3 Steps to Settle

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I'm going to share three steps you can utilize to feel more rest in each moment. You can do this as a meditation practice, but you can also do it as a simple practice throughout the day when you're going about your daily life. And there are three parts of this, C E N. You could view that acronym as cen.

The first is just to connect to what is here right now. One of the things that tends to prevent us from actually deepening into restful states is that we're disconnected from our body. And therefore can't actually sense what is going on beneath the surface. If we're not able to have a felt sense of what is here, it's very difficult to invite it to soften and to relax. So the first thing we do is just simply connect.

And you can even do it as I'm speaking right now. Maybe have, start to have a felt sense of your body sitting here or standing here. Connect. Next is going to be to expand. When we're contracted around an experience, we create more tension for ourselves.

However, our attention has the ability to get really narrow, but also really spacious. So just as you're watching this and listening to this, just see what it would be like to expand your attention so that you're inhabiting a broader awareness of your body in space, sitting here, the space around you. You have a felt sense of what's happening in your body, but you also have a felt sense of the space around your body. And then the last step is N, nourish. And this is to meet anything that we're experiencing that may be uncomfortable or stressful with the quality of compassion, and we could even say love.

So notice for yourself right now. Is there anything that feels maybe off or even something like an itch in the body or an emotion that's uncomfortable? Confusion? Discomfort? And just meet that with a quality of kindness. You could even say hi, nice to see you. You're welcome here too. And when we do this, we're no longer fueling the agitation and contraction that tends to happen automatically in relationship to an already agitated system.

And since we're taking in so much stimulation throughout the day, it's very common for us to feel agitated, even if there's nothing specifically going on in our life. So these three things you can use throughout the day. Connect, expand, and then nourish. It's as simple way to drop back into the present moment, to reground, and to create an internal spaciousness that allows you to lead into the next moment with a little bit more ease. Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.