Inviting you to take a comfortable seat,
Bringing your awareness inwards.
Notice your breath,
Allowing the awareness of your breath to bring you deeper into this present moment.
As you witness your breath,
Allow it to become deeper,
Letting the belly rise,
Enjoying every breath as you inhale,
Filling your lungs,
Letting the belly rise,
And exhale,
Letting go,
Softening.
These deep breaths,
At a rhythm that is comfortable for you.
Notice the body,
What sensations are present in your body.
Doing a brief scan throughout your body,
Noticing any sensations,
Whether it's a tingle,
A flutter,
Tension,
Softness,
Temperature.
Just notice what your body feels like.
Just witnessing,
Not justifying or trying to change,
Simply being an observer.
This is your witness consciousness.
You are the experiencer and the witness.
Bring your awareness now to the center of your chest.
What physical sensation is present there?
Maybe there's tightness,
Maybe there's spaciousness.
Just noticing what your chest feels like.
If you struggle to notice,
It's okay,
Just stay in the inquiry.
Keep the breath relaxed and long,
Deep,
Letting the belly rise.
Bring your awareness now into your emotional state,
Tuning deeper into the heart center,
In the center of your chest.
What emotional state is present?
How does your heart feel in this moment?
Not trying to figure it out in the mind,
But allowing the answer to come as a felt experience within you,
From your heart.
If it helps,
You can place a hand on your heart and we're going to take this opportunity to create space to feel feelings that have been wanting to be felt.
So,
Begin approaching your heart with softness,
Using your imagination.
Imagine your heart is its own being within you,
Its own little entity that lives inside of you.
Your heart wants your attention,
So we will give your heart the attention that it wants.
The heart is also the home of your inner child.
There's a little version of you inside of your heart.
So,
This is an opportunity as well to connect with your inner child,
Bringing a sense of gratitude towards your heart,
Towards your inner child for welcoming you into their space.
Keeping yourself relaxed,
Enjoying the sense of stillness as your breath continues to relax you deeper.
In this heart connection,
We want to bring forth a question.
You can ask yourself,
What part of myself have I not learned to love fully?
You can repeat the question within you.
What part of myself have I not learned to love fully?
Keeping your connection to your heart,
Perhaps your hand still in your heart,
And just witnessing what comes.
Take this next moment to allow the answer to reveal itself to you from your heart.
What part of myself have I not learned to love?
As those parts of you that you've yet learned to love begin to reveal themselves,
Hold them now with tenderness,
With love.
Maybe it's something you believed that someone else said.
Maybe it's something that you regret.
Whatever it might be,
Just hold that.
And if a feeling comes,
Whether it's sadness,
Grief,
Guilt,
Just allow that feeling to be present in your body.
Don't resist it because it's the very resistance of feeling this feeling that keeps these emotions stuck in the body,
Allowing those feelings to be present within you,
Knowing that you are safe in this space,
Knowing that you are safe in your center,
Everything is okay.
Maybe there's shame as well.
If you haven't noticed any shame yet,
You can check by asking yourself,
What am I ashamed of?
What do I carry shame for?
And listen to your heart as it reveals the answer,
Allowing the feelings that come with that memory.
If the shame is now present,
Allow yourself to feel that shame for a moment.
What does that shame feel like in your body?
Holding your heart with softness and tenderness,
Continuing to hold your feelings,
You're doing right,
Allowing your feelings to be felt.
Begin to bring forth some compassion for yourself and just like everybody else,
We didn't have a perfect instruction manual for how to live life in the sense that we didn't do everything the way we thought it should have been done and that's okay.
Allow yourself the space to be human.
Have some compassion for your own humanity,
For your own flaws.
We all have flaws.
We all have shortcomings.
We all make mistakes.
We all have regrets.
All that you are ashamed of,
Using your imagination,
Put it in a pile right in front of you.
Sit there right in front of you.
These things aren't going to go away and disappear magically but what you can do is have a new level of compassion for yourself,
A new level of love for yourself so as all these things that you're ashamed of are sitting there in front of you energetically,
Go ahead and draw a circle around them.
This circle is a container of compassion.
The cure to shame is compassion.
Perhaps it's not even those things themselves that carry the most shame but the judgments that you have of yourself for those shameful things.
Take this moment to soften the approach that you take towards judging yourself.
Imagine a four-year-old version of you.
This is an inner childhood version of you that lives within you.
That little innocent pure being deserves love,
Deserves your love.
So take the remainder of this time to give yourself some love and forgiveness.
And see what it feels like to have it be okay to have made mistakes,
To have it be okay that you have regrets,
And even to have it be okay that you've judged yourself harshly.
This inner critic has been out to protect you.
It only has taken a harsh path.
This inner critic thinks that you're safer if you continue judging yourself.
So the remedy for this inner critic is self-love.
The more you love yourself,
The less you have to judge yourself.
And soon enough you'll begin to discover the beauty in your flaws,
The beauty in your shortcomings.
That might seem far-fetched for you right now.
But sooner or later you might realize that it's these very things that make you relatable to other people,
To other human beings.
Someone perhaps are carrying that same burden of shame for something very similar.
And from this point forward,
You can be a space of peace and compassion for those people.
You must first just be that space for yourself,
Compassion,
Self-love,
Forgiveness,
Acceptance.
You deserve your own love.
Making yourself wrong for all those things has been the wall that you've kept up,
Blocking your own self-love.
So if there's any more of that wall that is still up,
Allow it to crumble down.
Because it's not needed anymore.
You will always be safe.
Let your inner child know that you will always be here with full devotion.
And notice the sensation in your body around your heart as you immerse yourself in this forgiveness,
In this compassion,
In this self-love.
I invite you to take this feeling with you into your day,
Into your life.
Take a few more deep breaths as you integrate this experience.
Thank you for giving yourself the love that your heart and your inner child have been wanting from you.
Thank you for expanding who you are as a person.
Growing and becoming someone who can love unconditionally.
Someone who can love themselves fully.
I invite you to continue on this journey of self-love,
Self-compassion,
Self-forgiveness.
Whatever burden you have been carrying of shame,
Put the burden down and allow this feeling of self-love,
Compassion,
Forgiveness.
To flourish.
