1. To begin:

Adjust your posture to be sitting in a deliberate manner – stepping your mind and body out of autopilot and into this present moment. You may like to close your eyes or lower them, gently gazing on the floor ahead of you.

2. Bringing awareness to here and now

Notice what’s happening right now in the mind and body – not having to change it, just notice it. Notice any judgement.

What thoughts are going around in your mind? Any feelings, emotions? What body sensations can you notice? Resist the urge to have to make a judgment or assessment or change anything, allowing whatever is there to be there, just noticing it.

3. Tuning in the breathing

Noticing the breath – all the way in and all the way out. With each new cycle, follow the breath completely in and completely out. It helps to use an anchor point such as sensations in the nasal passage, at the tip of the nostrils, or even feeling the air brush across the top of the lip. It may be that your anchor point is the movement in the chest as the chest expands and as it relaxes.

If the mind wanders, which it will naturally do, notice that you are no longer focused on the breath. Without judgment or criticism of yourself, bring your attention back to the breath, noticing the in-breath and the out-breath.

4. Coming into the body as a whole

Expanding the attention to the body as a whole, allow the attention to expand from the breath to the body. Gently scan your awareness without judgment or expectation from the crown at the top of the head, down the face, the torso, arms, legs, right down to the surface of the feet, including the surface of the skin.

As you develop the practice you may notice sensations from within the body as well as external sensations. Notice any sensations in order of the scan. Resist jumping ahead or back at sensations that are capturing your attention like tingling or pain. Again, resist judging if you like or don’t like. Notice and accept that they are the sensations you feel at this very moment.

To finish, slowly become aware of the sounds in the present, your sense of the air on your skin. Notice the light around you and take this sense of spaciousness in to the rest of the day.