 Hello, good morning and welcome to Mindfulness Challenge day 64. Today is about your mind and creating this beautiful ocean meditation. Join me in a few moments. Welcome to day 64 of the coronavirus mindfulness challenge. I hope you're well. This week's been a very busy and full week and a lot of fronts with my work that I do with spiritualism and spirituality and of course my work in and around the house. So today I wanted to do something where we could just relax. It's been a busy week. It's a Friday. So I wanted to understand again that mindfulness and in particular meditation is a fantastic way to get into a stillness within the body that allows you to relax. It allows you to take away some of the anxiety or some of the issues or stresses that you may have. And we've been doing it now for a long time in 64 days. And it's interesting to think about every day thinking about how we, what content I can bring, how I can try and keep it fresh and try and keep it moving. You know, I'll be honest. It is difficult. You ask anybody to produce content for 64 days on the spin. It can get difficult. But the easy part of this is just being able to connect in and see where we go in today and I get driven and guided to take certain aspects. And today is about you and it's about relaxation and it's about overcoming certain aspects of anxiety or if you're feeling slightly stressed at the moment or slightly emotional and we're going to take you into with a meditation into a very deep place of stillness just like the depths of the ocean and this is an ocean meditation. And we can create the separation between our thoughts and the actual situation. Somebody said to me yesterday, you know, I thought thoughts were good for you. If you think a lot, you know, you could be. There's a difference between emotional anxiety, fear and those type of thoughts, the emotional thoughts and actually your thoughts where you're trying to help yourself to design setting or build setting or work on setting or create something. And we still get those emotional thoughts within those creations. So for instance, you know, if I'm thinking about, you know, what am I going to do on my webpage today? What am I going to do on mindfulness today? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Oh, I can't think of anything. This is ridiculous. I can't be bothered. Why am I always like this? This is always me. And you know what? Yesterday I had an argument with a wife and before you knew it, I knew it was me because and you just gone. And that's because you've allowed your thoughts to rule your thinking. And you can sit and think all day long, but as moment those emotional thoughts or sometimes irrational thoughts or unbalanced thoughts come into your mind, that's when you hold them up and you step aside from them and you give them no attachment and you just have this beautiful breath of loving kindness. And you know, that's probably answering the question that somebody asked yesterday. So we're going to get straight into it anyway. We're going to go into this, your mind, experiencing your mind like an ocean. It's a beautiful meditation. But I'm going to put a picture up now, but I don't want you to close your eyes. Okay. So what I want you to do now is start by taking a moment just to relax your body, but keep your eyes open and soften any unnecessary tension in your bellies or your shoulder and find a posture that feels both relaxed and alert, but still keep your eyes open. I have my patio doors open here in the UK, so you may be hearing noises outside in particular birds, but if you rest your hands in an easy and effortless way just by your sides and with your eyes open, just take a few moments to scan your awareness through the sensations of your body and wherever possible soften and release obvious areas of physical tension. So just with your eyes open, just bring your attention to your head, to your neck and if your neck stiff, just give it a little click or and just, just find your own awareness of the sensations of your body. And as I said, soften and release and release any obvious areas of physical tension. Keep your eyes open and now focus on the middle of the room wherever you are and you focus in on this room and so you can let your awareness travel across the room from where you sit it. If you're lying down, you can let your attention go towards the ceiling and notice that how you can let your attention come back to the centre of the room and see now if you can bring your attention closer to about book reading distance as if you're reading a book in your hands so clearly that you can determine where your attention goes. Just focus that attention now, your awareness and just about six inches from your face and with this now, I just want you to close your eyes and just let your attention now go inside and gently focus on the sensations of your breath moving in and moving out of the body and you can let your attention go wherever the breath comes most naturally to you. For some people, it's the sensation of the air in their nostrils and while they gentle feeling coming in and out as the air presses in and out of your nostrils. For others, the natural fear for the breath is in the chest with the rising and falling of the chest with each breath in and out. And for beginners, most people feel the breath most naturally in the belly feeling the diaphragm underneath the lungs pulling air into the lungs and expanding your belly as you breathe in and then when the air is released from the lungs as you actually breathe out, the belly moves inward sensing the abdomen movements in and out. So if you can just let your awareness ride the wave of your breath wherever you feel it most naturally your nostrils, your chest, your abdomen movement or for some people it's even just the whole body breathing whatever comes naturally for you and let's just let your attention ride let the attention ride the waving the wave of your breathing and that just sense in your breath in and out may you also sense that your mind is as vast as the ocean we're deep in the ocean beneath the surface it's calm and it's clear and from that deep place in the ocean you can look upward towards the surface no matter what's going on in your life no matter what those conditions are deep in the ocean it's calm and clear and just sensing your breath allows you to access the depth and stillness of your mind as the vast option where from this deep peaceful place you can look upward at the waves at the surface the brain waves that are thoughts and emotions and conditions of your mind can you notice all of these fleeting thoughts and emotions they're just there at the surface that come and go pretty quickly in and out of your awareness each day like waves at the top of the ocean and sensing your breath bringing you back to this peaceful place feeling the profound depth of your mind when a thought comes in or a feeling or memory or sensation then warmly and calmly take note of that mental activity and redirect your attention back to your breath and let your attention return to the breath to this depth of your mind where you can sense and observe the activities of your mind as just activities and not to the totality of who you are see if you can just let yourself enjoy the deep tranquility that comes from just sense in the breath knowing that you're just focusing your mind on your breathing brings you to this deep place of calm and clarity maybe time you're breathing you feel these beautiful waves of healing energy just washing over you relaxing you calming you taking away any of the residual tension or stress that may have been built up of your day of your week over the month and with every breath in and breath out you just let it wash away calming methodically loving knowing that each breath is like a wave of love is like a wave of optimism is like a wave of healing when you breathe in you just see these beautiful waves just washing all over you and when you breathe out you see them taking any pain any stress or strains breathing it in the wave washes you again and it's just beautiful and we know now if we just drop down from the surface again into the beautiful depth and tranquility of this ocean where you feel so natural so beautiful so pure and take a deep breath in just feel that beautiful oxygenated energy just flowing through your body you are so calm in this very special space and I'd like you now just to very slowly take a deep breath in and just start to bring your awareness back to the room but bring the same quality of kind awareness to the rest of your day that you're feeling now and feeling relaxed in your body in your mind and in your soul and slowly open your eyes I hope that was relaxing for you on this beautiful Friday it's a bank holiday weekend here so we can't go out in Wales we're locked down England has started to lift some of its restrictions but we're locked down for the bank holiday weekend so it's going to be self-isolation for me and the family here with the dog reg and hopefully if the weather keeps being nice as it has been was beautiful yesterday got a bit of a suntan and we can enjoy some quality family time in the garden which would be lovely have a wonderful Friday be loving give love good morning junior and I love you take care look after yourself but just today just have a day off a bit just relax a bit if you can chill out you know it's been a tough couple of months and today you just need that relaxation calm beautiful might do another meditation myself I think suit them out on day 65 of the coronavirus mindfulness challenge have a wonderful day take care bye bye