Okay, so for our guided meditation, just taking an alert posture. A posture that expresses our intention to practice, as well as some warmth, some care, kindness. Some uprightness, but that doesn't have a coldness or hardness to it.

Connect with the experience of breathing. Feeling the breaths. Noticing the quality of the breaths. Are they smooth? Are they rough? Maybe the breaths are long. Maybe they're a little more short. Maybe some deep breaths, or maybe they feel a little more shallow. We're just noticing. Feeling the rhythm of the breath. An in-breath, and then an out-breath.

Is there a way that we can stretch our awareness, expand our awareness to include the whole physical body? This expanding, stretching of the awareness helps us to not get lost into our experience or contracted around something. It might be helpful to imagine, sometimes with the exhales, a little bit of blowing up the awareness, just like we might blow up a balloon in a relaxed, easy manner. Having the body be the arena of our attention. Again, nothing in particular needs to be happening. We're being with sensations of the breathing and with the body.

Can we offer our attention to different parts of the body? The face. The shoulders. The chest. The belly. It might be that bringing our attention to these different areas allows a certain amount of softening, relaxing, letting go of the tension. Maybe not, also; we don't have to make it a problem if there's still some tension, some holding. But is there a way that we can let go of some of the holding patterns in the body? Maybe with the exhale there's a little bit of release. Very subtle. This relaxing, calming is more associated with allowing, letting go, than with any doing.

We might check in and see if we're creating any new tension by expectations we might have. We can notice any pleasant sensations that are associated with breathing. This can be very subtle, but maybe there's a little feeling of smoothness. Maybe there's a little feeling of letting go with the exhale that has some pleasure with it. Maybe there's some pleasant sensations associated with just being intimate with our breathing. Maybe there's a feeling of contentment. A vague feeling of okayness. This may not be our dominant experience; it may be just a corner of our experience. Can we tune into this aspect of our experience? Any sense of okayness, contentment, pleasantness? And allow this to be a support.

Being settled in the body, feeling the sensations of breathing, you can now turn towards the mental experience. A gentle inquiry: are there any thoughts? Some mental activity that takes us away from the present moment experience?

Just like we did with the body and with the breath, we can notice the experience of this mental activity, rather than trying to make it go away. Perhaps they have a lot of energy associated with them, or maybe not so much energy with this mental activity. Are the thoughts more discursive, writing novels so to speak? Are they very simple, descriptive, just a single sentence? Maybe somewhere in between. Just noticing the quality, not so much the content.

There might be a sense of constriction or tightness around the breath—but also around the mental activity. Maybe there's a sense of ease, spaciousness, openness. We can feel into that. Associated with the thoughts, the mental activity, is there a tightening or an opening?

Maybe there's a sense of pushing or pulling, not liking, liking. This movement of wanting. We can notice that also. Maybe there's a sense of looking for something, searching. How does that feel? What is that experience? Letting the content of the thought take care of itself, more being with the experience of having these thoughts.

Maybe we're identified with the thoughts. "This is me. This is mine."

No matter which way we are experiencing the thoughts, as we breathe in, as we breathe out, can we relax, soften these mental activities? Letting the activities of the mind come to rest. Maybe the breaths themselves can reassure the mind in some kind of way that the mind doesn't need to be so active. Not getting involved with the thinking, but trusting the breath.

Not all mental activity needs to stop. We're just allowing a calming, a softening of whatever is happening in the mind. We can do this by being aware of mental activity without getting involved, getting tangled up in it. All the while breathing in and breathing out.