Settling Exercise: Step 1 To Heal Life Challenges & Changes

Welcome to your three part meditation series for life changes.

In this first meditation,

You will practice a cranial sacral therapy settling to decompress so you're not feeling like a mess,

And also to access your calm so you can be present in the moment.

In the second meditation,

You'll practice a cranial sacral therapy self-care exercise,

Not only to relax,

But to also use your body's natural rhythms to self-regulate,

So you can adjust,

Acclimate,

And feel in flow with your new normal.

Then in the third meditation,

You'll begin a self-healing practice using cranial sacral therapy zones.

These mind-body processes help you to know yourself so well that you'll clearly hear your intuition and inner wisdom.

With these three skills,

You can transform every stress and struggle into an opportunity for authenticity,

Personal growth,

And refinement of your life path.

Let's begin the first meditation.

As you settle in,

You may be able to close your eyes right away and drop into your body,

Or you may not.

We're going to start with a formless settling that just allows the nervous system to do what it needs to do right now.

If you need to keep your eyes open,

Or you go back and forth between bringing your awareness inward,

And checking that you've closed a door or a window or turned off a device,

Whatever your nervous system needs to do,

Now is the time where we allow it to do it.

We're here to hold safe space for our nervous system,

And sometimes that means allowing what comes up in our nervous system to be heard and to follow through on it.

There are other times when we'll take nice deep breaths and hold against it.

But for now,

Allow your nervous system to simply be processing thoughts,

Feelings,

Sensory information,

And stimuli,

As it does its own work to clean itself up.

As we stop receiving visual,

Auditory,

Kinesthetic,

And all sorts of sensory information,

Our nervous system has the opportunity to process what it's already received and dissipate.

Gently allow yourself another few moments of this formless settling,

Where your nervous system has the privilege to wander and do whatever it needs to do,

As it acclimates and adjusts and shifts into the inward state that we're about to spend some time in.

Allow your body to take those nice deep breaths that you get prompted to take.

Soften your jaw.

Don't control the exhale.

Just let the sound of the breath come from the back of the throat.

The breath allows your body to surrender.

And as you find it easier to be in the present moment,

And bring your awareness inward,

We're going to transition into a structured settling exercise.

Start by bringing your awareness to your skin.

If your awareness drifts away,

That's fine.

As soon as you notice,

Gently invite yourself back to your skin and trace your skin,

Finding it as the container for your whole body.

Your skin is what separates you from the world around you.

And notice that boundary and that container.

Now your mind's eye might not present your body to be anatomically accurate.

Sometimes our awareness and how things look from the inside feel different than the way they actually are.

A leg might be transparent in your mind's eye,

Or something might feel smaller or bigger or like a certain material.

Don't shift it,

Don't change it,

You're not here to fix any of it.

We're here to observe.

We're here to trust that all of the biology that created us from scratch,

Knows how to reconcile and heal and fix it.

We're here to bring awareness and hold safe space for that.

We are not doing anything.

If you have other healing practices or modalities that you want to draw upon during the session,

I invite you to hold that for another time and allow yourself to just be here with me in the craniosacral practice.

Again,

Find your skin,

Invite your awareness to your skin.

You don't have to have a perfect visual,

Or it doesn't need to feel exactly as it should be or as you think it should be.

We just need to connect with it and wake up that part of our brain and reorientate that part of our brain.

Noticing how the skin contains the whole body and just taking a moment to check in with the body and seeing whatever you can see of your anatomy,

Biology,

How it functions together.

And just notice it for a moment.

There will be other exercises where we can dig in further to each of these places,

But that's not what we're here to do today.

So now bring your awareness back to your skin.

And then bring your awareness to the space outside of your skin.

One to two feet off of your skin is your personal space.

Noticing it all the way around all of you in every direction.

Again,

This is not the practice to dig into this space.

We're just going to visit it and introduce ourselves momentarily and check in and give it a moment.

Now moving from one to two feet off your skin.

Starting from there and then reaching to the room that you're in,

Maybe you're sitting in a car doing this exercise,

Or out in the open space of nature.

Wherever you are,

Find what would be kind of like the room around you.

Find that container or that boundary of that space.

Whatever the natural container is,

Maybe it is walls and a ceiling and a floor.

Maybe it's different.

And take a moment to be in that space.

If this is the first time you're doing this exercise,

You might find it hard.

And that's not a problem.

Simply making the intention and the effort is waking up those parts of your brain.

And the more you do it,

The more information you'll get,

The more you'll know about these zones.

Easier it'll be.

So now we're going to drift off to the horizon.

Whether it be day or night,

Allow your awareness to float in the present moment out towards the horizon.

Let your body take as many deep breaths as you need as it continues to surrender.

Now you're so far out in the horizon that notice yourself safely slipping through the atmosphere.

Out into space where there is no gravity pulling you to the earth other than a gentle orbit.

Your body is moving weightlessly in space.

All of your cells have a little bit more room to spread out and to expand.

You may notice that your body,

Not as you're lying here in the moment or sitting,

But in your visual space,

As you roll out in space,

You might see your body moving in different directions and shapes three dimensionally.

Maybe rolling or bending or twisting.

We live life three dimensionally.

We move.

Everything is three dimensional.

And sometimes the body needs to release in these three dimensional movements as well for a full,

Complete unwinding.

And so you might naturally see your body floating.

Different movements or shapes.

Trying to observe not engage and get involved in it.

Very passive and notice like you're being taken along for the ride.

Feel thoughts or emotions surface.

Allow yourself to take a nice deep breath and gently invite yourself back to floating in space.

Here out in space,

We do not need to hold on.

We just need to take a deep breath and let it drop out of our body.

And just to give you a little bit of a percentage.

Whatever you feel you're carrying mentally,

Physically or emotionally.

On any level,

You can just let it drop out of your body.

You can't take it and move it as Telephone.

It's not allowed anymore.

Again,

Just from trial and error,

Van Mega allows us to take this deep breath or getting into our own space.

Overselves orBack Up our own space.

Repurposed for something wonderful.

So feel free to just drop it into space.

If it's something that you think you need,

Don't worry,

It'll be there when you come back.

I assure you,

If it's something bigger,

Your nervous system will not let you forget.

In these settling exercises,

We're here to dissipate the charges that happen with the experiences.

We will not be forgetting the experiences,

But we will be dissipating the charges,

Which end up being triggers in our everyday life.

Sometimes we end up reacting in ways we might not consciously would have preferred.

And so we go out into space and we decompress.

And we dissipate the charges,

We hold space for them to have all the time they need to dissipate.

Notice the stillness of space.

It's almost deafening.

It's almost deafening.

And allow your nervous system another moment or two to enjoy this space before we shift back slowly.

Always giving our nervous system the opportunity to shift,

Adjust,

Wrap up what it was working on.

And as we begin to say goodbye to decompressing out in space and this brief exercise,

We slowly let our attention from way out in space be drawn towards back where we are on Earth.

Gently and safely reentering the atmosphere.

Floating gently and safely refreshed back towards the building,

The room that you're in.

Slowly taking a moment to be present in the room or whatever that equivalent is for you.

Noticing how it might feel different than when you did it the first time.

And then gently letting your awareness drift to about one to two feet off of your skin,

Noticing yourself coming back into your own personal space.

Exploring it and noticing what it's like and how it might feel different than the first time.

And then you bring your awareness back to your skin as the container for your physical body.

Noticing how your body is softened,

Shifted,

Released.

At least one,

If not more layers of tension,

Allowing you to physically move more freely,

More effortlessly.

So as you're in the present moment,

Take a moment to align with what you want.

Maybe you did this exercise because you're nervous about a future situation or worried or stressed out about it.

How you're going to do in that moment or maybe it's stressing you out now.

Or maybe it's something that happened in the past.

Hold space for that moment.

And just hold stillness for that moment and for yourself right now.

Let yourself breathe.

Hold compassion no matter what it was.

Take nice deep breaths,

Surrendering as you bring awareness to the parts that you can't control.

Other people,

Circumstances.

And as much as it may upset us,

Just take a nice deep breath into it and allow the feelings to dissipate.

Allow the charges and the triggers to dissipate.

With every breath.

Now take a moment to bring your awareness to how you want yourself to feel or be moving forward or in a future moment.

I want you to see it going brilliantly.

Exactly how you desire.

Despite the circumstances that may have already happened that are beyond your control.

See it unfolding in a way that serves you.

And if you have doubts and objections that pop up and argument of this brilliant outcome,

Just take a breath with every doubt and let those dissipate.

Let them be heard.

It's okay.

It's part of our nervous system for a reason.

They're trying to protect us.

So don't suffocate them or push them down or avoid them.

Let them be heard and just let them dissipate.

Like a sound or a light frequency that just shoots off to the distance and it just dissipates.

Lastly,

We're going to align to the present moment.

Always finishing any mindfulness,

Formless exercise with grounding and structure.

To take a moment to see the week ahead of you.

Look at all the things you have to do and have to get done.

All the obligations that are non-optional.

And then see where there might be spaces or things that didn't seem that didn't seem optional,

But maybe you can shift it to the optional category.

Making space for the things that you do want to be doing.

See the week unfolding where both what you have to do and what you want to do are in flow and rhythm with each other.

Working together.

Maybe you can't see the whole week,

But just get a sense of what that might feel like.

And then bring that on to today or tomorrow if you're doing this at night,

Whatever is appropriate.

Seeing what you have to do and what you want to do.

See them being in flow with each other for whatever comes next for you.

And continue to practice this decompressing until you feel like you can be calm in the present moment.

Until you feel like it's easy for your body to get to that space without running or shifting or doing simply by observing.

And then when you're ready,

You can move on to the second healing meditation to reorganize,

Reorientate to your new normal.

In that meditation,

You'll be using craniosacral therapy healing rhythms.

To reorganize,

You'll learn about signs of physical release,

And some that you may have even experienced in this settling exercise.

One last breath,

Bring yourself back to the present moment,

Clear and ready for what's next.

And until next time,

Stay awesome.