Good evening everybody and welcome to May's Meditation. With myself and Doctor Mc Scanlon. So it's a beautiful, beautiful evening here in Liverpool, and it's been a glorious weekend.

I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend too. And now it's time for that lovely half an hour of relaxation just before the week begins again on Monday. So it's evening.

Oh, there we go. We are going to do the mindfulness of the sounds and we're gonna start with Mike's lovely, the mountain meditation. We're just doing it a little bit more mindfully.

So I'll pass you on to Mike, who'll guide you through that meditation and I'll guide you through the second. Thank you very much and speak to you soon. Over to you, Mike.

Thank you. Are you with us, Mike? Yeah, there I am.

Oh, brilliant, wonderful. Sorry, guys, I hadn't pressed and mute. I think I'd know what I was doing by now.

So, but no judgement, because this is mindfulness time, which is, which is lovely, isn't it? So, yeah, I thought I would do the mountain meditation, but more mindfully. And those of you that did our, our course, the, the eight-week MBSR Mindfulness-based stress reduction course, will remember me saying, I think that this is my absolute sort of go to meditation.

At times when I just need to pull myself together and kind of feel strong and get in touch with that sense of being able to . Be particularly resilient. And the one I'm gonna do today is slightly longer than the one that was on the recording and probably just a bit more mindful actually.

So, let's start. So begin perhaps by just getting into a comfortable position. In your chair.

This is a sitting meditation. Sitting, with your feet flat on the floor. Just on crossing arms and legs if we need to.

And just resting their hands. In your lap, palms up or down. Whichever's more comfortable.

And just allowing your eyes to close gently. And now Just take a few moments. To get in touch with the physical sensations.

Of your body. Especially sensations of touch or pressure. Where the body makes contact with the chair.

That you're sitting on Or the floor And as we're focusing. On our own physicality. Just noticing.

The gentle rise. And fall of the breath. In your chest and in the belly.

Smiling and catching ourselves. If we start to try and manipulate that or control the breathing in any way. Simply let your breath.

Breathe itself. Just breathing. And as best you can.

Perhaps bring this attitude. Of allowing And gentle acceptance to the rest of this mindful experience today. And now Just picture in your mind's eye as best you can.

The most beautiful mountain that you know. Have seen Or can imagine And hold the image. And the feeling of this mountain.

In their mind's eye. Letting it gradually. Come into greater focus.

And we begin by Observing its overall shape. The lofty peak. The broad base rooted.

In the rock of the earth's crust. It's slopes, whether they be steep or. Gently sloping sides.

Noticing how massive. Is our mountain How solid How unmoving. Perhaps your mountain has snow at the top.

And trees on the lower slopes. However it appears. Just sitting And breathing with the image of this mountain.

Observing it Noting its qualities. When you feel ready, Let's see if we can bring the mountain into our own bodies. So that your body sitting here.

And the mountain of the mind's eye. Merge and become one. Sitting here You too share.

In the massiveness and the stillness Of the mountain You can become the mountain. Rooted in the sitting posture. Bringing your attention to your head.

As your head becomes the lofty peak. Supported by the Rest of your body. And your shoulders and arms.

Become the sides of the mountain. And your buttocks and your legs become that solid base. Rooted your chair.

And With each breath as you continue sitting. Becoming just that little bit more. Of a living breathing mountain.

Unwavering in your stillness. Completely what you are. Beyond words and thought.

A scented Rooted Unmoving presence. Now As we sit Becoming aware of the fact. That as the sun travels across the sky.

And day becomes night and Night is then followed. Once again by a day. Our mountain just sits.

Experiencing the changing of the light. In each moment. Constantly changing.

Yet always just being itself. And the mountain remained still. As the seasons flow into one another.

As the leaves turned colour. In the autumn And the snow and ice blanket the mountain. In the winter.

And then spring comes. And the birds sing in the trees once again. And the streams.

Form from the waters of the melting snow but through it all. Our mountain Continues to sit. Unmoved by the weather.

By what happens on the surface, by the world of appearances. People may come to see the mountain. And they may comment on how beautiful it is or how it's not a good day to see the mountain.

Too cloudy, too rainy, too foggy. Or dark But none of this matters. To the mountain, which remains at all times its essential self.

Clouds come and go. But the mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit. By whether people see it or not or by the weather.

And perhaps in the face of everything that changes in our own lives. Over seconds Over hours Over years. We can become that mountain.

Embodying the same. Unwavering stillness and rootedness. We all experience.

Our own periods of light. And darkness and let's sit with that for a moment. Making space for it.

Acknowledging that storms of varying intensity in the outer world and in our own minds and bodies. Making space for the fact that. We endure periods of darkness and pain.

And we savour moments of joy. Even our appearance changes constantly. As we experience the weather.

Of our own emotions and trials. And tribulations of life. But by becoming the mountain.

Maybe we can link. With its strength, its stability. And adopt them for ourselves.

We can use the mountain's energy to support our willingness to encounter each moment with mindfulness. Equanimity and clarity. It may help us to see.

That our thoughts and feelings and sensations are just like. The weather That buffets the mountain. And just like the weather.

That our mountain experiences the weather of our own lives is not to be ignored. Or denied It's to be encountered. Felt Known for what it is and just held.

In awareness And in holding it in this way, whilst holding the physicality of our own mountain. We can Get closer to a deeper sense of silence. And stillness and wisdom.

Mountains have this to teach us and much more. If we stop, find our mountain and just listen. And so In the last few moments of our meditation.

Continue to sustain. You're mountain on your own. In silence.

Moment by moment. Holding it there. Until we're ready.

To open our eyes and come back to the room. But just holding. Our ability to find our mountain.

And the night and the days and the weeks ahead. And well done. That was lovely, Mike.

Thank you. Yeah, I, I haven't done that long amount in a long time, so it was lovely. I got quite into it actually then so did I.

It was really, really nice. I like the longer one cos I think I love it. It does, yeah, cos I love, I love this it's one of my favourite meditations that I've done with you and the longer one is good.

Yeah, it's always been one of mine, and it, it, I think it is that sense, you know, I really connect with the thing that the, the emotion of our lives is like the weather of our lives. And if we allow the stuff of our lives to buffet us and. You know, we, we, we can so easily find ourselves pushed about and bullied by, by our emotions and the stuff that's going on around us.

When, to be honest, you know, very often we just need to centre ourselves and find that peacefulness and that. Equanimity, as we were saying earlier. Yeah.

Mm. Even when the, I know that. With The course that I did was the yoga I teach is seasonal and adopting and changing your practises, so your energies alive the season and then that that link and that connection with the seasons is lovely.

Yeah, it is. So thank you, that's fabulous. Moving on to our next meditation, mindfulness of sounds.

So I did have a bit of, I was telling Mike earlier, I did have a little bit of inspiration with this one. So, obvious, oh, excuse me, I had, a friend who came to stay with me last weekend and I'd forgotten that she like she can snore. And I've done this a few times, and what I did is I, I'd woken up, I thought, oh I ever gonna get back to sleep?

And then I started to listen to the sound of her snoring and identified it and started to listen to the rhythm, the pattern of it and really embracing the sound so that I became part of the sound. And instantly drifted off to sleep, it was wonderful. So if anybody does have a partner who tends to snore, you might want to try this one with them.

But also from another side, often when we come to sit and meditate, you know, it's not every, every time that it's completely silent, especially if it's in the middle of the day, you've got young children or you have a dog or another animal who's coming over and nudging you with its nose and. There's often a lot of sounds and movement that goes on, and I think it's, it's good sometimes to practise meditation with that kind of thing going on so you can really embrace the mindful mindfulness part, . And the same goes when you're not meditating as well.

If you need to come back to your centre, if you notice that you're getting caught up in your thoughts, it's a nice way to come back to the present moment as well. So I'll just get you to. Adjust your position and to make sure you're nice and comfortable and I just do a little.

Lift up with the shoulders and roll them down the back just to open up the chest and maybe just drop down your right ear to your right shoulder, so just allow the head to be heavy. Just dropping the right ear down to the right shoulder. Then come back to centre.

Drop the left ear down to the left shoulder. And then come back to centre and maybe just giving the shoulders another roll back. And gently roll in the head from side to side, so just loosening up the head and neck.

And when you're ready, just come in that lovely. Upright position with the spine, each vertebrae is stacked, the head is balanced lovely on top of the spine, so you're nice and upright. And then you're sinking into the legs as well, so you're, you're sat sat down, you're sinking into the sit bones, but so you're nice and grounded, but you've also got that uplifting energy from the body as well and then you're ready, just begin to close the eyes or lower the gaze.

We'll start by focusing on the breath. So just breathing in and out. And if you can try remembering that three part breath.

We've done, especially at the beginning of our monthly meditation, so as you in how you feel the belly and chest rise. As you exhale, you feel it soften for. So the chest falls, the navel draws into the spine, the air is expelled out through the nose and as you breathe in the air enters, pushes all the way through to the body down to the pit of the tummy.

And as you exhale. Stagnant air expels up to the body. And then just beginning to focus on Sound With the breath as you breathe in and you breathe out.

And then I'm just going to get you to note all the sounds, so. Pick 3 specific sounds that you can hear right now. It could be the home of electrical equipment, so the laptop, your phone, or maybe the sound of traffic outside the cars or driving or perhaps people walking.

Maybe distant birds and now we're into the spring. It could be your neighbour walking next door or above you. Try and just pick three specific sounds.

And silly name them to yourself. And now I'll just get you to focus on a single sound, so picking one single sound and just paying full attention to that sound. Maybe describing it silence yourself.

Just using a few single words. The objectives describe that sound. So for example, if you were by the ocean, you will listen to the sound of the ocean, the words you may describe a wave, crash, smooth, wash, sweep.

Just picking 5 words to describe. You sound. As you begin to explore that sound and focus fully.

Just breathe in and out. I'll just leave you here with that first sound that we've picked. Just fully embracing the sound.

If the mind wanders all. To another sound or the sound of my voice as I speak, just gently bring it back to that sound again and find something maybe new about it, bringing your attention back to that sound. And I'll just invite you to come to your second sound, so allowing that sound to drift off into the background into the distance.

And discover a new sound. And once again, bring your full attention to that sound, describing it in your own way. How does that sound to you?

You may want to notice any feelings that arise when you're listening to that sound. The frustration that's distracting you or maybe it's a nice feeling of peace and calm. Or nostalgic feeling inside, just observing again without the touching, just noticing.

Those feelings. Making sure you're just continuing to breathe in and out as you focus on your second. Chosen sound.

Fantastic. Well and then we will come to the 3rd sound, so that. Well, that's all the sound just to drift off again.

Changing your focus to a new sound. And finally, describing it in your own way, just using a few words. So you've already identified the sound now, it's just describing.

What it sounds to you. And again, maybe exploring the emotions. The rise.

And how they're different to the other sounds. Gain just keeping with that breath. Steady breath in and out.

Well done. Fantastic. So we'll finally just return to the sound now of the inhaler exercise, so we're focusing internally.

On the sound of our own breaths breathing in. And breathing out. Maybe taking a deeper breath, filling up the lungs.

The abdomen. And deep breath out of breath. When you're ready, just gently opening the eyes, and that was our mindfulness of sounds.

So well done, everybody. Hm I always like, Meg to start the, a lot of meditations by going to sound first, and then, outside the room, inside the room, and then listening to sounds as a sort of, yeah, as a way of sort of bringing yourself in. So I love that, because I think we, we, we don't do nearly enough mindfulness of sound.

It's, it's, it's a lovely thing to do. Yeah, it is, and I, I, I really like it when you do that might take it the the the focus outwards and bringing it in, . It does help you sort of centre things doesn't it?

Yeah, and I think it's one as well, as I said before that. With sound, you can, it doesn't have to be in a meditation, you can just bring yourself into the present by if you've caught up in your thoughts or you're feeling a little bit anxious or nervous about something, just to bring your attention back to the present. Doing that exercise, but without a meditation, so listening, OK, what can I hear at the moment and absorb exploring and focusing on those sounds and it just also places you back in your body and what's going on and exploring maybe linking to the emotions as well.

It's quite nice. Yeah, definitely, lovely. Fabulous.

So if anybody, if anybody has any questions, as always, please feel free to pop those in the Q&A chat box and . We, we didn't do much movements, this evening, just, you know, using the shoulders and the head and neck, but if anybody would like to explore that a little bit more, obviously there's only so much you can do when you've got your headphones on over a webinar and this is predominantly. Meditation and mindfulness, but if, if anybody would like to do a little bit more movement before we flow from one meditation to the next, please let us know in the survey that we have after every webinar, or if you, you can email myself as well, or email into the office.

So I think, I think that's all for this evening. So I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you have a lovely rest of your Sunday evening and a lovely week.

Yeah, and speak to you soon, and speak to you. Oh, there's something. It has let me have a look.

I haven't been able to attend the live ones, like having to catch up with old friends, so relaxing. Yeah, it, it's, it is for us as well, you know, and it does remind me, and me, me and Meg always have a quick chat before we come on, and, we, we remind ourselves to stop being so judgmental with ourselves and. Yeah, so it's very useful for us too, so.

It is, it is absolutely. It is a nice thing to do, isn't it? Yeah, so thank you very much for sharing that.

And it is, I think it's, I think it's just lovely as well to have it on a Sunday. I know er vets often work over the weekend, so it's sometimes different, but I think it's just that kind of feeling that it is the end of the week, start of a new week. So just to check in before you begin a new week.

Wonderful. Thank you very much and thank you as always, Mike, and I will speak to you soon and look forward to seeing everyone else on another webinar. Good night everybody.

Good night.