Today, I invite you to take 15 minutes, set it aside to learn mindfulness meditation and
to learn about natural presence.
And I invite you to do this for yourself and for your soul.
So take a moment and close out your other browsers.
Turn off your phone, find a comfortable place to sit where you can be both relaxed, get
alert, and we will dive into it.
For those of you who are new to my channel, my name is Barbara Heffernan and I am a certified
mindfulness instructor and I'm also a Buddhist and I'm also a psychotherapist and I created
this YouTube channel to try to bring these tools to more people.
So if you support what I'm doing here, please hit the subscribe bell, give me a thumbs up
and we'll get into it.
So mindfulness meditation has been an unbelievably healing and helpful practice for me and I've
been practicing it for almost 30 years.
And in many ways it has really transformed how I live my life and it's helped me make
better choices, be clearer about who I am, how I fit in the world, what my options are,
and I really am looking to bring the tools of mindfulness meditation to more people.
So as I said, I'm going to keep this to 15 minutes.
I'm going to do the best I can in the middle.
We are going to sit quietly for five minutes to try the practice out.
With your posture.
If you need more guidance on posture, I have a whole separate video on it that I can link
right here, but for the moment just it's okay if you're in a chair, if you're in a cushion
on the floor, just take a moment to straighten your spine.
I'd like to suggest that you try to have your eyes open, but with a lowered gaze.
So if you have your eyes gazing two to three feet of front in front of you on the floor,
if you're sitting on the floor and a soft gaze, you're not trying to intently see something,
but you're also not trying to fuzz things out.
So you're just simply letting your eyes see what they see.
And one reason in mindfulness meditation that we can keep our eyes open, although not all
traditions do.
But one reason that I recommend it is that mindfulness meditation is not about blocking
anything out.
It's not about pushing anything away.
It's not about retreating.
It's about being here exactly in this moment with all of our senses gates open.
So we will hear things as we meditate.
We might smell something if someone nearby is cooking.
Our eyes are open, all of our senses are open and everything is accepted in.
Everything's accepted into the space, and I invite you to take a deep breath.
And really feel your presence in your room.
Check in for a moment with how you feel.
Physically.
Check in with how you're feeling emotionally.
Just take a moment.
You can just sort of close your eyes or lower your gaze
and just notice, notice what physical sensations you're feeling.
Now.
Bring your awareness to your breath.
Whatever that means for you.
Just feel your breath moving in your body.
And the instructions for mindfulness meditation are very, very simple.
Enacting it is not always simple, but the instructions are simple and the instructions
are just to bring your attention to your breath.
Focus on it, and as your thoughts wander and they will wander.
As your thoughts wander - the second you notice your thinking, just gently bring your attention
back to your breath.
Just a very gentle process.
Nonjudgmental, no criticism, no goal here.
Just really to take five minutes to honor yourself as a human being, not a human doing,
a human being.
Just to honor yourself for a few minutes.
And so bring your attention to the breath.
As your mind wanders, just notice it and bring your mind back to the breath.
So just with those simple instructions, I am going to hit the gong, and we're going
to sit for five minutes.
No more than that.
And then I'm going to talk a little bit about natural presence and a little bit more guided
meditation, but I would like you to get a taste of what it's like to just simply focus
on your breath for five minutes.
And for some people this might seem like a very long period of time.
For some people it might seem very short and either one is okay
And gently just bring your attention back to your breath.
If your mind has wandered, no worries.
Just bring your attention back to your breath and just take a moment to notice to really
check in how you're feeling physically.
Now, if anything has shifted for you, just notice that internally, how you're physically
feeling emotionally, how you're feeling, and just before we come out of our meditation
posture and stance, just notice your sense of natural presence.
The natural presence which is with you at all times.
Natural awareness and bring in a sense of everything is okay.
Right at this second right now, I am okay as I am and
feel the sense of natural presence that you have an every other human being has.
You can bring your attention back to your breath as you do this and then begin to expand
your awareness outward a little bit.
Bring your awareness to the space around you, the space in front of you, to each side of
you, the space behind you, below you and above you and just feel yourself sitting with this
sense of spaciousness.
And as I ring the gong, just take a moment to really hear the sound and just listen as
fully as you can to the sound of the gum and listen for as long as you can hear it.
Woo.
So I'm very curious about what that experience was like for you.
And if you could put some comments below, I'll respond back.
I'm curious, have you found that relaxing or perhaps stressful?
Did the five minutes go fast or did it take an extended period of time?
I just did a very similar meditation live in my Facebook group and I was planning to
just post to the live on YouTube, but the sound did not come across in a way that it
would work to be re posted.
Although everybody on the Facebook live could hear me, I don't think the sound quality would
be good enough for Facebook, for YouTube quality.
But in that group we, I was able to read comments and respond directly.
And if you are interested in joining the Facebook group, the link is below my Facebook page
is @awakenjoy.life And if you go to my page like it, join the
group, we will be discussing mindfulness, meditation, boundaries, and other components
of living a healthy and joyful life without whitewashing.
I promise you this is not a group which is going to be like everything is joyous and
wonderful all the time because we are human beings.
We struggle, we have pain.
This will be about reality.
Similar to mindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness is not to achieve a particularly blissful state.
Mindfulness meditation is to learn to be with what exactly what is.
And as you practice it, you probably will end up feeling calmer, more peaceful, and
have more bliss, but there's not an active goal to achieve that.
So mindfulness meditation is really about being mindful of what actually exists and
really practicing that nonjudgmental awareness can transform your life.
Truly it can.
So love to hear your comments.
I would also like to ask you if you're willing to challenge yourself to sit for a certain
amount of time each day, maybe five minutes, 10 15 whatever you think you can fit into
your day.
See if you're willing to challenge yourself and post that below as well.
And in my Facebook group, we are doing a challenge this week.
So hope to see you over there and hope to see you again on YouTube.