Welcoming you to a short morning meditation.
If you find yourself in perimenopause or menopause and you're finding that your emotions are very up and down.
Even when you wake up in the morning,
It's almost right away the roller coaster begins.
I invite you to take just a couple of minutes to find your anchor point.
So making yourself comfortable in a seated position or on a chair.
If you need to lean against something to keep your back straight,
That's fine.
Make sure you're comfortable.
Letting your hands rest on your lap.
Closing your eyes.
And just noticing if there's parts of your body that are tense.
Taking a few deep inhales through the nose,
Sending that breath directly to where you feel that contraction.
And exhaling out the mouth.
Exhaling the muscles,
Releasing the jaw,
Releasing the tongue.
And coming back,
Coming back to the breath.
Breathing in through the nose,
Breathing out through the nose.
Staying with this breath,
The inhale and the exhale.
As we expand,
As we inhale,
Sometimes the physical body expands,
Sometimes the energetic body expands and contract with the exhale.
Just small expansions,
Small contractions.
And recognizing that emotions are just energy.
And being that we are energetic beings,
We know we can't create or destroy energy,
But we can transform it.
And we also know energy flows where attention goes.
And so keeping this in mind,
When we have a big emotion that comes through,
Understand that as energy,
It wants to move through your system.
And so trying to ignore it or push it down only suppresses it within your system.
It doesn't make it go away.
And eventually the pressure of that energy is going to become so strong,
It's going to come out at some point or another.
So you can't hold your anger or your anxiety or your sadness in your hand.
It's not tangible,
It's energy.
And if we don't put more attention to it,
It will move through.
And so when an emotion comes through,
We acknowledge it and we can feel it in our body.
There's a body response that happens,
But it's the mind that then puts the thoughts and the stories to it.
So if we can stay out of the mind and stay with the sensation of the emotion,
Let it move through our body like a wave.
It will then pass through.
So you acknowledge,
But you don't need to engage with it.
There's nothing wrong with you.
We know that this is a biological happening,
A chemical happening within the body.
And it can spark old patterns,
Old thoughts.
But with self-awareness,
You can let it move through your system.
As it rises up,
It moves out.
And if you feel yourself getting pulled in or lost in the emotion,
Come back to your breath.
This is your anchor point.
The breath is always happening.
And it's not your mind telling your lungs to breathe.
It's your innate wisdom,
The innate intelligence of the body that just continually breathes.
It will always be there behind the emotion.
Go back to your breath.
If you're experiencing anxiety or you notice your breath has become shallow or quick,
Extend your exhale.
Take your inhale and extend your exhale.
You might want to count four beats in,
Six beats out.
And after a few rounds,
You may change it to four beats in,
Eight beats out.
Even doing that for just a minute is going to calm the nervous system.
Come back to your breath.
The inhale,
The expansion,
The exhale,
The contraction.
Very symbolic of life as we expand at some times and then we contract.
And the expansion always follows the contraction.
The contraction always follows the expansion,
The rhythm of life.
When we stop fighting it,
We can fall into a natural flow.
This doesn't mean you don't have emotions or feelings.
It just means that you allow them to come through.
You acknowledge,
You feel them and you let them go.
So spending this last minute,
Coming back to your inhale and your exhale.
Very symbolic of life as we expand at some times and then we contract.
And as you feel ready,
You can relax.
And as you feel ready,
Opening your eyes,
Taking a breath through the nose,
Releasing through the mouth.
