Resting With Breath: A Guided Practice For Gentle Presence

Welcome. Today we're going to be practicing gentle awareness of our natural experience. We're not trying to get anywhere or do anything special. Or trying to feel a certain way.

We're simply going to be bringing this gentle awareness to whatever arises in the body with our breathing. Or any predominant emotions that may be coming up for us. Simply bringing this gentle awareness to whatever comes up, allowing it to be here, breathing through it all. And so as we begin, let's take a moment to settle in as we explore what it means to rest in this simple awareness.

It's raining here today in Berkeley. Rain was not on the forecast for today, as of this morning, but here it is. Noticing where our awareness is, noticing what we're aware of in this moment. Some of us may be aware of physical sensations, sounds, tastes, stories or thoughts, thoughts of the past or the future, sensing into breathing, noticing what emotions are present or as we breathe. What energies we're carrying in our bodies. However, it is inviting a simple sense of care with this experience imbued in this gentle awareness. Some of us may choose to be aware of something simple, like the inhale and exhale of each breath. Some of us may bring

gentle awareness to emotion that's very present for us. Noticing the energies of that emotion. Some of us may notice more and more layers of this experience. Layers of emotion, sensations, and more embodied fullness. Noticing new things about this unfolding experience, breathing with this experience, breathing with the body, inviting spacious care, carrying awareness to this unfolding experience.

May we bring the same gentle awareness to ourselves and to others for the rest of our lives. Whenever we're ready and slowly reorienting back to the space around us and to each other. Sometimes deceptively simple. Sometimes if things feel complicated, busy, chaotic, sometimes we can use the mantra simple, simple simple awareness, inviting us to come home to ourselves, to our breathing, to our heart. Remember that we can relate to anything with this gentle awareness of how it's actually unfolding here right now. So that we can remember balance is presence, some of our deeper values, where we can heal ourselves.