Alive & Attuned - A Meditation For Balancing The Central Nervous System

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of these meditations sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

Hi there,

Thanks for listening.

This is Renee and today I'll be guiding you in a somatic meditation of your central nervous system.

Somatic is of the body and this meditation will use guided imagery that is fairly poetic and creative to bring attention to a really basic idea of your nervous system,

Which is the input and the output or the sensory and the motor functions.

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Thanks so much for listening.

I hope you enjoy the meditation.

Alright,

So to begin,

Please make yourself comfortable.

In this meditation,

I'll be guiding you through different spaces of awareness in your own body and I'll be working with breath and visualization.

You don't have to be in any particular shape for this meditation.

You can move around,

You can lie down,

You can sit.

Please prioritize your own comfort and be in a space where you can remain wakeful and also present so your attention isn't getting pulled by either sleepiness or by your own discomfort.

So feel free to pause,

Make whatever accommodations you need to make for yourself and then when you're ready,

Let's begin by allowing the face to relax.

If you're doing this meditation at the end or in the middle of a day and you've already been talking and making faces at people,

Performing through your face,

Then take a couple of seconds and stretch your face out.

Open your mouth really wide,

Bug out your eyes,

Wiggle your eyebrows around,

Stretch your cheeks,

Scrunch up your face,

Move your jaw,

Stick out your tongue and make some sounds.

When you're ready,

Then let all of that go and feel that your face can just soften and any expression that you had assumed can kind of just melt away.

The skin on your face is soft and your jaw is relaxed and your tongue is relaxed.

Feel that your ears and your nostrils are open and they're gateways into your skull.

So just feel the movement of your breath and notice the sounds that are coming into your ears and see if you can feel that all of those pathways are just clear and direct spaces for communication,

But there's no need to attach to anything.

So if there are smells that are around or you hear my voice,

You hear other sounds and there is a sense of reaching towards your sensation,

Just try and relax through your nose and through your ears.

Then do the same thing with your eyes and whether your eyes are open or closed,

Feel that the eyes can rest back away from the space in front of you and that the corners and the backs of the eyes are really relaxed and wide.

Then begin to bring attention into your breath and the nature of bringing attention to something means that it will change,

But there is no need to do anything with your breath right now,

So just notice it and notice how your inhale arrives in your body.

And notice the space between your inhale and your exhale.

Notice the sensation of your exhale and the pause at the end of the exhale before you inhale.

And for the next couple of breaths,

Let's just notice these four parts of the breath.

The inhale,

The exhale,

And the pauses between the inhale and the exhale.

These kind of moments of culmination and fullness and emptiness.

And you might notice that it is easier to inhale or exhale,

That one breath pattern is more accessible or longer.

And what I'd like you to do is count the longest part or the easiest part and then begin to match the other part to that length.

So it's easiest to exhale and it takes you five counts to exhale,

Then start to spread your inhale for five counts.

And as you seek this sameness between the inhale and the exhale,

Can you soften your body so that whatever the more challenging breathing pattern is,

You approach it with a lot of gentleness.

And I should say that if breathing in this way or just breathing in this way is a little bit more challenging,

You can soften your body and let it go.

And if you're doing any kind of pranayama or breath work creates anxiety for you,

Don't do it.

Just let it go and just return to the kind of initial awareness that we were practicing.

Just noticing your breath.

If it's possible to continue to count your breath as you listen to my voice,

Then you are starting to train in Jedi mind tricks.

So the splitting of attention can be challenging,

I know.

And one way that sometimes I deal with this is by counting with my fingers and just tapping my thumb and index to middle,

Ring finger,

Fourth finger,

And fifth,

Etc.

And that can be kind of a regulation as well if the internal counting is hard to maintain as you listen to me as well.

So as you start to notice the length of your breath and bring the inhale and the exhale into symmetry with one another,

You're working consciously between your body and your mind.

And the wisdom of the yogis and now the wisdom of neuroscience teaches us that breath and mind are one.

They are intimately related.

And when we find peace with our breath,

Then the mind can start to find peace.

And when the breath is dysregulated and chaotic,

Then the mind often is as well.

And one influences the other,

They go in both directions.

So using your mind to calm your breath then calms your mind.

And breathing has effect on your brain,

Fluctuations of your brain.

So we're going to continue this pattern.

This is called Sama Vritti.

And Sama is a Sanskrit word for same of Vritti.

Vritti is a pattern.

So the pattern here is the breathing pattern and we're working with the same pattern,

Same count for inhale and exhale.

And if that feels easy and accessible and not stressful in your body,

Then you might even start to bring the same count into the pauses between your inhale and your exhale.

And if those pauses feel a little too long,

Then shorten them,

But have the pauses be the same length.

You're doing a little bit of math with your breath.

Okay,

So very basically your nervous system has a couple of different parts in it.

But at the most basic or kind of the level that we'll work with for today,

There is the motor and the sensory parts of your nervous system,

Your central nervous system.

And these nerves or neurons have different capacities.

And so the motor neurons are the nerves that send impulses from your brain and your spinal cord out to your body.

And the sensory are the neurons,

The nerves,

The pathways that bring the external environment and the information of sensation into your spinal cord and into your brain.

And at any given time,

Both of these functions are happening.

And this is the link between our internal intelligence and cognition and the environment.

So you get some kind of message like a little fly lands on your arm and it itches and then your hand reaches out to scratch the itch.

And that's sensory and motor.

In communication with each other,

Creating a link between the external environment and what you do,

How you respond.

Your nervous system is like a web,

Like a lattice.

And the branches of your nerves spread out into all of your muscles and your organs and your skin.

And you might imagine that there is an energetic flow from the very center of your body,

From your brain and the center of your spine,

Where your spinal cord is.

And that flow is radiating out through your whole body,

Through all of your tissues,

Into your muscles,

Into your skin,

And out into the environment around you.

And then from the space around you,

You can feel all of your skin,

Feel the muscle layers,

Feel your organs,

And feel how those pathways come right back into your central channel,

Into your spine and into your brain.

And then you can link this with the movement of your breath.

So as you inhale,

You can feel the movement of your body.

So as you inhale,

Feel the central most part of your being,

Brain and spine,

Start to reach out in all directions,

Your awareness into the space around you.

Pause,

Linger there.

And then as you exhale,

Feel your awareness of the space around you and all the information coming right in through your skin and through your muscles and into your spinal cord and brain.

And then pause.

And then again,

So you can do this at the pace of your own breath and try and link the breathing pattern with this imagery.

So on the inhale,

You're feeling your motor nerves,

Your the motor half of the CNS,

Central nervous system,

The ability to affect your environment extending out.

And as you exhale,

You are allowing the outer world to permeate in,

To reach in,

To reach in and to settle at your very center.

And if it feels more intuitive to you to have this imagination go with the opposite pattern of breath,

Go ahead and do it.

There's not a right way.

So it's a very basic,

Very easy imagining.

And I'd like you to keep your attention in your brain and your spinal cord at all times and keep your attention in the external environment in kind of a sphere around your body at all times.

And then as you inhale and as you exhale,

Play with directionality,

Feeling the expansion and the motoring or the reaching,

The interest from your center out into the space around you.

And feeling the information and your awareness of the space around you come all the way inside.

And when you investigate the pause between your inhale and your exhale,

Then investigate the full awareness of whatever place that brings you.

So if you're finishing your inhale and your attention is out in the periphery,

Then really exist in the periphery for a second.

Imagine your body has expanded and extended to become a bubble that you're kind of surrounded by.

And at the end of your exhale,

If it's bringing you back into your body,

If it's bringing you back into your own center,

Then really just take a moment to remain there in the kind of quiet emptiness right at the center.

So the way that the nervous system is talked about these days is often with words like electric or electricity.

And this accentuates the idea of the nervous system being a nervous place or an electric place or maybe a dry or static place.

But it's important to remember that your nerves,

The cells of which are called neurons,

Are encased in fat,

A special kind of fat called myelin,

And fat is fluid.

And so as you kind of imagine the sensation of this system,

Your central intelligence reaching out and moving into the environmental intelligence and the environmental information,

Coming back in,

Registering in the very center of you,

I'd like you to imagine that this movement and the feeling quality is more like fluid than it is like electricity.

And fat is such a wonderful substance.

You should just take a moment,

Side note,

And give thanks to all the fat on your body.

It's such a wonderful protective nurturing substance.

It holds a lot of power.

It retains heat.

So it's like a blanket for your nerves and the myelin coating on the nerves is really important for their health,

For our health.

And so as you breathe,

This quality is fluid and it's like a caressing,

A gentle,

Kind of very tender,

Loving petting.

All the way along your nervous system branches and all the way back in.

Now let's get a little bit more specific and we'll bring attention into some of the plexus of nerves.

So there are places in your body where you can feel the energy and the energy that's in your body.

So you can feel the energy in your body.

So there are places in your body where your central nervous system,

That's your brain and your spinal cord,

Meet your peripheral nervous system.

And so those are all the nerves that innervate the rest of your body,

Your muscles,

Your organs,

Your skin.

Let's start down at the base of the spine.

And you can bring your attention now into your sacrum.

And the sacrum is kind of a triangular shaped bone at the base of your spine.

And it's just above your gluteal cleft.

That's an anatomical term for your butt crack.

So if you feel just above your butt crack and you feel for these kind of two bumps,

That often is right where people get tattoos a lot,

That's pretty much where your sacrum is.

And you might be able to feel how the bone there is different than your spine.

It's not ridged like your spine,

It's more flat on the surface.

And so in your sacrum,

This is a really cool looking bone,

If you've never seen one before,

Maybe you can search for a picture later.

But in your sacrum,

There are these little holes on either side.

And that's where some of your nerve branches come out.

And the sacral plexus releases nerves down the backs of your legs and also into your pelvic floor,

All the way into the kind of back portion of your pelvis,

Around your anus,

Around your genitals,

And down the backs of your legs all the way down to the back portion of your pelvis.

And then you can see the back portion of your pelvis,

Through the backs of your legs all the way to your heel.

Sciatic nerve is here as well,

So you might know that one.

And so as you breathe,

You can imagine this pathway.

So your inhale or your exhale currents your nerve river,

Your awareness river,

All the way from the base of your spine into your pelvis,

And then that river returns.

And so there's information that comes from the backs of your heels through the backs of your legs into your genitals and into your anus and coccyx and then up into your spine.

And if you can just feel this space,

This channel as a river and as something that you're experiencing,

And if you want to move or adjust your body in some way so that there's a clearer flow,

Then do that.

And just above your sacrum is your lumbar spine,

And your lumbar spine is behind your belly button.

So if you feel your belly button and then feel the part of your belly button,

Your lumbar is the link between your sacrum and your ribs.

And so you could feel where your lower ribs are and where the top of your sacrum is,

And so all of that spine between them,

That's your lumbar.

And the lower portion of the lumbar,

That's where the lumbar plexus is.

And so again,

From the sides of the vertebra,

There are little holes,

They're called foramen and nerve branches come out of those holes and then they innervate your lower body.

And so the lumbar plexus innervates kind of the sides and the fronts of your belly and pelvis and down the inner and the outer thighs and the fronts of your legs and all the way to your feet.

Another picture you might want to look up is the dermatomes.

And dermatomes are the kind of segments of skin that your nerves relate with so you can see these pathways that I'm talking about.

So as you inhale or you exhale,

You feel this spreading and current from your lumbar back all the way down around the sides and the fronts of your belly cascading down your inner and your front legs down to your feet and your toes and all the way out.

And then you imagine that current coming back in into your belly and into your lumbar back and then all the way up your spine into your brain.

So your lower body now is connected.

You just feel this river and this current from your brain through your spine down through your lumbar and sacral plexus and that river flows all the way through your legs and through your pelvis and into your feet and toes and then the river flows back in.

Those from the soles of your feet and toes through your legs all the way up through your pelvis through your belly and low back and into your spine and up to your head.

And then you can bring your attention to your solar plexus and so this is the space that's above your belly button and kind of below your sternum.

And the solar plexus is a pretty amazing convergence of all your nerves,

Central nervous system and peripheral nervous system and it's where the nerves branch out into your organs.

So all of your gut brain,

The enteric nervous system.

This is an area of rapidly expanding research and study and science is finding that there are unmistakable correlations between mental capacity and digestion.

So this is why it's so important to be mindful of the food that you eat,

Of not eating a lot of toxic food,

Of not consuming food that you're allergic to,

Of not eating food that you're not eating.

And of course,

It's important to be mindful of the food that you're allergic or sensitive to,

Trying to take time to eat with mindfulness,

To be grateful for your food,

Etc.

Because the health of your gut directly affects your ability to understand,

To articulate,

To make sense of,

To remember and of course also your emotional reality since the body,

Mind and body is the same.

So in your solar plexus,

You can let the inhale or the exhale extend from your belly,

From this upper belly area,

Through all of the organ tissues and into the skin and then out into the space around you.

And as you exhale,

You feel the river or the channel of the body and you can let the flow of the energy back from the space around you right into your core.

And this part of the body relates a lot to a sense of personal agency.

When you're feeling vital in your organs,

Good in your digestion,

Etc.

,

You've got energy.

When you're not,

Then you don't.

Flow that this pathway has a kind of radiance to it,

A vitality.

And as you exhale,

What's clearly coming back in is supportive to that vitality.

And particularly for those of us who have had any kinds of challenging relationships with sustenance.

And so if you're someone who has dealt with challenge around your eating in any way,

Or if you have diabetes or other metabolic issues,

If you're someone who tends to eat your words or internalize your fear and you get belly aches,

This kind of thing,

Then I'd love for you to really send a lot of love down into your organs as you imagine this.

So the solar plexus is radiating out and those channels are loving and gentle and there's this vitality that exudes out.

And you meet the space around you and as you exhale or inhale,

Whichever is most intuitive,

That space comes right back in and into your spine and then flows both down and up,

Down to the base of your spine,

Through your legs,

And up through your crown.

And then we'll bring awareness to the brachial plexus.

And the brachial plexus is between the middle of your neck and your shoulders.

And it's where all the nerves that enervate your arms and your hands branch out.

And then we'll bring awareness to the brachial plexus.

And then we'll bring awareness to the plexus.

And then we'll bring awareness to the brachial plexus.

And then we'll bring awareness to the brachial plexus.

And so you might just imagine here the same idea of a river your spine out through your entire arms,

Shoulder joints,

Elbows,

Forearms,

All the way through your wrists and fingers and out from them.

And then there's a clear pathway and a channel and a flow that comes back in.

And it comes all the way back into your neck and your upper spine and then flows up to your brain and all the way down through the solar plexus lumbar sacral into your belly,

Into your legs.

So there's this idea of one great river.

The great river is from your brain and your spinal cord.

You might imagine your brain as,

I don't know,

Like a spring,

Some crystal-clear spring at the top of a mountain and it's flowing down through a great river of your spine.

And then there are smaller rivers that branch out and there's two rivers that branch out into your two arms and all the way into your hands where then they become ten little rivers into each finger and then out into the space and many many streams.

And then there's a large kind of,

Maybe it's a watershed or something,

A meeting of the river with a pond or a lake around your solar plexus and a movement out into many many pathways and channels into all of your organs and this kind of pulsing radiating vitality that extends into the sphere around your body and back from your environment into you.

And then two more rivers that branch out through your legs that release through the basin of your pelvis into both legs and all the way out through all ten toes.

Maybe you have more than ten or less than ten toes,

Just however many you have into many streams and rivers and then all the way back in.

And then we'll connect the base of our spine and the crown of our head all the way up and down and you can imagine your crown is open and the base of your spine is relaxed.

And whatever intelligence there is in the world around you,

This is the earth intelligence and the intelligence of matter and ether and all of the elements and whatever the intelligence is that describes spirit,

The gods and goddesses of your understanding,

That intelligence links to you too.

And so if your brain is a pond at the top of the mountain then sometimes there's mist and there's rain and there's evaporation and there's communication from the environment and all the rivers flow to the oceans and the oceans of course dissipate and disseminate and become the rivers once again.

Are you still breathing with the same breath?

Maybe you are,

Maybe you aren't.

But when you're ready,

If they're not already,

Then open your eyes and open your ears and open your nose and your mouth and feel that your skin is open and then notice how you absorb the external environment.

Do you immediately attach to information?

You see something,

You have a thought and all your awareness goes there.

Is the external environment overwhelming?

Can you remain in this easeful flow between inner and outer environments,

Inner and outer experience?

And as you become more aware of your nervous system you'll start to feel these little knots or areas of tension that gather in certain places and if and when you feel them then just come back to the idea of the river,

An easeful flow around and remember that rivers have boulders in them and we don't need to move the boulder,

We don't need to get stuck on the idea of it but just allow the space around it to continue to flow.

And there's a very good chance that the stuck place might just get a little less stuck.

All right,

So if there is anything that you need to do from here to continue with or complete this meditation please take the time now to do that for yourself and if you're ready to finish then find a gesture that feels appropriate to finish.

Maybe it's bringing your hands together in prayer,

Honoring your body in some way.

Thank you so much for practicing with me.

I hope that this meditation serves you well and serves your health,

Your happiness,

And your balance.

If you enjoy these meditations please share them with your friends and family,

Please link to them on your social media,

And if it's possible for you please consider supporting me with a small donation or recurring monthly donation.

Thanks so much for listening.

I'll catch you in a couple of weeks.

Bye bye for now.