In this live session recorded on 2 June 2024, Mindfulness Coach Erin Lee reminds the Take A Pause community of how every moment of our practice is a moment of change - whether we are noticing mind wandering and bringing our attention back to the breath, or choosing to sit with discomfort in our experience and not react.
Such moments of change are deep and profound.
Erin guides a practice of breath awareness, followed by a body scan focused on attending to the lower half of the body.
She then concludes the session with a reading of the poem “Change” by Ellen Bass.
Practice begins: 08:50
Reading begins: 24:30
Meditation duration: 17 minutes
-Ellen Bass
This is where I yank the old roots
from my chest, like the tomatoes
we let grow until December, stalks
thick as saplings
This is the moment where the ancient fears
race like thoroughbreds, asking for more
and more rein. And I, the driver,
for some reason they know nothing of
strain to hold them back.
Terror grips me like a virus
and I sweat, fevered,
trying to burn it out.
This fear is invisible. All you can see
is a woman going about her ordinary day,
drinking tea, taking herself to the movies,
reading in bed. If victorious
I will look exactly the same.
Yet I am hoisting a car from mud ruts
half a century deep. I am hacking
a clearing through the fallen slash
of my heart. Without laser precision,
with only the primitive knife of need, I cut
and splice the circuitry of my brain.
I change.
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