Number 9,
De-stress.
Begin by finding a comfortable posture and by bringing your awareness to the breath.
Take a few moments to let yourself arrive and allow the breath to draw you gently into internal awareness.
Allow the gaze to soften,
The eyes to close.
Take five deep breaths.
Inhale fully,
Exhale fully.
Next,
Take five further breaths and allow the natural rhythm of your breathing to return.
Inhale fully.
Let the awareness of your breathing fade into the background.
Bring your attention to your experience of stress and choose a colour to symbolise it.
Imagine your chosen colour highlighting all the places in your body where you feel stress to be present now.
Watch and observe.
Which parts of your body light up?
Where is the colour most obvious,
Most intense?
Take five breaths here as you notice the colour lighting up in your body.
Notice if the colour is moving or if it is static.
Is it hot or cold?
Does the colour have a texture to it?
Silently choose three words that describe what you notice.
Now you can see and feel where stress is being held in the body.
Next,
Connect with a feeling of compassion and consciously breathe into the heart.
Feel what happens as you start to connect with the deep resource of your own compassion.
Give compassion a colour too and watch it emanate through the body.
Take five deep conscious breaths and observe what occurs to the stress in your body as the compassion moves through.
What is changing?
Has the colour of stress in your body changed or is it the same?
What is happening within the space of your awareness?
What is happening in the body?
Take five further breaths as you attend to the feelings of stress through the lens of your awareness.
Notice how the two colours moving through your body interact,
The stress and the compassion are in relationship.
Something is evolving.
Notice that your stress is finite but your compassion is infinite.
Simply prepare to return to wakefulness and in your very own time allow the eyes to open.
That was number nine,
De-stress.
Thank yourself for finding time for this practice and don't forget to record your reflections in your mindfulness journal.
