For people who find meditation hard. No silencing anything, no forty minutes on a cushion. We just use sound.

About 13 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

Start with my voice and the gaps in it, and notice a word is only a noise until your mind decides what it means. Then widen out to what you can feel, taste, smell. Some of the best sittings take no effort at all. If it slips, back to the breath, and that is fine.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

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Hi and welcome to a very simple meditation we're going to do that you can do anywhere really. It's just

an open awareness meditation and we're going to use sound as the

first pinpoint that we use to focus this.

I'm Steven Webb and I have a podcast called Stillness in the Storms that helps you to see life differently

when you're having a real hard time. And also this meditation podcast that Inner Peace Meditations,

that just help you to find a little inner peace when you need it most. And it's mainly for people

that find meditation really difficult. Sitting down for 40 minutes trying to silence the mind which of course is

not Not the idea of meditation, but it's certainly what we could do if sometimes or we feel like we

could do it. So without me talking on too much, I just want to say thank you to all the

supporters. Thank you to anybody that donates towards this podcast. It's really appreciated. I love you guys and you'll

keep it going. I don't have no sponsors and I don't want to add sponsors really to it. So you

can do so just by going to the link below. Anyway. Let's just become comfortable and

you don't have to do anything in this meditation. Just loosely follow my instruction and if you miss a bit,

don't worry, it's fine. Allow

your body to relax.

Allow your mind to just relax a little

And you don't have to do anything to relax the body. It knows how to relax.

Just give your arms permission, your back and your bum and your legs and your feet. Just

Just invite them to relax into this moment.

Even your face and your eyes, your

cheek and your tongue, even your forehead,

even your ears.

Just allow them all to relax in this moment.

And this meditation is really about bringing everything into our awareness. So

if a dog ends up barking outside or something ends up making a noise, just allow it to be.

And don't just bring your awareness to your breath.

You don't need to do anything with it. Just be aware that

you're breathing in and

you're breathing out.

Man, you could soften your gaze just a few feet in front of you or if you choose to, close

your eyes

And do so with a knowing that all is well in this moment.

As you're aware of your breath, be aware of everything you can hear.

The sound of my voice,

The gaps between my words.

You may notice my words are... Not

just simple words or sentences. They're

just different noises. The

start of the word, the

middle and the end.

Each word comes and goes.

And we hear them in our ears. And the sounds going through our ears into our minds.

And

then the mind does something with them to translate them into something it recognizes And we do this with all

sound. Whether

it's a sound of the wind or a sound of an air conditioner or Some other sound that we suddenly

hear, we

label it.

And what if just for a couple of minutes we don't label anything and we don't do anything with the

sound?

So just purely listen

And just allow each sound to come and go.

And if your mind wanders, just smile and thank you for the little thought and just bring it back to

the breath and then

move the awareness to your sound

when that's we're listening...

Move your awareness or open your awareness to your breathing as well.

So you can hear everything

at the same time you're aware of your breath.

And you notice the way everything just becomes a little quieter and we're not putting any effort into it.

Some of the best meditations are just no effort. You don't have to do anything with this moment.

You don't have to do anything with your breath or the sounds that are coming in.

I'm going to invite you to open this awareness to even more.

Perhaps you can open the awareness to not only the sounds you can hear, not

only to the sounds and the breath you can become aware of. But what about what you can feel?

Can you feel the seat that you're sat on? Can

you feel maybe somewhere else your body's touching something?

It's nice to be able to open our awareness to more than one thing and when we do that we

soften it.

There's a gentleness there.

When we're focusing on one thing, we

very often

become rigid or so focused that we have to not lose focus. Whereas the awareness

of more than one thing, we can drift between each one and we can recognise, ah, there's a sound. Ah,

there's my breath.

Ah, there's a feeling.

And we can open it up to our other senses as well. Perhaps our taste. What's going on inside of

your mouth or your tongue?

What's going on when you breathe in through your nose? Can you smell anything?

And if you do find it difficult to keep your awareness open, just bring it back to your breath and

smile and that's okay.

The main lesson really from this meditation is whatever you're going through, whatever's happening, you don't have to do anything

with it.

It's the fundamental teaching of Zen.

You know, what arises, we can choose what to do with it. We suddenly become in more control. And if

you think about this moment now, are you in more control now or when you were fleeting from one thing

to another before the meditation?

But how do we practice this in everyday life? How can we be at a party or be at work

or amongst the kids or something else? A doctor's appointment. And remain home and in control.

It's not easy. But

your breath is there.

The sounds are there. All

these things are always there as anchors for us to just go to and use to drop into the awareness

of this moment.

And that's all we're talking about in the present moment Eckhart Tolle and all the different world teachers Just, ah,

hear. The

sound that's happening now. The emotion that's happening now.

Because very often the here is perfectly fine.

Yes, there's things going on around the world, but right here now is okay.

What a joy in okay Okay

So in a moment I'm going to ask you to gently open your eyes and shake out your arms. But

before that, just bring this feeling back with us. This

feeling of we can be present and with it and aware.

So five, four, gently open your eyes. Three. Shake out your arms.

Two. One. And just be aware and look around the room and the sounds are still here, your breath's still

here, my voice is still going on. Ah. Yeah. You can do that anytime Just

pick a trigger, pick an anchor. Breath, sound, taste, feeling. You could

even use a candle or an incense or even just look at a tree and just use of leaves on

the tree as an anchor. I'm just going to purely, totally just be aware of what's going on. I very

often stop in nature and I just watch a tree or watch a leaf and I just watch it intently.

That's the mindful moment. We can listen to somebody or we can watch a movie or we can do all

these things intently in the moment.

That's all. Just do the one thing but you can have an awareness that's open.

And don't forget to check out my other podcast, Stillness in the Storms. Thank you and thank you for your

support and have a wonderful day. Have a wonderful mindful awareness day. Take care.