Finding pleasure in the breath & body

We’re going to practise with relaxing, enjoying, finding—well, being in—the breath and the body. So just make sure that your posture supports that before we commit to relative stillness. And then, just beginning to shift the kind of foreground of awareness to the body. It’s like a dimmer switch. It’s not like we’re elsewhere and then we’re in the body. It’s like we just turn up the brightness of the presence of awareness in the body. You might even sense or imagine awareness as a kind of light that illuminates the body. And then we can become much more intimate with this experience of the body. We can get a much deeper sense of what it is that we’re bringing awareness to. So it’s not the projection of the body into space that the mind makes—that’s part of our experience of the body—but we want to go deeper and open with more sensitivity to the felt sense, the experience, the very multifaceted, dynamic experience of your body. So, noticing firstly what’s obvious in your body—what sensations or atmospheres or unnameable experiences are most prominent and most liable to capture attention. And then tuning to what’s much less obvious, what’s more subtle, just visiting different parts of the body to listen for those micro-tingles, currents, subtle tension. Noticing the temperatures in the body, noticing how the body isn’t all one temperature, but there’s a kind of shifting thermal map of the body. And then sensing how your emotional state is reflected in the body. Even if your emotional state feels quite neutral, there’s a sense that the body carries this atmosphere, this vibration, this frequency. So this is our embodied experience right now. And our first intention is just to allow it to be exactly as it is. Noticing the tendencies to step in and fix this or that aspect of experience that we consider to be not quite good enough. Just resting into the spaciousness and ease of not fighting experience. This is it. And then we can begin to welcome the breath, to encourage the breath to take a prominent place in awareness. And there’s a reason why we start with all of these other aspects of our embodied experience first—so that when we turn to the breath, we’re turning to something much richer, more nuanced, more detailed. We can bring much more sensitivity. So, notice that breathing is something that the whole body moves with—even the top of the head, the soles of the feet, the fingertips. If we can bring this real sensitivity, we can notice these too—feel the impact of the breath. And of course the belly, the chest, the throat. And we’re going to let the breath carry this intention to welcome, to allow, to be with our experience in this spacious way. We’re going to let the breath carry that to every cell in the body, every micro-sensation in our experience of the body. And as you do this—as you encourage the breath to reach the whole body and carry this intention of completely allowing things to be just as they are—you can be sure to also be the receiver of this intention, not just the one who evokes it. Feeling how the body responds to this kindness of just letting things be. Right now, this experience is enough. Letting your whole body soak that sense in to its core. And just this intention—this kind intention—to allow everything to be as it is. And this presence in the whole body—just this—might be sufficient to begin to enjoy the breathing body. Just notice now—is there something here that can be enjoyed? And I’ll invite you to just check a few different possibilities. Is it possible to enjoy the feeling of your belly, as your body receives this intention, this ease? Is there a kind of warm glow—or the seeds of that—in your belly? Is there some kind of lightness and warmth in your heart as you gracefully receive your experience of body breathing? Or is there a kind of frequency, energy, vibration in the whole body—a sense of the background fabric of the body, coloured, tinted, flavoured somehow with some kind of well-being, something pleasant? Check if any or all of these possibilities are working for you right now in a really low-key way. We’re not trying to make anything happen. We’re leaning towards enjoying something quite subtle, something that probably doesn’t initially knock our socks off. But then the attitude of enjoying and appreciating and savouring—this can build a sense of well-being. So we’re in touch with the whole body. There’s this bright presence in the whole space of the body. The breath is animating and moving this whole space. And we’re noticing whatever feels easiest to love, easiest to enjoy, easiest to appreciate about this experience of your body—in this experience of your body. And to help catalyse this process of appreciating and enjoying, developing a sense of well-being in the body, we can use our imagination in any way that feels helpful. We might sense the body as a ball of golden light that is made of love or joy. And with each inhale, the ball brings energy from outside of it. With each exhale, the ball expands. You might imagine your body made of honey, or leaves, or sunshine, or the river. There’s no prescription for how it should be. Sometimes just a little drop of kinesthetic imagination—it’s got to be embodied and felt—sometimes a little drop of this can spark some joy, some love, which we can welcome, include and appreciate. It’s not that we’re demanding pleasure from the body—we’re not trying to mine the body for pleasure or exploit it. It’s more like we tune in to the most pleasurable kind of frequencies in the spectrum of experience in the body, choosing to dwell here and deepen this sense of well-being. And we’re never removing ourselves from the reality of our experience of the breathing body—always welcoming and allowing whatever happens to be the case. And as we keep appreciating, keep enjoying, keep rolling out the red carpet for whatever can be enjoyed, this enjoyment can begin to feed back into the very sense of the body—creating a kind of feedback loop, showing us that the way that we attend to the body, the way that we bring awareness, has a deep impact on how we experience ourselves, how we experience our bodies. And this intention of enjoying, well-being, appreciation—it needs to be affirmed again and again. Habits of the mind will pull us away. So we start by returning to this sensitivity and presence in the whole body and the movement of the breath. And then allowing whatever feels most pleasurable about this whole experience—allowing that to be appreciated, feeding that with awareness and love. And we’ll practise like this in silence for the last few minutes together.