Okay,
Welcome,
Welcome,
Welcome and just allow yourself to arrive.
Just give your body,
Give your body permission to be here and nowhere else.
Give your mind permission to be here and nowhere else and giving it permission creates the possibility,
Doesn't need to say it's going to happen.
So also give yourself the permission for whatever is going to happen is going to happen.
You can take responsibility and make an effort and then you can almost lean back and trust that you will be held in whatever way you need to be held,
That your body will respond in whatever way your body needs to respond,
Which will be different at different times.
Take a breath.
Sense your chest rising and falling.
Do that a couple of times,
Sense the breath coming into your chest.
Chest rising and falling.
And now see if you can encourage your stomach to rise and fall with the breath as well,
Or not in a forced way,
Just make that invitation for your stomach to expand and contract.
Expand and contract.
Invite your body to feel free.
Invite your elbows to be heavy.
Invite your neck to be free.
And we're going to try a slightly different way of doing the breath today.
This is a way that has been used for hundreds of years to regulate the body,
To feed the body.
And the first step,
If you just listen without doing it,
So the first step is to just take a deep breath for a count of six.
The next is to hum for a count of seven.
The next is to hold your body tense,
Holding everything tense for a count of eight.
And then we exhale and release for ten.
So it's breathing in for six,
Humming for seven,
Tensing for eight and releasing for ten.
And don't worry if you get lost in the counting,
Repeat this for a few cycles so you can come back in when you're ready or take a break and come back in when you can.
We'll just take a moment before we do,
Just take a moment to reflect on your energy levels at the moment,
It's almost like doing a baseline survey of yourself.
Check how your neck is,
Check how your back is,
Check your emotional landscape at the moment.
Do you feel jaggy or smooth?
Do you feel up or down?
Do you feel numbed out or in connection?
Or is all of that just too many words?
Are you in yourself,
Out yourself?
Whatever it is,
Just take a little baseline survey.
I'm going to take a breath in,
Just a normal breath in and exhale,
Ready to begin.
Breathing in deeply for 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and hum for 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
Tense everything for 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8 and exhale and release 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and hum 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and tense 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8 and exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and hum 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and tense 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8 and exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 1 more round,
Inhale 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and hum 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and tense 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8 and exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Allow your breathing to return to normal.
If in the last exhale there's still a holding of tension in your body then invite that to release,
Invite your elbows to be heavy,
Invite your neck to be fully,
Invite your legs to be weighted down to the ground.
Just do another little survey of yourself.
Do you notice that anything feels different?
Do you feel more up or more down or jaggy or smooth?
Do things feel exaggerated or have things swung on a pendulum?
Just notice and give yourself permission for whatever you are noticing to be okay.
Maybe you notice surprises,
Maybe you were expecting what you noticed,
Whatever it is just give yourself permission to avoid the noticing lightly,
Gently.
And once you've done that scan of your body,
Your physical body,
Your mental body,
Your emotional body,
Check in with your spiritual body,
Check in with whether you feel like you are an island by yourself or whether you feel like you have that sense of connection to something other,
Something bigger than you,
Something outside of you.
And we're going to take another normal breath in and we're going to exhale ready to begin and do another cycle of six,
Seven,
Eight and ten.
So breathing in normally and exhale ready to begin.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and on 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
Holding tight 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8.
Exhale,
Release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and on 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and holding tight 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8.
Exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and on 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
Holding tight 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8.
Exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and on 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
Holding tight 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8.
Exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Breathing in 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and on 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and holding tight 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8.
Exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Last time inhale 2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and on 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7 and holding tight 2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8.
Exhale and release 3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
Allow your breathing to return to normal.
Allow any residual tension from that invitation to hold yourself tight.
Allow any residual tension to leave your body a little bit more and a little bit more every time you breathe out.
Invite your neck to be free.
Invite your legs to be heavy,
Rounded,
Down into the floor or into your bed or your couch,
However you're sitting,
Wherever you are.
Invite your elbows to be heavy.
Just scan your body,
Your toes,
To the instep,
To the ankles,
To the heel,
To the calves,
To the shins,
To the knees,
Your thighs,
Those legs that have carried you all these years,
To your chest,
Your pelvis,
Above your pelvis where so much energetic work happens,
This place of feeling like we're good enough,
Where we're feeling sometimes that we're not good enough,
This place of feeling like we belong,
Or sometimes feeling like we're that wobbly,
That we don't belong,
That somehow we are overlooked.
Keep on with your scan on a physical and emotional level,
Coming further up your intestines,
Your solar plexus,
Your ribcage,
Coming up to your heart.
How is your heart?
How is your heart?
Make that a question or asking of yourself,
Dearly,
Dearly,
How is your heart?
Take a breath into the heart and exhale.
Inhaling,
Another breath in to the heart,
And exhale.
Coming to the shoulders,
Flowing down the arms.
Coming back to the heart from the arms again,
Let's hang out to the heart.
Out and away,
Dearly,
Out and away.
Coming to the shoulders and the neck and the face,
Your chin,
Your mouth,
Your jawbone,
Your lips,
Your gums,
Your teeth,
Your nose,
All the cavities in your skull and your beautiful skin that covers it all.
Blood vessels pumping around your body,
Carrying goodness towards your cells and carrying anything that needs cleared away.
Your body knows how to do this.
So allow it to do it,
Allow it to carry tension away,
Allow it to carry whatever is not serving you well.
And if there's any residual tension,
Trauma,
Anxiousness,
We did invite it to leave again,
To be carried away on the breath.
So easy.
Your body knows what to do,
Just as your heart knows to keep on beating,
To keep on flushing toxins out of your body.
All this cleverness in your body without us even needing to understand.
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Just allowing that flow to happen.
Our bodies know best.
Let's imagine that we could,
From this point on,
Make every decision from our hearts.
Every decision we make is in our own best interest.
Isn't it selfish?
It's just deeply,
Deeply loving towards yourself.
And it's not your self-interest from your ego.
It's your true self-interest.
It will serve you well.
It will serve you well to surrender to another meditation,
To another moment of prayer,
Even if your ego is fighting it.
Yes,
That's what we need.
So that's the kind of self-interest that we're after.
Imagine you could make all of your decisions with that kind of interest in your heart.
It's in your interest to be generous,
To give,
To receive all of these things that serve us well.
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Just allowing that as a possibility to flush through our bodies.
And take a deep breath in.
We're going to come back up to the surface now,
But slowly,
Gently.
Take a deep breath in and exhale.
Take another deep breath in.
And on this exhale,
Just allow everything that has been working in this meditation,
In this exercise,
This connection with yourself,
Allow all of it to settle.
To run through from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.
Maybe that took a few inhales and exhales.
Let it be.
Take another deep,
Deep,
Deep breath in.
And on this exhale,
Imagine the smoothing of your energy.
Imagine the lightness coming to you.
And on the next breath in and exhale,
You allow all of that to be absorbed in your body.
And even in that moment,
You can come back to the surface and you can open your eyes whenever you're ready.
Welcome.
