Hi,
This is Meg Ranaldi of Body Centered Inquiry and welcome to this guided body centered practice entitled Releasing Overwhelm.
You'll be on your back,
On the floor on a padded or carpeted surface or on a bed for this session.
Please wear comfortable clothing that allows for the easy rise and fall of the breath.
Have what you need to be warm or cool enough.
Use a rolled up bath towel or yoga blanket for your head and adjust it so that you have the best support for your head and neck.
Please don't use bed pillows for these kinds of practices.
It actually inhibits the movement we want to evoke.
You can have a bolster,
A rolled up blanket or roller for underneath your knees to keep your lower back at ease.
Remove your glasses,
Belt,
Anything that might inhibit your breathing or your movement.
And when you're ready,
Please come to lie on your back.
Take time to adjust your props and allow yourself to begin to settle in.
This practice brings focus to the simple rise and fall of the belly or soft belly as meditation teacher Steven Levine called it.
It is a powerful antidote to overwhelm.
It invites internal spaciousness.
Gently invite your attention to draw inward.
Softly close your eyes or let them rest in a soft gaze.
As you continue to settle in,
I'll share this quote with you from Steven Levine.
The softness of the belly is a good indicator of our openness to the moment.
When we are at peace,
The belly is soft and open.
When we are not,
It is tense and held.
In letting go into soft belly,
We open the body and loosen our grip on the mind to expose the heart of essential healing.
Consider that the ground beneath you is dynamic.
Whether you're on a bed or on the floor,
It's all the ground and it comes toward you as you rest into it.
See if exploring that idea allows you to rest more into the ground.
It's always there to meet us.
For now,
Have your arms resting along your sides or resting in a simple way on your abdomen.
And continue to allow yourself to arrive and settle in.
You can have your legs resting over your support or your feet standing with knees pointing toward the ceiling and the knees leaning in and resting on one another.
It's up to you.
Consider what's easy for you right now.
Invite softening into your jaw,
Throat,
Eyes,
Mouth,
Tongue,
And the back of your neck.
Make sure your head support offers enough support for your neck as well.
And a reminder,
Please use a rolled up bath towel or yoga blanket.
Now in a simple,
Quiet way,
Begin to roll your head a little bit to the right.
Keep it soft and in an easy range.
And then roll your head back to where you started with your face oriented toward the ceiling.
Do that gentle,
Soft roll slowly a few more times.
Easy does it.
And see if you can set a quiet,
Simple tone for this movement.
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Being aware of the ground beneath you.
You can pause the audio and slow it down.
Take your time.
After doing that movement a few times,
Rest with your head in your starting place.
Breathe and allow the soft belly to rise and fall.
And now allow your head gently and softly to roll to the left with a quiet tone to it.
And then gently back to where you started,
Exploring this side,
Noticing how the two sides are different and how they're the same.
It's not about how large the movement is or how quickly you move.
Here you're being invited into learning how to listen more deeply for how you do what you do.
So it's not about the movement form.
It's about what informs your movement.
Soft and easy.
Allowing soft belly to rise and fall as you gently roll your head to the left and back to where you began.
And when you're ready,
Just take a rest.
The rests are important because we begin to listen for echoes of the movement and how movement and breath might be connected to one another.
That's only one reason why the rests are important.
Be aware of the support beneath you that's always there to meet you.
Allow your awareness to come once again to the rise and fall of breath moving in and out of your abdomen.
Breath breathing all by itself.
Notice any tension in your belly.
Can you gently meet it?
There's no point or need in pushing through or struggling.
Can you meet whatever tension or holding might be there and continue to allow breath to rise and fall as best you can right now?
Knowing each time you visit this session,
The quality of the movement will be different.
Drawing in as full a breath as you can and then letting it go completely with no force.
And there's no particular standards of breathing here.
Only stay present to what is here for you.
In your own time,
Allow the in-breath and the out-breath to become more even.
Allow yourself to receive this moment and to receive the tenderness that might be there as well.
Allow breath to drop into the pelvic floor or into the hip joints on either side,
Into the sacrum and tailbone in the back,
This beautiful pelvic bowl.
It's an experiment with inviting breath into all those places.
In soft belly,
There is room for pleasure and pain,
Fear and confidence,
Joy and sadness.
Soft belly breathing can hold it all.
Soft belly is an embodied or lived experience of internal spaciousness.
In soft belly,
There's space,
There's space for mercy,
There's space for all of it.
When it seems right,
Come back to gently rolling your head from one side to another slowly with a soft,
Quiet tone.
Noticing when you breathe in and when you breathe out.
Just a few times of rolling from one side to the other,
Taking your time,
Taking all the time you need.
Noticing how the ground is there to meet and hold you.
Becoming aware perhaps of how awareness of the ground support can ease the efforting in your movement.
And rest again.
May you be free from fear.
May you have mental happiness.
May you have physical happiness.
May you have ease of well-being.
May you be held in vast love.
May you discover the inner spaciousness that can hold everything.
Thank you.
This concludes the end of this session.
