Aloha and welcome.
Why don't we get started by allowing our presence to become known,
Not to anyone outside of you,
But inside.
And just close your eyes as you focus on your breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
And each time you inhale,
I invite you to let your breath root itself deeper.
And with each exhale,
I invite you to release the tension,
The stress.
And begin to allow your breath to ground you in this way that feels supportive,
Relaxing,
With a sense of peace that becomes ever more deeper,
Rooted in this present moment.
And perhaps if you'd like,
You might inhale through the nose and pause at the top.
And exhale nice and long,
Even longer,
Longer through the mouth,
Noticing how setting the intention to slow down allows your unconscious mind to relax the shoulders ever so slightly more than they were relaxed before.
And you might notice that your jaws relax following the shoulders.
And with each inhale,
You become even more aware of the ground underneath you,
Perhaps the floor,
The chair,
The couch,
The bed,
Holding you up gently.
Co-creating this space with you now is this awareness that you can relax even deeper.
And allow yourself to receive this gift because there's nothing else for you to do other than just sit and be aware of each and every breath that feels grounding,
Replenishing.
And allow yourself for just a moment,
Let yourself arrive,
Not to any specific place,
Not to a particular task,
Just here,
To this breath,
This body,
In this moment,
Which has never existed before and will never exist again.
Anchor yourself here and feel your breath moving through you like a tide,
In and out,
In and out.
You don't have to do anything with it.
You don't have to improve it.
Just let it breathe you.
With each exhale,
Feel yourself drop a little deeper into the body,
Into the quiet,
Into the part of you that exists beneath the noise,
Beneath the plans,
Beneath the story that you've been telling about who you are and what you're supposed to be doing.
That part of you is awake right now.
It's been waiting.
So I want to ask you something.
And I want you to let the answer come from somewhere deep,
Deeper than your thinking mind.
When did you stop choosing and start just going?
There's a moment for all of us when life stops feeling like something we're living and starts feeling like something that's happening to us.
When we move through our mornings without really being in them,
When we respond to people in ways we've rehearsed a thousand times without even hearing the question,
When we reach for the same comforts,
Shrink in the same ways,
Repeat the same quiet sacrifices as if on a loop,
Not because we're broken,
But because we learned.
Somewhere in some earlier season of your life,
A pattern was born.
Maybe it was a way of staying safe.
Maybe it was a way of being loved.
Maybe it was the only door available to you at the time.
And so you walked through it.
And then you walked through it again and again until the path wore smooth,
Until the choice became automatic,
Until you became the pattern.
But here is what's also true.
You are not a pattern.
You are the one who can witness it.
You are the awareness that sits behind the behavior,
Watching,
Remembering that there was always more than one door.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
And let yourself become very still.
As you imagine for a moment that you are standing outside your own life,
Looking at it the way you might look at a river from a bridge.
You can see the current,
The direction it pulls,
The places it speeds up,
And the places it circles back on itself.
Where in your life are you circling?
What keeps returning?
Not because you chose it,
But because the current has always gone that way.
Let something rise gently.
Don't rage for it.
Just allow it.
Maybe it's a relationship that feels familiar in the wrong way.
A response that comes too fast before you've even thought it through.
A belief about yourself you've been carrying so long that you might have stopped noticing that it has weight.
Notice it now.
Breathe into it.
You're not in any trouble for having this pattern.
In fact,
You're brave for looking at it.
Now,
Imagine that between the trigger and the response,
There is a door.
As thin as a breath,
Easy to miss,
But always there.
That door is you.
The real you.
The one underneath the learned one.
The one who chooses.
And you don't have to blow up your life to walk through it.
You don't have to have the perfect insight or the exact right words.
You only have to pause.
One breath.
Just one moment of,
I see what's happening here.
That pause is not nothing.
That pause is everything.
That pause is where a new life begins.
Not in a grand gesture,
But in a breath,
Taken consciously,
In a moment you would have otherwise skipped right through.
You can place a hand on your heart if that feels right.
Feel a beating.
This body.
This life.
Yours.
And know this.
The fact that you are here.
That some part of you reached for this instead of the distraction.
Instead of the scroll.
Instead of the constant go,
Go,
Go.
That is the pattern beginning to break.
You don't have to do it perfectly.
You don't have to do it all at once.
You only have to keep noticing.
Keep asking.
Is this me or is this the loop?
And every time you ask that question,
Every time you feel that flicker of awareness,
You are choosing yourself.
You are choosing the life that's actually available to you instead of the one you accidentally rehearse.
Take one long,
Slow and deliberate breath.
And as you exhale,
Let something go.
Not because you figured it out,
But because you are allowed to set it down.
Even if it's just for now.
Just for today.
When you're ready,
Begin to feel the room around you.
The temperature of the air.
The sounds that exist just outside this quiet.
Let your eyes open slowly.
And carry this with you,
Not as a task,
But as a remembering.
You are not the loop.
You are the one who can step out of it.
And you already have.
