Gently close your eyes and start observing your breath, just listen, just feel. Be the observer of your breath not the doer. Simply allow your body to breathe. 

Good breathing is essential to vibrant health. Vibrant health is not just the absence of illness but a connection to all the energy in all of your body. Can you feel the sensations of energy in your body? Can you sense the areas where you may be guarding yourself? Areas of holding and tension.

Be aware of all your thoughts and feelings whether they are uncomfortable or comfortable, notice what you are allowing and what you are resisting. Without judgement. Give yourself permission to be exactly as you are. Create a closeness to your body that you might normally not have time for.

Meditation can help us become in touch with our whole selves. This isn’t an abstract idea but involves the entirety of our functioning. Awareness of self is being aware of what is going on within us as well as around us. It is different from an intellectual knowing. It is different from the thoughts we have about ourselves. It is a felt experience in our body. We often live in our heads, led by our thoughts, with very little conscious awareness of what is going on in our bodies. We may not be aware that we hold our breath, or that we are breathing shallowly, or that our thoughts are causing our anxiety.

Imagine for a second, that you live in a world where you are not the thoughts that you have day in day out.

But if you are not your thoughts, then who are you? Your thoughts are created by consciousness. Consciousness comes first, then thoughts are born from this consciousness. Thoughts are a necessary means to an end when we have a problem or a need to plan and arrange, but they only exist as a consequence of this conscious awareness that is already there and will always be there.

If you begin to observe your thoughts, day to day, you may start to notice that you are usually imagining some future event that is either worse or better than the one you are in. Imagining better gives us hope and excitement, whilst imagining worse causes us stress and anxiety. Both of them are an illusion. You might notice that a lot of your thoughts are repetitive, a rehash of a conversation, an event playing out again and again.  

When we start to witness our thoughts, who is it that is doing the witnessing? It is the constant presence of conscious awareness. An awareness that is untainted and full of pure potential. When accessed we are said to be in flow, in alignment, in the moment, in the now.  

Let’s try it now. Bring your attention to the inner experience of your body. Feel the energy that exists all the time moving around you. And become aware of the areas of your body where you do not feel movement. Where you feel blocks, or denseness, heaviness. Particularly bring awareness to your chest and your stomach as these two areas are where emotions generally arise and subside.

Notice a spaciousness in your experience and try to rest there.  When a thought arises simply notice it as a thought and allow it to pass by like a cloud in the sky or see it disappear as you bring your attention back to the felt sense of spacious aliveness in your inner body and once again, rest as the thought free space.

Even if you can only rest as thought free awareness for a few moments, take the time throughout your day to do this. They may last 3-4 seconds and then thought comes back in. Just keep trying to return again and again. 

Notice how your thoughts affect your body.

Develop a curiosity into the thoughts that make up this illusion of self. Who are you? Who are you really? Who are you when you’re alone? When you’re with friends, a lover, work colleagues, which part of you is always consistent. Always present. That’s who you are.

Being more in the now helps us be present in our experience and releases us from worry, anxiety and the stress we create in our minds. 

So as you start to come round back into the room, slowly, gently, remember that there is more to you than your thoughts. There is a place in you where you can navigate the ups and downs of life with balance and a sense of acceptance. When you feel anxious, you can bring your attention to your breath and body. Bring yourself to the now and say who am I? How can I react to this situation that will serve me the most? How can I react without getting caught up in the stories and thoughts and deal just with the situation in hand. How can I find solutions and move into action and miss out the worry and defensiveness, the dissatisfaction and the unease and draw on my inner wisdom and insight to just be me dealing with a problem.