A Guided Drive Home

Good afternoon.

If you are listening to this meditation,

Then maybe you're just getting in your car to drive home from work.

Maybe it's been a stressful day,

A busy day,

A distracted day,

An unconscious day,

A beautiful day,

A wonderful day,

An incredible day.

But in any case,

Let's do our best to just sort of recollect and regroup,

Get a little more grounded before heading home into whatever is going to be happening this evening so that you can show up for whatever that is in a more grounded,

Comfortable,

And relaxed state.

So assuming that you're sitting in your car,

If you're listening to this,

Whether you're already driving or getting ready to take off,

Let's just go ahead and take three deep breaths.

Just breathing in as if you could breathe in from the earth underneath you.

And then exhale out the mouth.

Just let everything go.

Let's go ahead and do this two more times.

Breathing in.

Exhaling through the mouth.

Just let all that shit go from the day.

One more time.

Breathing in,

Clearing out your entire body.

And exhale.

Just let it all rush out the breath.

Let it all release.

And then go ahead and just return to a natural breath.

And as you're exhaling,

Just really starting to pay attention to the weight of your body against the seat of the car.

Just feeling that pressure,

Feeling that heaviness,

Feeling that sensation of connection of your body to the seat.

And as you continue to breathe,

Just remembering as you exhale,

Allowing your body to maybe get a little bit heavier in your seat,

Paying attention to what you're doing,

Where you're going,

But just simultaneously noticing your breath.

And envisioning that your breath could just clear and wash away the day.

With every exhale,

You have permission to just let something go.

Paying attention to the sensation of the feeling of the steering wheel on your hands.

Just noticing sensation,

Noticing breath.

Noticing the temperature on your skin as you're driving.

Maybe there's air conditioning on,

Maybe a window is down.

Maybe there's nothing on and you just sense the still air in the car around you.

Just noticing the sensation as you continue to breathe.

And as you're breathing here,

Just maybe shifting your focus into what you can hear.

Maybe turning this down a little bit and just noticing what you can hear inside of the car,

What you can hear out the window.

Doing our best not to make any judgment about what we can hear,

Just noting it,

Acknowledging it.

Knowing that you can always return to sensation,

Whatever feels best right now.

Continuing to breathe,

Remembering that weight of your body against the seat,

Remembering that sensation of the hands on the steering wheel,

And just noticing what you can hear.

Nothing more,

Nothing less.

And then from this place,

Gently calling and shifting your awareness just into what you can see.

So obviously,

Maybe you do this drive every day,

Maybe it's a new location that you're arriving back home from.

What can you notice that you haven't noticed before?

What would happen if you really,

Really looked where you're going?

Finding the beauty around you in however,

Wherever you are,

However you're driving.

Without drawing distraction from the drive,

Just noticing beauty,

Noticing the plants along the side of the road,

Noticing the trees that you're driving by,

The way that they move in the wind,

In the breeze,

Their colors,

Noticing the color of the sky,

The clouds in the sky,

The lack of clouds,

Any birds in the sky.

Where can you find beauty as you're driving?

Continuing to breathe,

Continuing to feel that weight of your body,

Just letting go into the seat as you become more conscious of your surroundings,

Of your body,

Of your breath,

Through noticing these different things.

And as you're looking around and noticing this in the safety of your seat,

In the safest way you can,

In a way that makes sense,

That is natural as you're driving wherever you need to go.

Just beginning to notice and reflect on the day,

Recognizing if there were any major emotions that came up today.

Can we just let them be there?

Can we accept whatever has happened today with all of its complexity,

Good,

Bad,

And different,

And recognize that it is past?

Taking a deep breath in to just honor whatever happened today.

And then as we exhale,

Just allowing it to fade,

Like smoke into the ether,

As if blowing out a candle.

What's past is past.

And just noticing how you feel in your physical body,

Recognizing that you have permission to let go of whatever came before.

Whatever's coming next for your day,

For your evening,

Has not yet come to pass.

Recognizing that it's all that's here right now is the beauty all around you,

All of nature all around you.

This breath in,

And this breath out.

The feeling of your body rested against the seat,

The sensation of your hands upon the steering wheel,

The temperature on your skin.

This is what's here right now,

And this is all that there is.

So just breathing with this as you drive,

As you acknowledge where you're going,

Letting yourself be present as you purposely move and drive yourself to your destination.

All the while acknowledging how you feel,

The felt sense of this acknowledgement in your body,

In your breath,

In your mind.

And from this place,

Just maybe considering an intention going into your evening tonight.

What is it that you want to call forward into your evening?

How would you like to show up for yourself,

For those around you?

And just letting whatever first shows up to be here as you breathe.

And taking a moment to just maybe have some gratitude.

What are you grateful for in this very moment?

Recognizing that that gratitude will call you forward into love,

Will call you forward into this evening from a place of intention,

Love,

And groundedness and connection.

With yourself,

First and foremost,

So that you can ground and connect to those that you love around you.

So just feeling into this,

Feeling into this sense of gratitude.

Taking another big,

Deep breath all the way in from your toes,

Up through all the way to the crown of the head.

And then once again,

Exhale,

Just let everything go.

Returning your breath back to its natural state.

And again,

Just noticing the difference,

Noticing how you feel now versus when we started.

Maybe not much has changed.

Maybe something has changed.

Either way,

You did it.

You took the space and you honored yourself.

With the intention of becoming more grounded,

More connected,

More clear.

Know that you can always come back to this practice.

Any bit of this practice,

It is yours to create.

You have permission to make it yours.

The intention here is just to ground,

To reconnect,

To embody by connecting to the breath,

By connecting to sensation,

By connecting to what we can see,

The beauty around us.

And having more intention and clarity as we move forward into the rest of our day.

So I wish you a lovely evening filled with so much love,

So much connectedness.

And I'll see you again next time.