Focus Your Busy Mind With A Grounding Practice

We’re going to be exploring right this moment a sequence of various methods to domesticate aware consideration. It’s a very useful apply when the thoughts is busy, once we’re discovering it laborious to be current, once we’re triggered by one thing, or when it’s simply actually laborious to settle. After all, this would possibly sound like several day of the week. However there are occasions particularly once we’re so busy considering, planning, worrying, stressing that it’s actually laborious to deal with the breath or the physique, or no matter explicit meditation object we’re utilizing. 

Attending to Consideration

This apply is a extremely helpful approach or instrument that helps the eye that’s grounded in our bodily sensory expertise. So I’m going to instruct you to maneuver your consideration from being conscious of seeing, to listening to, to sensing your physique. 

And once I say, “be aware of seeing,” which means I’m going to ask you to decrease your gaze, like I’m doing proper now, and sit with a delicate, targeted consideration: relaxed eyes, delicate gaze, and simply being conscious of the visible stimuli—coloration, mild, kind, form. You’re not taking a look at any explicit factor or observing or learning something intently, simply being conscious of receiving the visible area in the identical manner we pay attention—which would be the subsequent factor we shift our consideration to. We’ll go from seeing to listening to. 

And with listening to, once more, you’re simply opening up your consideration and permitting the total auditory panorama to be recognized—listening to the ambient sounds, the distant sounds, the nearer sounds, the sound of my voice. This additionally contains sounds within the room the place you’re, or the sounds of nature, mechanical sounds—the final panorama of sounds. 

So, we’ll do this for a number of moments, after which we’ll shift our consideration to sensing our bodily expertise. That’s, sensing our posture, and particularly, feeling the contact of the physique with the bottom or no matter you’re sitting on. The main focus will likely be on feeling your sitz bones, your legs, your toes. We’ll additionally steer towards some consciousness of our breath. Then, we’ll rotate via these three major experiences: seeing, listening to and sensing. And we’ll do that rotation a number of occasions as a option to actually floor the eye. 

One other profit: every time we transfer the eye on this method, it lights up our curiosity. And once we’re curious, it permits our consideration to have interaction, permits us to abide extra strongly within the current.

A Grounding Follow to Focus Your Busy Thoughts

Watch the video:

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Learn and apply the guided meditation script under, pausing after every paragraph. Or hearken to the audio apply.

1. Start by discovering a cushty posture the place you may sit upright and relaxed. Simply take a second to sense your bodily expertise. Ideally, your eyes are closed, or, if not, the gaze is lowered a bit of. Sense your physique settling. Really feel the contact of your physique with the bottom or the chair. Pay attention to your posture, conscious of the motion of breath and the sensations. Within the physique. 
2. Now, from this expertise of sensing the physique, I invite you to open your eyes and simply gaze in entrance of you. Decrease the gaze perhaps a number of toes—purpose for relaxed, delicate eyes, a delicate gaze. And simply be aware that you just’re seeing, receiving via the eyes coloration, mild, kind, form, motion. 
3. Now, closing your eyes, decreasing your gaze extra, and shifting your consideration to listening to. Pay attention to sound. Pay attention to silence. Pay attention to the entire number of the soundscape. 
4. After which shifting consciousness to sensing your physique once more. Sensing your posture, contact, touching, respiratory. And open the eyes: now we’re seeing. Goal for a delicate gaze. Consider saving via the eyes. There’s no must make any explicit effort. That is simply easy mindfulness of seeing. 
5. Closing the eyes now and pay attention to listening to. No want to consider the sounds or the supply of the sounds, simply resting within the easy expertise of listening to, of listening. 
6. And now shifting consideration to sensing the physique once more. Be interested in no matter it’s you discover: temperature, breath, the expertise of contact and touching, different bodily sensations. 
7. And transferring to consciousness of seeing once more, so, opening the eyes. Transfer the eyes down a bit of, have a delicate gaze. Pay attention to the expertise of figuring out that you just’re sitting right here: sitting, seeing, listening to. There could also be all types of noise happening in your thoughts—ideas, planning, worrying—and but this attunement to seeing and listening to and sensing permits you to keep grounded right here. 
8. Now we’re going to maneuver our consideration a bit of extra shortly amongst these three spheres of our expertise. So, let’s shut the eyes, shifting consciousness to listening to and sensing the sensations of your physique. And now to seeing: opening the eyes. Now, once more to listening to. Sensing your physique. And lastly, opening the eyes and seeing. 
9. As we deliver the meditation to a detailed, pay attention to all three of those areas of expertise: seeing, and listening to, and sensing. Discover how this apply permits you to keep grounded and current. 

It doesn’t matter what is perhaps happening in your life, whether or not it’s a busy thoughts, challenges in your physique, or no matter else is pulling you away from the current second, we are able to use this straightforward apply. Seeing, listening to, sensing: it’s a option to keep grounded, current, open. And it’s a option to help your self in staying actually grounded in your fast expertise. 

You’ll be able to apply this anyplace: in your workplace, at residence, in a park. Pay explicit consideration to the distinction between doing this apply indoors versus having the help of the sensory expertise outdoors. See if that makes a distinction. And bear in mind you may draw on this apply at any time—significantly when it feels laborious to get current or focus or focus.