Welcome to First This, a short mindfulness practice and message for any time.

I'm Catherine Nikolai. Thanks for being here. Please settle into a shape you can be more or less

comfortable in. And as always, it's okay to lay down or to take your legs up a wall

or to just accommodate your body in any way that suits you. In fact, for the style of meditation

that we're going to do today, it's especially helpful to be comfortable. So pause me if you need to and set

yourself up. And once you're there, take a deep breath in through your nose and sigh from your

mouth.

Let's do one more.

Deeply in.

And flush it out.

Good.

So natural breath now.

Through the nose if you can.

Before we can steer this ship in any particular direction, we have to first notice the ship, be aware of this moment.

So for the next minute or so, just attend.

Attend to the feeling of breath moving in your body.

When you realize you're not doing that anymore, no biggie, nothing wrong, just start again. Thank you. Thank you. So the awareness of breath still there.

So the awareness of breath still there.

And that just keeps us present in our bodies.

Touch base with it whenever you need to.

I'll start to turn focus a bit to cultivating a specific feeling, that of loving kindness or metta.

This practice is an antidote to the harshness in the world,

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