Mercury Meditation

Welcome friends. Today, we'll do a meditation with the energy of mercury. Mercury is a planet of communication. We'll work with the throat chakra. We'll work with using our voice sounds and of course listening, which is the greatest benefit of meditation, right? Being aware of our thought patterns and the way that we communicate with ourselves So we will start with three ohms.

You can just listen or join me if you'd like. Just find a tall spine, close your eyes softly. Become aware of your breath. Become aware of this moment right here right now. And channeling our beautiful or whatever judgment you have over your voice, voices and we'll begin. Go ahead and take a deep breath in.

And from here, we'll move into a Praniyama known as Bramari. It is also called humming breath. You can keep your eyes closed if you like or open them just for a moment to look at me. You can take your thumbs to block off your ear canal so that inner part of your ear that's close to your face, you'll just sort of push it in so that when you press, you can't hear as well. And then you'll use the other four fingers to block off your eyes.

So we really draw our awareness inward here and we really hear and feel the humming. So I'll do it with you. We'll do three and you can just continuously on your exhale. Feel free to watch me for the first one. Take a deep breath in.

And keep going. And whenever you are finished, you'll just pause with your hands on your thighs eyes softly closed. Taking some time to bear witness to the effects of the Pranayama. Humming breath is known to be very calming for the nervous system. And when our mind gets the best of us, and get stressed or anxious, we can come to this breath in any moments to chill out, right, to soften some of those crazy thoughts.

And speaking of crazy thoughts, we're gonna do one more form of Praniyama known as lion's breath. We use this a lot in our asana practice. It's a forceful exhale out the mouth with your tongue out like a roar, but just through the breath. So we won't actually roar, although you could if you wanted to. And I want you to close your eyes and just think about one specific thing in your mind now or recently that's just unnecessary, creating too much drama, a worry, a fear, an anger, a frustration, and just bring it into your mind's eye.

So we're gonna play with the thoughts. Right? Mercury is thoughts and communication. And then we'll take a deep breath in and just sort of hold that drama thought in your mind's eye and lion's breath let it go. Good. And let's do that again. Big inhale.

Hold it in. Hold it in. And out the mouth. One more. Good. Maybe move your mouth around your jaw for a moment.

Come back to an effortless natural breaths. Notice how your face feels and your mouth and your brain. And for the rest of our meditation, we are going to simply bear witness to the thoughts. The thinking mind One of my favorite ways to notice the thoughts is to imagine the space behind your closed eyes like a movie screen. And as a thought comes up, you place that thought on the movie screen as though you are watching it.

So you might just see the words or the image of the thought. For example, right now, I'm thinking my nose itches. I could itch it or I could be with the sensation of the itch. Right? And so I might visualize my nose and You know, just so you can be silly, you can be dramatic. However you wanna be here, but just seeing the thought, right? Seeing it in full detail. So what is your thought? Just pick one thought.

Place it out on the movie screen in front of you. See it in full detail. Notice it. Be with it. Really explore it.

Let it be a full scene in the movie of your minds. Maybe notice any reactions to the thought in your body, in your breath. And then just feel a blank screen again. The movie got cut off. It stopped.

Blank screen. No thought. And just pick another thought. Any thought? Any thought that comes up next? See it out in the movie screen of your closed eyes. Visualize it unfolding into a scene, all the details, all the emotions.

Stay with that one thought. Notice what the mind does with the thought, with the movie, with the scene, and then cut the movie, the stop It stopped. There's a blank screen in front of you. No thoughts. Feel your breath.

And just let the mind wonder and wonder as it does noticing what comes up and what goes, what you might cling to, what you need space around. You're welcome to sit here as long as you have time for. Maybe go back and play with the movie screen in your mind's eye. Playing with that ability to cut the thoughts, to choose the thoughts, to make space around your thoughts. We will never avoid this thinking mind. It is our human experience to think and Mercury certainly does its job to help us think and how we communicate our thoughts. So we will end our practice with gratitude in that space. Bring a prayer to the heart.

And take one more breath. No mistake.