A Meditation on Finding Contentment in the Present, with Dr Rick Hanson

I offer these every week, along with a short teaching. Just click the subscribe link below to be notified through YouTube when I post the recording of the latest one. Or if you'd like to join me live, which I'd really welcome, go down into the description section below and follow the link along to be able to sign up for free. Good. I'll make some suggestions about the breath, yet if that's uncomfortable for you to focus on, it's really fine to put your attention elsewhere. Elsewhere in your body, or just outside your body altogether. You know, a comfortable feeling, lovingness or gratitude, or an image, like a favorite place, or a simple phrase or single word, it's really fine to use something other than the breath. That said, I'll talk now about the breath. So, taking a few breaths that are really full, with your eyes open or closed as you like. And in this meditation, I'll be focusing on steadying the mind, a traditional foundational focus of contemplative practice. So, to start, see if you can remain continuously aware of breathing. And see if you can get a sense of your body as a whole as you breathe, or at least large areas of it as you breathe, such as the sensations throughout your chest and belly as you inhale and exhale, sensations that include your hips and back and shoulders, neck and head, even downward into your legs and feet, rising and falling, breath after breath, feeling the air flowing in and out as you breathe, seeing, feeling what it's like to give yourself over to breathing, disengaging from everything else, passing through awareness, letting yourself become increasingly absorbed in the beautiful breath. There's a simplicity in this foundational form of meditation. We are either in touch with the breath, or we are not. And if we're not, no worries, just get back in touch with it. As you dwell increasingly in breathing, you might find your mind getting quieter, less verbal. You might find a growing sense of grounding, feeling established, stable, with a combination somehow of groundedness and spaciousness, openness, while still remaining aware of the breath. For their own sake, and as neurological factors of steadiness of mind, you might like to recognize or invite positive emotions, such as gladness at the opportunity to practice, or gratitude, or lovingness, a simple happiness, perhaps. Not forcing anything, recognizing what might already be here, or even gently inviting gladness and other feelings, mingling in awareness with the sense of breathing. In particular, as you breathe, can you find a sense of feeling content? It's a quiet kind of well-being that is not seeking anything else. There's a letting go of seeking, clinging, or craving. When it's authentic, contentment is a sense of there being enough already with well-being woven in. There's a release from the engines of becoming. There's simply being, already content. We can know that there can be pain and challenges. We can know that there can be opportunities and goals. That's all okay, while feeling already content. See if you can find a sense of this and increasingly dwell in it, not leaning into the future, content with the present. You might have soft thoughts such as, I am content, or this is enough. You can be aware of a sense of pressure, or drivenness, frustration, or discontent. And without struggling with anything, you can also let more and more of all that go. It's okay. You can be content. You can become absorbed in the experience of contentment spreading through your body, pervading your mind, taking contentment as your object of attention, becoming absorbed in contentment.