Introduction
Martin shares his background and outlines the goals and structure of the series.
Foundational Meditation
Even when you’re lost in thought, awareness fully envelops your experience.
Embodied Awareness: Foundations
A stable, upright, open, and relaxed posture reflects the same qualities in awareness.
Embodied Awareness: Practice
Ground the legs. Lengthen the spine. Widen the chest. Release tension. Breathe deeply.
Embodied Awareness: Daily Life
Direct your attention inward. Identify sensations. Slow down. Move from your belly.
Types of Attention: Foundations
Our minds can focus on objects, investigate experiences, and recognize phenomena.
Types of Attention: Practice
Continually notice your breath. Explore predominant sensations. Welcome whatever arises.
Types of Attention: Daily Life
The character of your attention will vary based on your activity, goals, and setting.
Awake Awareness: Foundations
The basic, undeniable fact of every moment of experience is our awareness of it.
Awake Awareness: Practice
“Sense your experience as if backlit by the fundamental awakeness of awareness.”
Awake Awareness: Daily Life
Every moment of presence is a chance to notice the mind’s natural clarity.
Spacious Awareness: Foundations
The vastness of awareness can hold even our heaviest experiences with ease.
Spacious Awareness: Practice
“Sense the space of experience, of here-ness, of immediacy in which everything happens.”
Spacious Awareness: Daily Life
Space surrounds objects, softens tension, separates sounds, and contains relationships.
Knowing Awareness: Foundations
Consciousness does more than hold our experiences; it illuminates and comprehends them.
Knowing Awareness: Practice
Let awareness itself meditate—knowing without grasping, sensing without doing.
Knowing Awareness: Daily Life
Use self-inquiry, planned reminders, and routine activities to examine direct experience.
Loving Awareness: Foundations
Contact, curiosity, and care reveal our natural tenderness and warmth.
Loving Awareness: Practice
Receive sensations with love—as offerings of affection from life itself.
Loving Awareness: Daily Life
Treat moments of impatience as opportunities for compassion and connection.
Embracing Ambiguity: Foundations
We experience things as either existing or not. Contemplation dissolves these categories.
Embracing Ambiguity: Practice
Meet thoughts and sensations not with concepts but with closeness.
Embracing Ambiguity: Daily Life
Seek out unfamiliar perspectives and roles. Inhabit them. Let them go.
Luminous Mind: Foundations
The space of awareness both extends infinitely and shimmers brilliantly.
Luminous Mind: Practice
Rest as the space in which all experiences arise—and the light by which they’re known.
Luminous Mind: Daily Life
To emerge from rumination is to see it truly: as a wispy veil over intrinsic clarity.
Freely Unfolding: Foundations
Creativity and wisdom come from abiding—not resisting—the fluid nature of things.
Freely Unfolding: Practice
Allow the breath to breathe itself, without trying to add to it or subtract from it.
Freely Unfolding: Daily Life
Notice situations that cause you mental friction. Meet them with curiosity and care.
Final Thoughts
Prioritize both insight and integration. Celebrate your progress. Practice repeatedly.
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Awake Where You Are
Meditation teacher Martin Aylward offers a clear, structured approach to bringing awareness into daily life. Through meditations, lessons, and exercises, he shows how practice isn’t just about sitting still—it’s about transforming how we show up in our roles, responsibilities, and relationships, turning mindfulness into something we embody equally in formal meditation and out in the world.
to listen to all 30 sessions in this series.
Artwork by David Joel Kitcher