Welcome to another resilience meditation.
In these stressful times you can give yourself the gift of self-care by slowing down.
So in this time you've chosen to slow down for just about 10 minutes to give yourself the present of your presence.
So I'll stop the puns.
I've been thinking that one of the true silver linings of this time has been the gift of slowing down and we have all had our lives come to a crashing halt in a way.
We've gotten off the hamster wheel that we may have been on.
I know pre coronavirus times I was racing around often like a chicken with my head cut off.
My blood pressure was sky-high.
I would be forgetting one thing after the next.
I have a difficult time keeping track of everything anyways.
It's my ADHD brain but I just felt so rushed in my life constantly and as a mother of young kids and working it was just a constant hamster wheel and I wonder if any of you have that feeling.
I don't think I'm alone in that.
Getting off the hamster wheel,
Having this sort of deliberate slowing down in our lives,
Yes the crashing halt has been for me a silver lining and I wonder for you as well.
When we slow down we give ourselves the gift of being more present in ourselves,
In our lives,
With the people who are right in front of us,
With the life that's right in front of us.
So today's meditation will focus on slowing down,
Getting present,
Giving ourselves the gift of presence so that you can return feeling more resilient in your life and more able to be present with the world around you,
With the people with whom you live or with whom you work or in just in general to be more present in our own bodies is very healthy physically,
Mentally,
Emotionally.
So let's go ahead and get started.
Finding a comfortable position for yourself in which you can sit or lie down,
Give yourself the gift of slowing down.
You might allow your eyes to gently close,
It just helps to tune out the external visual field which can be full of a lot of distractions including distractions that keep us from slowing down.
I know my my phone is a big visual cue that can pull me into speeding up,
Into getting unpresent.
So just by closing our eyes we remove those visual cues,
Those temptations to re-engage in the rush of the world around us.
We're deliberately giving ourselves a gift of just about seven or eight minutes of getting present in ourselves.
So you might just tune into the fact of yourself in this moment as a living,
Breathing body.
Just feeling the gentle rhythm of the breath as it moves through you moment by moment whether or not you're paying attention.
When we slow down we can bring our busy mind down into our bodies through the waves of the breath.
So your attention is just almost riding the wave of the breath down into the core of your body.
Maybe even the core of your heart,
Your beating heart in this moment.
Just bringing all of your awareness into the heart.
Breathing through the heart and just being aware of the feeling of your beating heart.
Noticing perhaps if the beats are fast just by breathing and bringing awareness to the heart.
We can slow down the beating heart.
Exhaling and letting go of tension or stress in the chest in this area.
When we slow down our heartbeat just by bringing our awareness to it,
We slow down our busy minds,
We switch our stress response into a more parasympathetic stress response or parasympathetic nervous system rather.
That's the more relaxed,
Soothing nervous system.
Breathing out and relaxing any tension in your face,
Your jaw.
Really using this time of slowing down and getting present to deliberately relax any areas of tension in your shoulders,
In your neck.
Maybe doing a few gentle neck stretches.
Just being present,
Slow and gentle with the movements.
By slowing down and getting present with our bodies,
We can be really aware of our needs physically,
Emotionally.
And if we're stressed or sad or anxious,
One of the greatest gifts that we can give to ourselves is to just be present.
Almost like when you are feeling stressed or sad or anxious and you're with your dearest friend or someone in your family or some teacher or mentor or even your pet,
Your dog who's just present with you.
They don't need to fix anything,
They just heal by the gift of their presence,
Their loving presence.
So we can give ourselves the greatest gift of slowing down and just being present.
You might,
If you're feeling sad or anxious,
Gently put your hand to your heart.
Almost like you're letting your heart know,
I'm here with you,
I'm present,
You're not alone.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
Letting that heart-centered breath be your home base of awareness.
So whenever you notice the mind is pulled away into thoughts,
Ruminations,
Worries,
Regrets,
Daydreams,
Whenever you notice that the mind is pulled away,
Maybe making a list of all the things you need to do today,
We just gently re-relax the mind open.
You can get back to that list,
Those worries,
In another two minutes.
But in this moment,
We gently relax the mind riding the wave of this new breath back down into your heart space and just breathing in and out from the heart.
When we slow down our nervous system,
When we slow down our stress response,
When we ground ourselves in presence with this moment,
We shift from the sympathetic,
The activated nervous system,
To the parasympathetic,
Which is that soothing,
Healing nervous system where our body repairs itself even at the cellular level,
Where we can process all that's going on in a way that can be really renewing to our spirit,
To our body,
To our minds.
You might further slow down or experiment with slowing down just by taking a few deeper breaths from the belly,
From the chest,
Letting the exhale be deeper and longer than the inhale,
Which also helps to slow down and switch into that parasympathetic nervous system.
One more deeper exhale,
Inviting a letting go in body and mind.
And as we come to the close of this meditation,
Just noticing what it feels like to slow down and get present,
Ask yourself what what keeps me from slowing down,
What in my life keeps me from slowing down and being present with myself,
With the people I love,
With the world around me.
I'll leave you with the words of Ariel from The Little Mermaid that I was singing with my four-year-old this morning.
Just look at the world around you,
Right here on the ocean floor,
Such wonderful things surround you,
What more is you looking for?
Have a good week.
I'll look forward to connecting with you for another resilience meditation next week.
Bye.
