Jill Satterfield: Session 1, Sensing Practice (Weight & Gravity)

So let's do a short practice. This will be about 10 minutes. You're welcome to close your eyes or keep your eyes open and cast down about three, four feet in front of you depending on your space. I highly recommend that you take a posture that's comfortable. It's going to be short, so it's probably not enough time to lie down and come back up, but if that's something that you need to do to take care of yourself, that's totally all right. If you are going to be moving in one way or another, it's probably better you turn your camera off for that, but you don't have to. So weigh that out for yourself. And let's begin, and this is a great resource, I think. Let's begin by relating to the weight of our bodies. What can you sense in terms of the heaviest parts of your body or the heavier parts of your body right now? And by sensing weight, it sometimes signals the soft tissue of the body, the muscles, the fascia, the sinew to release a little bit, acknowledging the weight. So let's even invite our muscular system to not feel responsible to hold us up right now. Let's allow our bones to hold us up in the way that they are. Acknowledging weight and heaviness in the body is another way of sensing gravity. And gravity holds us to our home. Gravity holds us to our body. Gravity holds us to the earth, thankfully. So the mind can fly all over the place, and it's often quite wonderful when it does, but the body can stay here. The body is what can facilitate being present and grounded. So we sense gravity through weight. We might sense contact with whatever it is that we're on right now, chair, sofa, the floor. And through that contact, we can sense connection. You can even imagine that you're connecting to the earth in a way that maybe you don't see, but you can sense. Maybe you picture lying in grass, standing in a forest, being at an ocean, sitting on a mountain, a connection to a place on earth, a root system perhaps, and feeling some semblance of stability here and now through weight and gravity, contact and connection, we might be able to open outwardly and sense the space around us. Maybe you feel the air, the air as it touches your skin in the space, the room, the area that you're in right now. Maybe you can even sense the space above your head and the ceiling if there is one, or the sky if you're outside. Just sense it, or the wall behind you, in front of you or to your sides, sensing this body that's rooted, that's here, that's now inside of a space. So we are an aspect of where we are. We're not the totality of where we are. We are part of this space that we're in, which also contains sounds. What can you hear? Notice the direction from which a sound emanates, resonates within and from the space that we're in. We see different kinds of light, or darkness, shapes with the eyes opened and the eyes closed. Depending on the light of your room, the light of the day, the darkness of the room, if you're in an evening time zone right now. But light filters, light and darkness filters through the eyelids, what can you see in terms of sight coming from where you are right now? So weight and gravity keeps us here. We can remind ourselves to let go, let the body relax a little bit. Or just focus on bones, focus on your feet on the ground, sensing any of these aspects of weight. Well, we sense space without even having to look at it, the space around us. So we are one aspect in a space, one aspect of the world. We can sense the air around us on our skin. Maybe even moving in and out through the nostrils. We sense sound, we hear it, we receive it from all different angles, very parabolic. And we see, we sense sight, whether the eyes are fully closed or somewhat open. All of these sense doors help us to be here now. They're indicative of the present moment only. Now allow your breath to be a tiny bit deeper or a lot deeper depending on what you prefer. And then when you feel ready, allow your eyes to open fully but keep your gaze very soft, your eyes receded into your head as much as you can. And very gently just look around, taking the color, the shapes, the forms that you see. What do you see right now? And see if you could do this in somewhat of a way that's not having to apprehend or even judge. Can you just look? Receive sight. And while your eyes are open and either you keep your eyes still on a place or an area or you're looking around, see if you can still sense your body and the weight of your body somewhat. Now take a look at the screen.