One-Minute Practice: Being Present In Your Body

Bring your awareness to your feet. Let them rest on the ground and feel the soles of your feet widen into the floor. Sense the many bones in the feet and think of allowing a little space between those bones.

Now bring your attention to the top of your body, at your head/neck joint. Way up high, almost between the ears, and behind the roof of your mouth—think about allowing this joint to have a little more space. Let your head balance delicately.

Attend now to your right ankle and continue up your right leg through to your right hip and invite the muscles and tissues around the bones to be soft yet dynamic. The joints to be spacious. Do the same on your left leg.

Take your awareness to your pelvis and sense the bowl-shaped structure.As you are sitting, notice your sit bones resting on the surface of your chair or floor. Think of allowing this bowl shape to rest easily and support you.Invite width across the lower back as if your pants pockets could widen away from each other.

Now bring your attention to your core—your spine—with it’s fluid-filled discs between each vertebrae. The intervertebral discs are wide and springy. Think of allowing length along the spine, from the base of the sacrum all the way up to the head/neck joint.

Notice now your breath, and how your whole three dimensional torso is gently moving. Lungs and ribs moving out and in with ease.

Allow your shoulders and collar bones to drift away from your center, so that you don’t hold your shoulders down or back or anywhere, but they simply float on your ribs.

Think of your neck muscles, all the way from your upper torso to the base of your jaw and skull, to rest into length and ease. Again notice the gentle balance of your head.

During your day, at any time, you can invite an easy spaciousness into your sitting. As you practice coming back to presence, it will become easier, fuller and more pleasurable.