Welcome to this guided meditation and intention setting for autumn and the month of November,
Where our October session drew upon the inspiration of falling leaves and what the trees release and let go of.
This month we're drawing inspiration from November bonfires.
In today's intention setting we'll be reflecting upon what we can release into the flames,
What boundaries we need to draw near and the breathing space we need in place to allow our inner fire to rise up from within.
Your invitation now is to find the most comfortable position for you.
That may be sitting at your desk,
Cross-legged on the floor,
Lying on the sofa on your bed or on the floor with your legs up the wall,
Wherever feels good for you.
And once you've got your spot I want to encourage you to glance around the room,
The space that you're in,
To take in all of your surroundings and just confirm to your nervous system that in this moment,
In this setting,
You are safe and that this is a good place to shut your eyes and relax into a meditation.
Do that now and then gently close down your eyes and just allow yourself to land.
Once we close our eyes we no longer have the distraction of everything we can see and as you turn off your vision it becomes much easier to focus on other senses and sensations.
Feel yourself arriving,
Feel yourself being met and held by the chair or the floor or the surface beneath you.
What would it mean to soften just a little bit more,
To let your shoulders fall away and to increase that gap between the bottom of your earlobes and the top of your collarbone and feel yourself being met and held by the gravity that surrounds you.
Really allow yourself to surrender just a little bit more.
Could you loosen your jaw,
Relax your belly,
Just surrender and feel yourself being met and held by the earth below you.
Maybe even allowing your mind's eye to journey down through the floorboards,
However many layers of the building there are that you're in,
Through the foundations and down to the ground,
The earth,
The soil below.
Feel yourself being met and held here.
I'm just reminding yourself that there's nowhere else to be but here and there's no one else to be but you.
And I'll invite you now to find your breath,
Just observe it for a moment,
Ask nothing more of it,
Command nothing more,
Just notice the inhale and the exhale.
I'm just being curious where it is most present this morning.
Perhaps it's high in your body,
Dancing along your collarbones and you notice the rise and fall of your shoulders.
Maybe it's in your chest,
Perhaps it's deep down in your belly or maybe it's inflating through your side ribs or even your back.
Imagine yourself now as an external observer.
Notice the cadence of your breath.
If someone was observing your breath from outside your body,
What would they notice?
Where is it rising and falling?
Is the cadence deep or shallow?
Now bringing some intention to your breath,
I'm going to invite you on your next breath in to imagine that that breath is pulling in all the way from the ground beneath you and rising vertebrae by vertebrae the back of your body and then the breath that pauses suspended above your body,
Above your head for a moment,
Neither coming nor going.
And then on the beautiful exhale imagine that that breath as you breathe it out,
Release it through your mouth,
Imagine that that breath is crashing over your head and rolling out along your body like a wave.
Take another one of those big juicy breaths in,
All the way pulling up from the ground beneath you,
Suspending at the top and then rolling up,
Crashing like a wave in front of you.
Take another one of those in your own time now and as you move from the rising and the crashing of the waves,
I want you to imagine that you're in a clearing.
Feel your feet on the earth beneath you,
Feel the expanse of the woods and the forest around the edge of the clearing,
Feel the enormity of the sky above you and noticing that in the clearing night has fallen and around you darkness sets in.
The November air is crisp,
You are wrapped up warm,
Your ears,
Your neck,
Your forehead are toasty under a scarf and a hat that wraps around you tightly but your cheeks and the tip of your nose,
They're exposed to the crisp air and they are cold.
In front of you,
Delighting all of your senses,
In the middle of the clearing is a bonfire and there are sparks that pop and they hiss and they dance with delight into the sky above and big lazy flames lick amongst the logs and they wave and they flicker and the sound and the smell and the heat and the warm glow and the light,
It all draws you in and you're grateful that the wind direction is preventing the smoke from billowing into your eyes but the sweet scent of wood smoke carries on the breeze and it too dances up your nostrils and makes itself at home in your hair and your clothes and on your skin and for days and weeks to come the shadow of that smoke will evoke the memory of the bonfire in front of you now.
You free your hands from your pockets,
Naked fingers wiggling and dancing,
Stretching outwards,
Soaking up and absorbing the warmth as you toast them in the glow of the fire.
You feel that heat meet your skin and your gaze moves upwards,
Higher up above your dancing fingers and you notice again those sparks as they burst from the fire and you watch as those sparks dance higher and higher and then fall slowly dimming their glow to the ground below and you imagine now that each one,
Each brilliant spark is representing something meaningful in this moment of your life.
It carries a meaning for you and you stop and you notice them.
There are thoughts,
There are dreams,
There are worries,
There are regrets,
There are questions,
All dancing in the night sky and as you stand here in this clearing in this cool night you take in their flight path.
They rise up and up and up and then their descent,
Their gradual settling on the earth below and as you witness their dance you pause and you give thanks for what you have achieved this past month.
You give thanks for the attempts that you have made,
The things that you have tried and the lessons that you have learned.
You give thanks for those around you.
You give thanks for the doors that have firmly closed.
You give thanks for the things that call to be released and thanks for the opportunities still to come and you imagine now for a moment as you watch their sparks dancing in the night sky that they form a word or a phrase as they leap up into the inky black of the darkness.
What is that word?
What does it say?
What message do the sparks have for you today?
With a whoosh they flicker and dissipate and disappear,
Softly fading into the darkness.
You turn your gaze back to the fire in front of you and you feel its golden warmth and you let that gentle glow wash over you.
You feel your entire body start to warm as that gentle golden glow moves from your face,
From your hands,
Down your neck and your shoulders and your arms,
Radiating out all through your torso,
Down your legs to your toes until you are one giant pulsing golden glowing ball of energy.
Stay with that feeling just a little bit longer,
Soak it in and then gently start to notice your body as it sits on the chair,
On the floor,
On the bed,
On the surface.
Start to become aware of your limbs,
Maybe start to bring some movement in.
Become aware of your wider surroundings.
You'll notice again your breath as it rises in and out.
Don't rush yet to open your eyes,
Just pause a moment suspended here between that clearing with the bonfire and the sparks and their message for you and all of the busyness of the rest of your day.
And then gently,
When you're ready and only then,
Blink your eyes open and return into the room.
Welcome back.
As you're moving back into the space,
I'll invite you,
If you wish,
You may choose to end the recording here or to continue just with a bit of reflection and intention setting.
If you want to do so,
Grab a notebook,
A journal and something to make some notes with.
And for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere,
As we turn from October into November,
We're now at the midway point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.
And as we descend into these darker months,
We usher in a darker half of the year and we look to things like the light of the bonfire or the flame of a candle and it represents hope and reminds us of the sun's eventual return,
Even as the world around us grows colder and darker.
And as the darkness keeps our company for longer in the morning,
As we wake and get ready for the day and as we notice the light receding earlier and earlier in the evenings,
Drawing in around us much sooner than in the summer months,
There's a natural invitation for us to slow down,
To surrender to a stillness and to nurture our energy.
And just notice here how this invitation lands,
How does it feel to be invited to slow,
To still,
To surrender.
Is there a softening,
A relief,
Is there a welcomeness to this?
Or perhaps there's some resistance,
Whether that's internal,
You can kind of feel that bodily clench and resistance or perhaps it's the many external voices with an overwhelming supply of things to do,
Do,
Do.
A call to keep going,
Keep going,
Keep doing,
To pile on more and more and more.
Whatever you're noticing,
I'll invite you to place a hand on your heart and let your breath in and out,
Moving your chest,
Moving that hand and as your hand really feels the movement of that breath in and out and connects in with your heart,
Listen to your answer again.
Am I welcoming of the slowing down,
The surrender and the softening or am I resisting?
And then an invitation to think about the month ahead and what intention you'd like to set here perhaps.
Is it to listen to the welcome or is it to bring some curiosity to explore the resistance?
Fire represents a chance for us to burn away the old,
The unwanted,
The dead weight and make way for the new.
And so I'm curious as well,
What comes up for you here?
What might you be ready to release to the flames?
And maybe just imagining that in your hands,
If you look down at them,
What do they hold?
What feels heavy?
What is aching to be released?
And can you let it go now into the metaphorical fire,
Cast it out towards the flames and watch as they engulf it?
And just notice there,
Is there a sensation of release,
A letting go of the heaviness of what was and the lightness in its place?
What might I need to let go of to make way for the new this month?
And is this a practice I'll need to do just the once at the start of the month or do I need to set some intentions around regularly checking in and kind of adding to that metaphorical bonfire as I go through the month so that I don't get to the end of the month really burdened?
So yeah,
What intention might you want to set here?
Anyone that's been around that really kind of communal element of a fire,
Whether it's people or like moths to a flame,
We're drawn to fire,
Aren't we?
It really brings us in.
But fire can also have a kind of protective element and the invitation now is to think about how do you need to protect yourself in the month ahead?
What boundaries do you need to draw near?
And maybe rather than thinking about what you're saying no to,
What are you saying yes to this month?
If we think about the image of the bonfire,
Often around a fire,
A campfire,
We'll have a ring of stones that form the perimeter of the fire and the edge.
And it can be really helpful to imagine that you are inside that perimeter with the stones that kind of encircle you.
What are you actively going to place inside that circle with you this month?
What's sacred to you?
What do you value?
What matters?
What gets to stay in the inner circle with you?
Maybe noticing what stays on the other side,
What doesn't get invited in this month.
And finally,
Noticing how there is space.
If we think about that fire and the logs that are stacked and burning,
There's space there between the logs and that space,
That air,
Makes it possible for the fire to breathe,
Allows the flames to weave their way through and up and climb into the night sky.
And your invitation now is to think about where in your life is there breathing space like this?
What am I going to do this month to enable there to be the breathing space?
What will make it possible for my inner fire,
That flame within me,
To roar and rise up in the same way?
The beautiful thing about this recording is you're able to pause at any point and really lean in and explore some of these prompts and to also just move through the ones that don't have the same resonance.
I like to arrange to you so you can really just find the ones that really speak to you and explore them at the depth that works for you and to just let go of the ones that don't.
So feel free to to move through the intention setting,
The reflections,
The journaling part of this in a way that really works best for you with your pause and your ability to go backwards and forwards and return here.
I hope that you have a beautiful month ahead.
I look forward to seeing you at the beginning of the next month of December and I hope that it brings everything that it needs to this month of November.
Go well.
