Well,
Hello everyone.
Let me start with a short introduction.
My name is Diana Merciva.
I am a life coach,
A meditation teacher here on Insight Timer and a philosopher.
And this is my second live event here on Insight Timer which I am really,
Really excited about.
And you can listen to the first episode in my profile.
It is already there and please try to do that after this session if you are curating this topic.
So today we are concentrating on mind-body connection and we'll have a short but very effective breathwork practice and we'll talk a little bit about intuition.
I would really like to hear your experience and your opinions on this topic or a relative one.
So let's start this second talk from the How to Find Peace,
Self-Confidence and Safety Inside Yourself series with a short summary of the previous episode.
I will mention it just in a couple of words.
We were talking about mind-body connection in all the details and shortly to say,
To sum it up,
If we at some point concentrate on one of the aspects of our being which there are basically two which I can say are spirituality or our mentality and the second one would be our physiology or our physical body.
So if we concentrate too much on our spirit,
On our spiritual body and kind of forget to take care of our physical body,
Well,
Let's say we don't have enough time to exercise,
To go to the gym or we prefer some processed food and do not pay so much attention to having a nutritious diet.
So with the time we will feel that we have less energy,
That our body feels weaker,
That probably we feel more lazy,
Generally speaking.
And it will affect not our body but also our emotions because everything inside of us is interconnected.
And we unfortunately or I would say fortunately in regards of our life events cannot separate one from another.
So the other point,
The opposite one,
If we concentrate too much on our physics,
On our physical body,
So we go to the gym,
We follow our daily schedule of waking up and going to sleep at the same time which is also really important but we probably will talk about it in the future sessions.
We have a really good diet but we do not dedicate enough time for our spirit,
Maybe to our hobbies or to quality time with our friends,
Family members or which is more important with ourselves.
We will start feeling more like robots,
Doing something,
Being very productive and soon we will lose interest in all of that.
So to some extent some of us can lose meaning of why,
Why we are doing this.
And to balance our physiology and our mentality,
To put it all together,
To feel this connection inside is what I find the most beautiful part of our life.
For me personally it is probably,
Probably the meaning of life.
So it is our highest state of being when we can balance both of our base parts.
When we are who we are,
We let ourselves live fully and we can create our unique lives,
We can be authentic,
We can feel free,
Creative and expressive and so on.
For each of us it will be different.
Well,
That was kind of a short summary of the previous session and for now the second part of today's life event is breathwork.
So it will consist of three parts.
It will be perfectly suitable and for beginners,
For complete beginners and for those of you guys who have practiced breathwork and meditation for years.
Let's start with just calming ourselves down.
And it will require no effort from you at all.
So let it be just a gentle and enjoyable practice for you.
Dedicate these about 10 minutes for yourself,
Try to relax,
Not to worry about anything.
I'm sure you can have just 10 minutes of breathwork practice spending with your body,
With yourselves,
In our community today together.
So the first part,
To soothe our nervous system,
We will use vagal breathing.
It is called vagal breathing because it activates the vagus nerve in our body which is responsible for parasympathetic system which will physically make us more relaxed,
Will slow down our heart rate and lower our blood pressure.
So it will take us about 3 minutes.
It's a scientifically proven practice that works.
I will be counting during the whole practice so you don't have to worry about anything.
So let's take one deep breath in and out together and later continue breathing through your nose.
You can close your eyes and let's breathe in fully and breathe out.
And take a breath in and out.
Still out.
In.
Out.
Still out.
In.
Out.
So if you have noticed,
Our breath out should be twice longer than in's.
In.
Out.
In.
And out.
Still out.
In.
Out.
Out.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
We are halfway there.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
In out.
In.
Out.
In out.
In out.
In.
And let it go out and come back to your natural breathing.
3 minutes have left and please keep your eyes closed and try to feel if there is any difference from the beginning of this practice.
Just take a note of that and we will smoothly continue with our second breathing technique which is called Alternative Nostril Breathing.
Some of you might have heard about that and what we have to do here,
You guys can see how I will be using my hand or you can use your left or right one.
We will basically need four fingers.
So let's put our middle and index finger between our eyebrows and we will use the fourth and the first finger to close our left or right nostril respectively.
So we will be breathing kind of in a triangular form.
Breathing in through the left,
Out through the right,
In through the right and out through the left.
So I will be also guiding you through some of these moments.
You can choose the pace that is more comfortable for you,
Which feels more natural and let's put both of our fingers on our third eye and let's close our right nostril and we will take a deep breath in through the left nostril.
Change your fingers,
Close your left nostril,
Open your right nostril and out through the right one.
Do not change your fingers,
We are taking a breath in through the right and we change the fingers out through the left.
You guys can continue during this cycle.
We will also spend about three minutes here,
Try to enjoy the process and if you get confused with the fingers,
With the nostrils,
That's completely fine,
Continue from where you stopped.
We are taking in breath through one nostril,
Out breath through another.
In breath through the same one and out breath from the other one.
In,
Out,
In,
Out.
Try to deepen your breath just a little bit so it will still feel comfortable but you can feel it end in your chest and in your belly.
In,
Out,
In,
Out.
If using the previous breathing technique we tried to relax and calm our bodies down,
This one helps us balance our left and right side of the brain so we will still stay totally relaxed but alert,
We will not get sleepy.
This is the main benefit of this practice.
It will help us have a clear vision,
Probably literally as well but what I mean our thinking,
Our mind will work much more clearly.
Let's spend here about 30 more seconds.
Continue breathing deeply.
You can imagine a triangle,
The path of the air traveling in your head.
And,
Let's come back here,
You can still keep your eyes closed.
Remember no effort,
Just try to enjoy the process and we will smoothly move to the third technique.
It will be the simplest one for today.
All I want you to do is to relax,
You can sit or probably lie down in whichever position you are in now is fine.
Try to keep your back straight as well and what we have to do is to dive deep inside of our bodies.
We will just be observers of our natural breath today for about 4 more minutes.
Having accomplished,
Having reached this balanced and relaxed state of mind and body,
We will be able to notice maybe some changes or simply sensations in our body which our breath creates.
You can put one of your hands on your chest,
You can use another one to put in your belly or just relax your hands whichever,
Wherever you want.
Try to dive deep into your torso.
You can rest your attention in the part of the body which moves probably the most while you are breathing.
You can rest your attention on your third eye or in the middle of your brain and try to notice the rising and falling of your chest,
Of your shoulders,
Of your belly.
Try to feel all the sensations present in each part of your body.
If a thought arises,
Just let it be.
Do not resist your thoughts,
It's a part of the meditation,
But do not engage in any stories in your mind.
All you have to do is to follow your breath.
Allow yourself to feel whichever sensation might be here.
Do not label it as positive,
Pleasant or unpleasant.
If you get distracted,
Just come back to the rising and falling of your belly and chest.
You can mentally follow the air traveling in your body,
Through your body.
Try to rest your attention on your solar plexus.
Feel everything that happens there and if nothing happens that is totally fine.
Enjoy this calmness that you have created inside of you.
Allow yourself,
Feel and experience everything and follow your breath.
Let it be your guide.
And let's smoothly close our breathing practice.
Thank yourself for this time.
Thank your breath,
Thank the air,
Thank your body and of course our community here.
You can move your limbs,
Your shoulders,
You can slowly open your eyes.
Try to take a mental note of how you feel now and which difference you notice from the very beginning of our practice and even earlier from the very beginning of our live session.
I personally feel much calmer,
I feel my torso,
My chest much more,
I clearly see all the emotions inside of me.
Well,
That was very enjoyable for me and I hope for you guys as well and for now as I have promised you which we were doing now,
We were establishing this connection with our body and our spirit.
Who was the observer and who was breathing?
Well,
Just ask yourself and probably the answer will come for you a bit later.
And establishing this connection,
Feeling everything that happens inside of us in our torso,
Letting ourselves feel it,
Including all of our emotions,
Is the first step to intuition.
With the time,
Body will give you more and more signals.
Actually,
Our bodies give us signals all the time,
Probably all day long,
Maybe even when we are sleeping,
But unfortunately not all of us have the ability to hear and to understand these signals.
We just in daily life call it intuition and it is nothing mystical,
Though some can view it this way and that is great as well.
And it is something very physical and very scientifically proven,
At least for me,
Which I believe in.
They say that all the answers are inside of us and that is completely true.
We just need to hear them.
We just need to set this deep trust and connections within us to hear our intuition.
So,
That was the first step today that we made towards our inner voice,
Our self-confidence and,
Which is probably more important,
Peace in our bodies.
Well,
I probably will make another life session about intuition.
If you guys want it,
Let me know what you think about today's life event and before we finish,
I would really like to thank Insight Timer for providing such an amazing opportunity to get here together to share this time and experience with everyone,
With each one of us.
And I personally am a big fan of Insight Timer for already many years.
And if you guys want to attend free life events,
If you want to use such an immense and such an incredible free library of all the talks and guided meditations,
You can leave your donations here.
They will be gone to Insight Timer team,
To the whole platform,
To the whole application and to the contributors.
As I mentioned previously,
The first episode is already in my profile.
You can subscribe or,
How is it called here,
Follow me,
So you will stay tuned with the future life events.
I will hold them here weekly and that is always a big pleasure to hear your feedback.
You can reach me out through the personal private messages,
You can also find other breathing meditations in my profile.
That was really nice to spend this time together.
I wish you all to have an amazing day or a night ahead,
Depending where you are right now.
And I really hope to see you all soon,
The next week.
And bye everyone.
