So we'll be exploring some together the awakening of compassion.

And as with all guided practices, you might receive the words and then just sense what

fits, what works so that you adapt in a way that's alive and meaningful to you.

The alchemy of compassion, it has two real components.

And one of them is this capacity to contact in our body, in our senses, the aliveness,

the feelings that are here.

And the other component is this capacity to sense a larger space of belonging.

The space that's happening in.

So it's this ability to be touched by the suffering, our own or others, but not to hold

on to it, but rather to feel it held in something larger, in a space that's tender and open.

Our practice today will have two parts.

We're going to begin with a more of an arriving and that embodied presence because you

can't really open the heart unless you're here, inhabiting this body, sensing aliveness,

sensing space.

And then we'll move on to a more traditional tongue-line practice, a version of tongue-line,

which uses the breath to help to contact the aliveness and contact the space.

Take the first few moments, if you will, just to notice if there's any of those habitual

kind of tightnings or holdings in the body and see if there's a natural letting go.

You might have let go about three minutes ago and you can find that there's recontracting

all the time.

So just loosen it on the shoulders and the hands.

Perhaps take a few full breaths inhaling deeply and letting go, releasing the breath, relaxing

...