Meditate for Good — Day 1

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Hello, this is Hector Marcel from Three Jewels. Welcome to day one of our 10 day meditation challenge. Congratulations for committing to your practice, for taking care of your mind. It’s gonna be fun. Today, I’m gonna be leading us through a meditation on rejoicing.

We’ll begin by settling our bodies, calming our mind, and then we’ll reflect upon a positive object, something that makes us rejoice a moment of kindness. So let’s get started.

Make sure you’re in a comfortably seated position, something conducive for meditation where our bodies are still; and relaxed. So if you’re seated, make sure your hips are higher than your knees. Your spine is straight, not rigid. Your body begins to get relaxed.

Take a deep inhale through your nostrils, filling up those lungs. Little more and then just hold.

When you’re ready, begin to exhale through the nostrils, releasing any stale air from the bottom of your lungs, keep exhaling a little more and then pause.

And let the body find that rhythm of breath until it settles natural exhales and inhales while the body settles. Let’s check our posture.

Bring your mind’s attention to your feet and legs. Doing any micro adjustment you might need to do to relax and release any tension that you might be holding. Then let’s begin to move up above our hips as you breathe. See if you can have a sense of tucking in the tummy at the belly button. Just a tiny bit. Just a suggestion of a tuck destabilizes our lower back, settles our torso. And then begin to open up your shoulders by just moving your hands up your thighs a little. Your shoulders are nice and open, not stretched, relaxed shoulder blades reaching for each other a little.

All the while breathing naturally.

Bring your mind’s attention to your neck and shoulders, release and relax with every exhale.

And then lets bring our attention to our jaw, our ears relaxed, our eyelids relaxed, release that brow, a tiny Mona Lisa smile helps release so many muscles on the face and gives a sense of uplifted relaxation.

And then just imagine that your spine is being pulled up, suspended like a string from the crown of your head up high into the universe. Make a commitment to withdraw from the space around you. Eyes closed. Sounds begin to fade far away into the distance.

They won’t hook us. Thoughts or emotions will notice but not get hooked by them. And so to focus on brighten this attention, bring your attention to the sensation of the breath at the nostrils. Let’s see if you can notice as if for the first time, every exhale, every detail of the inhale.

Without controlling it, begin to follow the rhythm of the breath as it interacts with your body. Feeling bright and uplifted with every inhale.

Feeling relaxed and centered. With every exhale.

If your mind gets distracted, if it begins to gets attention to any part of your body, your mind, notice it. Don’t fight it. But as soon as you’ve noticed it, remember the breath. So decide you can go back to your distraction later. You don’t need to get hooked right now.

And just bring your attention back to wherever the breath is on the exhale or the inhale.

If you need to get a little tighter, go for more detail on the breath. Maybe look at the temperature difference between the inhale and exhale at the nostrils.

Maybe if you’re getting a little quieter. See if you can sense your heartbeat like an under -rhythm to the breath.

Mean many beats per exhale. How many beats per inhale?

Our minds are bright and relaxed. Settled an expansive.

And so with this state of mind, much more at ease, much brighter and very focused. I invite you now to let your mind go searching for a moment of kindness that you’ve done towards another. A moment where you’ve made another person’s life better. It could be something simple and routine. Something you might not notice, like making someone a cup of coffee. Like listening to a friend and wanting to help them.

Like remembering to call your mom.

Whatever it is, just let your mind go searching for memory after memory where you were kind towards another. And then just pick one. One that stands out. It could be tiny, could be massive, but just pick that moment. Bring it front and center of your mind. Just that moment. There should be you in this scene, the person to whom you were kind and the kindness as you make it front and center of your mind, as big as a movie screen, like an IMAX movie 3D. That’s all your mind can focus on. Try and rejoice for this goodness by playing the moment over and over, see the effects of your kindness on the other.

It felt heard. it Felt fulfilled.

And then look at you. That must have been a spark new to want to help them. So feel good about this kindness in your heart right now as it expands. It’s OK to be happy. It’s okay to feel good about your goodness. And so on the next inhale, let that goodness be baked into you to every cell of your body, every part of your mind, acknowledging this kindness, human kindness. Alive and well in you. And in your next exhale, imagine it reaching out to people that need kindness and send it to them as a gift. And when you’re ready, you can begin to bring your attention back to the room. Take a nice inhale and exhale.

And congratulations, you’ve just done your first meditation from your 10 day meditation challenge.

I invite you to join me in person if you want to see me live at Journey Live, or you can check my meditations on Instagram and in fact, any of our three Jewel’s meditation teachers and you can still invite your friends and family to participate in the challenge. Its about trying to get other people to meditate with us. We want to reach over a thousand people. They can set up up to December 3rd by going to meditateforgood.org Meditate for good is our annual fundraiser. And this challenge helps support all the non-profit activity of Three Jewels where a father once a three. So know that every donation you give will help to help other people meditate and reach that perfect place inside of them. If you want to learn more about the challenge, you can go to Three Jewels Instagram at ThreeJewelsNYC for daily live meditations at 10 PM right up to the 13th of December. And remember to keep an eye out for tomorrow’s email with new content, new meditations, and please rejoice this goodness that you’re doing. You meditating for 10 days with other people from around the world, helping people meditate where they might not have access. It really is an awesome thing to do.

Thanks for joining. See you around Three Jewels.