Hi! Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. We're on day four, which means we're about halfway through the program. So just notice how it's going for you so far. We've had three days together. We've explored different strategies, making space for the experience of stress, noticing our thoughts, becoming an observer to them rather than sucked into them, and learning how to start to redirect our attention away from some of those stressful thoughts when they arise.

Today, we're going to move from our heads, from our mind and drop more into the body. So there's a, at the end of a poem, by this poet Kabir, that I really love. And he says: Enter into your own body. There, you have a solid place to stand. Let go of all thoughts of imaginary things and stand firm in that, which you are.

Let go of all thoughts of imaginary things and stand firm in that, which you are. The amazing thing about connecting to the body is that the body is always present. They can't go into the future. They can't go into the past. They can't go into judgment or ideas.

All of that's happening in the mind. And so when we connect to our body, when we feel our body, we're stepping out of that narrative, the thought process, which is often the impetus for a lot of the stress we experience. So, let's put it into practice. Regardless of what your posture is right now, whether you're standing lying down or sitting. See if you can start to feel that a part of your body that is most vivid in your experience.

Right? So for me, it's my seat against the chair and also my feet on the ground. For you, if you're lying down, it might be your back against the couch, back against the backrest. If you're standing, maybe your feet on the ground. I just want you to bring your attention to that focus point. What's it like to tune into those sensations? Feeling a sense of groundedness? Remembering that we're not thinking about the sensations.

We're not imagining the sensations, but we're, we're just trying to feel them. Sometimes we can have some trouble with this because we can get a little disconnected from our bodies, from living so much in our thoughts. So if that's the case, you could take your hands, just place them on your thighs and practice sliding the hands up and down, just a little bit. And this way we're connecting to the visceral experience. I had a martial arts teacher that anytime I'd be standing up, if he could tell that I was up in my head, he would just come over and put his hand on my shoulders and push.

I would fall down almost every time. And he'd say, take a deep breath, get into your body. And I would, and I'll just go [inhale]. I feel my feet on the ground. My center of gravity drops.

And then he'd do the same thing. And I will be steady. I went silent. When we're up in our heads, we're a little more spacey. We don't have our groundedness.

When we drop into the body, there's more stability there and it's harder for stress to penetrate us. So my invitation to you today is to explore, dropping into the body when you find yourself caught in those stressful moments. We'll explore more of this in the meditation as always. Thank you for your practice and I'll talk to you shortly. Take care.