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Happy Hour: Soothing Breath in Each Precious, Passing Moment

Hello, and welcome to Happy Hour, everyone. It's lovely to be with you. It's happy-making to be with you in this moment in time, wherever you are in the world.

For today's practice, I'd like to invite us to explore a couple of themes. I want to bring two themes together: the theme of metta^[1], kindness, together with the theme of peace. Peace, especially given that it's a Friday or Saturday depending on your time zone, so bringing in a sense of peace and peacefulness. Metta, kindness, can show up in so many different ways. This practice can be very energetic and warm, and it can also be very quiet, very gentle, very comforting, soothing, and very stilling. So that's one aspect that I want to bring in, and invite us to really rest, to relax into it. There's not so much doing that needs to be done, but to rest. To really rest.

The other theme I want to weave in today is one of impermanence, of the brevity of our time. The best way to be with the brevity of our time—that actually we are all dying, we are dying every moment—and the best way to really appreciate that and open our heart to that is with peace. It is with stillness, with presence, being fully present with care, with love, with appreciation for whatever is in this moment in time, for ourselves, and for others. I want to weave those in. Even though maybe for some it feels like, "Wow, awareness of our brevity of time, awareness of mortality is not peaceful," it can be. The appropriate response is peace.

So the invitation is, if leaning into the brevity of time really brings in more sense of letting go, peace, love, and kindness, lean into it. But if it brings more agitation, then don't lean into it. It's an invitation. You don't have to lean into it at all. You can stay with the yes—saying yes to the peace, to the calm, to the presence, to the groundedness in this moment. See what is more helpful for you as I bring up the invitations, and lean more or less into these invitations. See what might work for you.

Guided Meditation

Okay, well, let's get formally started with our practice.

Moving your body perhaps, if you need to move or shift, find a comfortable position where you can be sitting or lying down, or even standing. Whatever this body needs.

Appropriate response to what is needed in this moment. What does your heart need? What does your body need at this moment?

Ah, letting go. Releasing with the out-breath.

Ah, letting the in-breath be received in the abdomen. The in-breath received.

The out-breath released. Released, letting go.

Feeling, sensing sensations of the feet and the earth. The hands on your lap. Your sit bones on the cushion, on the chair. These contact points.

Releasing your weight onto these contact points.

Releasing. Releasing doesn't mean pushing away if there are emotions present. It might be sadness, grief, joy, disappointment—whatever there might be, it's okay.

Instead of holding them tight, as if you were carrying a load of bricks in your chest, release. It's okay. Let them gently drop on the floor, proverbially, with you. Ah, you don't have to hold them so tight.

Hold them contained, let them release. Let the sack open. Ah, no longer heavy, being carried.

Let the breath be spacious, through the body. The whole body, around the body.

And if your body was the breathing, breathing ball, maybe the edges are a little blurry. A little elastic. The breath being breathed inside, outside. Including breathing through the bricks that have fallen on the floor about you. Maybe softening, maybe the bricks as they're breathed into, become a little softer. A little lighter.

Not effortful. It just happens on its own.

Maybe nothing more is needed in this moment but to just be breathed. Let everything be breathed. Your joy, your sorrow. Your lightness, your heaviness.

Your gladness, your grief. Your gratitude, your disappointment.

Your hopes and dreams for the future. Your fears. All of them breathed right here. All of them okay to be here.

If any thoughts arise, preoccupation, let them be breathed through. Not so heavy.

The grace of the breath touching everything.

This breath, this thread. This thread that keeps you alive. Breathing through everything, all these moments of awakeness, of sleep. Of being alive, this thread.

This precious thread runs through everything. Can be aware of the grace of this breath that threads through everything.

Let it run through everything.

Holding this magic thread. Let it lead you, comfort you, calm you. Lighten the weight. Inspire you.

Inviting the breath. Receiving the breath. It's also an expression of care for yourself. Metta, kindness, stilling the mind and heart.

Listening to the breath. This caring lullaby.

These precious days, these precious moments. Spent with yourself, with this being who is you. This being who is me.

Expressing my care, my love, simply by being present. The precious breaths, here.

Intimate, so intimate with oneself.

This beloved we may have ignored all day. Intimately attending, listening, feeling each breath. Each precious breath.

And if the mind wanders, if there is distraction, sleepiness, it's okay. Can it be greeted and breathed through? Let the breath, the ease of the body—let the breath breathe ease through the body and thoughts in your heart, your mind.

In this moment, and now. In this moment, and now again. This fresh moment of now-ness keeps fleeting. Keeps fleeting. Keeps fleeting.

Even more precious as it slips, comes and goes through our fingers. It's like this.

Spacious. Spacious.

Can the sense of care, kindness be imbued in the breath? Just being present for ourselves in this moment. This precious breath is an act of metta. It doesn't have to become complicated. No phrase is needed. Just being present.

Holding spacious presence through ourselves is an act of care.

"I'm here for you, sweetheart."

Just being. Being breathed.

And whatever is present—if it's boredom, sleepiness, sadness, joy, peace—is welcome. Breathed into, breathed with. Body relaxed with kindness.

As if your heart were smiling at all the comings and goings in this impermanent moment.

This practice, this being present in this moment for myself, is both for me and so much bigger, greater than me.

Seemingly holding witness space with the breath for myself opens up to more dimensionality of what, who this person is. A service for all beings. All beings, our lives.

Each breath is an offering to others. To those we love, those we're connected to directly, and everyone indirectly.

We may not understand all the dimensions, all the meanings, but trusting that our breathing, our being in the world, our actions—for good or bad—impact ourselves and so much beyond ourselves.

To dedicate the goodness, the grace of our practice, the beauty, trusting in the goodness that has been created, co-created, to all beings everywhere. With gratitude, with appreciation that we live on this earth. We're here to breathe, to hold witness together with all the joys and all the sorrows in these precious days while we're alive. May all beings be free, including ourselves.

Reflections and Q&A

Thank you. Thank you, friends, for your practice. Thank you.

So good to sit with you. So good to sit with you.

My sitting is lovely. I love sitting alone, and yet sitting together with you in sangha^[2], as you are in various places in the world, just makes my heart happy. So happy.

Yes, I see a heart there. Yes, other hearts are happy too. Sweet, sweet.

So, we have some time if there are reflections you'd like to share. You're welcome to raise your hand.

Anthony, I see you. Here we go.

Anthony: Nikki, I wanted to thank you so much for this guided meditation. It was very powerful. It was very easy for me to comprehend. I always overthink it, you know, what I'm doing, and just the simplicity of "receive and release," you know, I really felt that and it felt very, very good. So I wanted to thank you for that. I've never felt it that simple, you know? That simple. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Nikki: Thank you, Anthony. Thank you so much. Release, release. Yeah, yeah, the simplicity of that. Beautiful, thank you for sharing that.

Let's see. Simone, I trust it's okay to say your name because I think it was sent to everyone. Let's see. It's a long message, so I'm going to summarize instead of reading the whole thing. Let's see.

Yeah, so I appreciate it. I think what I'm reading is that you appreciated the guided meditation—my voice is calm and soothing—and yet mentioning death and dying is triggering for you, especially as you're dealing with cancer at this time and it really hits home. So I think the question that you have asked, and I'm going to paraphrase it, is how to continue to come because you want to come to Happy Hour and you want to do the practices, and yet the mention of death brings stress and anxiety and keeps triggering.

So, I appreciate you saying that, and to take care of yourself. I mean, the invitation that I had at the beginning was to see what is helpful for you to lean into. What is helpful, what is not helpful. And I would venture actually to say—and you may not know this, but I love teaching about metta and love, and I also really appreciate teaching (it's one of the other things that I teach a lot about) mindfulness of mortality.

It's so that we work with the anxiety, because the solution is not to avoid it or turn away when any mention of death arises, because we're all dying. And yes, I appreciate that there's something that you're working with right now given the cancer and it's very present for you. And what I'm trying to say is that—and I can stay and we can have a short conversation at the end, you can reach out to me—but actually let me share the intention.

The intention that I do have with combining the mentioning of death and mortality with a meditation that is about release, letting go, and calming, is actually to help us work with that death anxiety. You might have heard of systematic desensitization, which is a method in psychology, and there are many methods also in Buddhist practice, which is slowly, slowly pairing this gentle letting go, calming, and soothing, and bringing a little bit of the mention of what might be triggering or might be challenging or anxiety-producing for some, to pair it so that it can be held in ease. We can lose our fear, we can lose our trepidation, because it's the human condition, of course. We're all going to die. We all have a terminal condition, we don't know when. With having a terminal illness perhaps... and it may not be terminal, so sorry, I don't want to be saying that. But having illnesses—as I do have a chronic illness myself—makes it more challenging to deal with these conditions. But anyway, I'm happy to stay. But there is a reason to this. There is actually quite a deliberate way of bringing these in and pairing and supporting with death phobia, especially in our culture.

So that's what I would like to say about that. And again, I'm happy to stay later if you want to stay and I can talk with you one-on-one about this.

Any other reflections? Questions?

Yeah, so we are approaching the time... yeah, so it's actually both. Bringing mortality makes metta more palpable. There are so many ways in. There are so many ways in.

So I'd like to invite us all to practice in small groups. As always, the invitation is to only share from your own experience. Not managing, not handling, not probing into other people's experience. Each person is invited to share one nugget from their own experience, and then the next person, and the next person, going around and around. So take care of yourselves, take care of each other. And if it comes to your turn and you want to stay silent and just say "pass," that's perfectly okay. Here we go.

Great, so we have just about a minute if there are any reflections and questions, comments. You can type in chat, you can raise your hand. Please take it away.

Thank you for the heart.

Any reflections? Anything that came up in the groups? Maybe just quickly. I see it's actually seven o'clock, so I'll tell you what, we're going to formally bring it to a close just to respect the time, and I'll stay a few minutes extra and am happy to have reflections afterwards.

So thank you all, thank you for your practice. Thank you for coming and supporting each other, supporting yourselves, and all beings everywhere. May you be safe, happy, healthy, and have ease. Take good care, be well.