Arriving In The Unknown #2 - Finding Center & Letting Go Of Control

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 this meditation 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 everyone,

This is Renee and I'm here today with part two of a meditation series called Arriving in the Unknown.

So these meditations are given at a time when there's a lot of unknown that's happening.

There's a lot of change.

It's intense change.

It's happening really fast.

There's also increased polarization and feelings of dividedness between many people.

But when we look closely,

We see that those feelings are,

Although they are amplified right now,

There's also a lot more connection that's happening.

A lot more conversations are happening and there's a huge shifting in awareness in our world right now.

There's a lot of people who are open to seeing things and understanding in ways that they haven't been before,

And dialogue that's happening.

I know that we tend to focus on bad news and the media,

Whether or not the facts are true that are being shared,

There's a human tendency to focus on distress.

It is part of our biological function that when we have an injury,

That's where our attention goes.

We don't typically spend a lot of time noticing that everything is just fine.

So know that.

Know that in this time where there's a lot of anxiety and feelings of turbulence in the air,

There is also an increase of that feeling because it's partially that we're focusing on it so much.

That's not to say turn away from the conversations that need to be had.

It's to say that it's also important to stay balanced and to keep perspective and to be content and appreciative with what is.

So if you listen to part one of the series,

We did a walking meditation on contentment and appreciation and that's available to you.

Now for this second part,

We're just going to focus on letting go of control and feeling centered.

You can do this meditation anywhere.

You can sit,

You can lie down,

You can take another walk,

You can bring this into a movement practice.

I'm going to be doing this meditation sitting in more of a classic kind of easy seat.

Just easy,

Simple,

Legs crossed,

Sitting up on a cushion.

When I'm sitting,

I notice that my knees are lower than my hips so that I can easily let my spine be long and supported.

You can sit in a chair as well.

So we're just going to start by breathing,

Letting the eyes either close or really soften back into the skull.

So there's no need to focus in the eyes.

As you breathe,

You feel the touch of your breath enter in through your nose.

Notice the passage of breath coming in through your nose and into your sinuses.

It's like it's hugging your eyes and then moving back into your brain,

Down into your throat,

And into your lungs.

Down into your throat and into your lungs.

On the exhale,

Allow your body to trust gravity.

So as you inhale,

The sensation is a spreading and seeping of your breath,

An invitation for the space that's around your body to come in,

To fill.

As you exhale,

There is more of a condensing feeling,

A paring down,

A drawing in.

You feel the weight of your bones supported by the earth,

By gravity as a force,

Connecting you through whatever space you're in.

Maybe through layers of a building.

Maybe you're directly outside walking on the dirt.

But wherever you are,

Can you let your exhale connect you all the way down to the earth itself?

And as you inhale,

Accept the space around you.

Accept it into your body and feel how much space you have between each breath,

Between each thought,

Between your head and your neck,

Your neck and your shoulders,

Between your fingertips and the finger knuckles.

So right now we're going to bring attention to the center of our bodies.

And as I guide awareness to the center,

I'm going to use some cues that there's an invitation to feel with your hands if you can.

So if you're in a place where you are private and can touch your own body,

I highly recommend that you do.

It's a great way to just bring kinesthetic awareness,

Is to use palpation.

I'll include internal movements that you can do too.

They're slightly less conspicuous if you're in a public space.

And finally,

Just directing your attention is a touch.

We're just attending to a certain space.

And then one last thing is to say that as I'm naming these parts,

If you're like,

I don't know what that looks like at all and what I'm saying sounds foreign to you,

Pause the recording,

Go get online and google it and get an anatomical picture.

Because what I'm talking about are actually structures in your body.

And when we can connect those structures through our inner eye,

Our inner body feeling sense,

Then those structures get to wake up.

And that's a joyful thing.

So definitely feel free to pause and go do some research and then come back.

So the first area of attention that I want to guide you towards is the balance between your right and your left sit bones.

And if you're walking,

Then you can feel this through the base of your pelvis and the sit bones are somewhat in line with your heels.

So you can kind of feel a relationship from sits bones to heels if you're walking.

If you're seated,

Then you're sitting on them.

And sometimes you might need to pull the flesh of your buns around until you can feel those two bony points,

Right and left,

That you're sitting on.

And if you're lying down,

Then I'm going to suggest you do something that's called a heel rock,

Which is if your legs are long.

And you can have someone else do this to you to facilitate it as well.

You don't need to do it yourself.

But if you're lying down on your back and your legs are long and you move your heels forwards and back and almost like push and pull your heels against the surface of whatever you're lying on,

It could be the floor or a bed,

It'll drag your skeleton so that your head nods either down or back or body words back towards the top of your skull.

So a heel rock is a little bit faster where you're kind of rocking the bones of your heels and it creates like a little bit of a jiggling through your spine and just nods your head.

But you can do that movement slower as well.

So you can just feel the push and the pull of your heels up into your spine.

And those of you that have been sitting or standing,

You might have also been kind of playing with that.

So if you're sitting,

You can flex your heels and then almost point and feel how that moves the bones of your legs and affects your pelvis and how your spine is.

And if you're standing,

Then you can push your heels down into the earth and then also kind of draw the heels up into the legs and feel how that moves your pelvis.

And then you can also kind of push your heels down into the earth and feel how that moves your pelvis.

So there's a relationship there.

And these sitz bones,

Right in the left sides,

Form one axis of what we're going to call the diamond of your pelvic floor.

So it's a diamond shape.

So this is the side to side axis.

Okay,

So now we're going to look for the coccyx or the tailbone.

And you can bring your hands back into the body,

Kind of base of your spine,

And feel for the curve of your sacrum.

And then walk your fingertips down.

If you're touching your body,

You're going to get down into your butt crack.

And the tip of your tailbone,

Some of you it might go all the way almost to the back of the anus,

And other people it might curve off to the side.

People's different.

Some of them poke more out of the body and some of them tuck in.

So I want you to see if you can find with your fingertips the tip of your coccyx bone.

Okay,

And then once you've found it,

Give the palpation with your hands so that you know that it's there,

And then just let your hands relax away from your body.

And now what I want you to do is really gently use the muscles around your anus,

So the sphincter muscles,

To just just barely,

Imperceptibly,

Draw your tailbone forwards and up,

And then move your tailbone back like you're wagging your tail.

And this movement is really subtle,

Okay?

It's not going to rock your pelvis if you're lying on your back.

It shouldn't flatten your lower back if you're standing or sitting.

If I was looking at you,

I might perceive the slightest little rocking,

But it would be very,

Very minuscule.

I'd have to look really closely.

So what we're doing right here is just feeling that the tailbone is different than the sacrum,

Okay,

But it's the base of your spine.

And the tailbone is the third point in the diamond of your pelvic floor.

So I want you now to feel the relationship between your coccyx,

Your tailbone,

And your two sitz bones.

And notice how when you very gently draw the tailbone in and up,

That weight travels in your sitz bones,

And as you wag your tail,

That that weight shifts,

Just a little bit probably.

Okay,

And now we'll find the base of the pubic bones.

Okay,

So this is another point where if you're using your hands for palpation,

You probably want to be in a private space or in a safe space for sure.

So you're going to find the top of your pubic crest.

So your pubic bones are low,

And they're just above the genitals,

And then you're going to walk your hands down.

So for female-bodied people,

The base of the pubic bones will be right in front of the vaginal opening.

For male-bodied people,

The base of the pubic bones will be kind of up underneath the shaft of the penis,

The base shaft,

And in front of the perineum,

Which is the muscular band of tissue that is kind of,

You know,

Between things.

It's called the taint,

Right?

So at that space,

We're looking for the fourth corner in the diamond of the pelvic floor.

So these are bony landmarks.

And when you found the base of the pubic bones,

Can you initiate a relationship now between your tailbone and your pubic bones?

And so you could gently move the tailbone towards the pubic bones,

And then you can also dilate the pelvic floor and relax and kind of spread everything away.

And when you really gently draw everything towards the very center,

Like if we were going to think of the intersecting point right at the center of the pelvic floor,

We'd be on the perineum or the perineal body,

And that space would ultimately be drawn up and in towards the body,

But just a little bit.

So it's not a big contraction of the pelvic floor,

It's actually a really gentle,

Almost migration of attention from the periphery into the center and from the center back to the periphery.

Okay,

So when we are feeling our own center,

And this is metaphoric language as well as actually really practical,

When we're feeling our own center we need to feel our base.

We need to feel our root and where we're connected.

So we cannot be centered in our beings unless we are supported.

My teacher Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen says that support precedes movement,

And I think that's such a beautiful invocation to remember that there is support available,

And any kind of movement or change that we want needs it.

All right,

So from the base of the pelvic floor,

I want you to imagine the very center point.

So if the sits bones were going to come towards each other,

The pubic bone and tailbone were going to come towards each other where all four would meet,

Right at that center point,

That you could draw that point all the way up into the base of your heart,

The base of your lungs and diaphragm.

And then allow your body to arrange itself accordingly.

So if you're sitting or standing,

You want to feel that there's not more weight in your belly or in your lower back,

That the front body and the back body are balanced around this plumb line.

And that's an internal sense of balance,

Okay?

It's not something that you need to look at in the mirror.

It's a feeling that there's spaciousness to the front and the back,

And that you could fall into the front and into the back equally.

And then I want you to continue to draw that plumb line up right through your heart center,

Through the center of your chest.

And again,

Feel that the front body and the back body are balanced with one another,

That there's space all the way around into the sides.

You can breathe around this center point.

And then continue to draw that center up through the center of the throat and feel the relaxation and softness of the tissues in the throat around the center point.

And then continue to draw that center line right up into the base of your palate.

So like the soft palate,

The top of the roof of your mouth,

Up behind your nose,

And right through the center of your skull,

And straight up or out through the center of your skull into whatever is beyond it.

So this center line that we're sensing right now is not a structure in itself.

It's just an axis.

And all the way around that center,

I want you to feel that the structures of your bones can sense their own steadiness.

So we felt the bones of the pelvic floor.

And now in your belly,

Can you feel how the softness of your tummy and your organs is balanced in the length of your lower back?

And in that curve of the low back,

It's called your lumbar curve where it curves forwards,

Can you feel like how long it is?

And this doesn't mean to flatten it or to create undue strain in the lower back,

But just to feel like those vertebra,

Those bones in your spine,

They're actually pretty big.

They're each very tall and there are soft discs between them.

And they're so strong and the bones of the spine hug around the spinal column where your nervous system is,

And that's fluids and nerves.

And then the soft organs of your belly,

All your digestive organs that are held within the abdominal container,

So your muscles and other soft tissues just containing the inner body.

And as you feel these structures in your body,

Noticing how they're balanced along that plumb line,

And I feel that the center plumb line runs right in front of this part of my spine,

That the spine is soft and the tummy is soft.

Okay,

Now we're going to continue upwards in our body and feel the chest,

The upper back.

So there's the part of your spine that curves back and balances your breast bone and breast tissues in the front.

And this part of the spine is called the thoracic spine.

It connects to your ribs.

So as you inhale and exhale,

Can you feel the movement of your ribs spread out into your bones?

Feel the expanding of your lungs on the inhale and then the condensing of your lungs in towards the organ of your heart on the exhale.

Your heart is in front of your spine.

It's held kind of attached to the front of your spine in the back and then it's hugged on all sides other than the very back by your lungs.

So as you inhale,

You might feel like these cushions of your lungs just hugging around the heart.

And your lungs and your heart work together.

So there's four chambers of your heart and two of them are responsible for bringing oxygen into your blood.

So as you inhale,

You might feel your lungs expand.

Feel them hug and press into your heart and imagine that where your oxygen comes into your blood,

It kind of looks like bunches of grapes.

It's called the alveoli.

You could look that one up.

Google that one.

But in that place in your body,

There's this amazing transformation that's happening where the air that you're receiving from the space around you that's the exhale of the plant life,

So they're emitting gases that they don't need,

Is coming into your body and it's something that you need and it's moving into your blood.

And then as you exhale,

I want you just to feel the way that your arteries pump blood out.

And that pumping of blood out travels through big branches,

Big arterial branches,

Along your spine,

Up into your head,

Down into all your organs,

And then the branches get smaller and smaller,

Feeding all of your muscles,

Feeding your bones,

Feeding your skin,

And every single cell in your body that needs oxygen.

So as you inhale,

You're receiving from the air around you and then as you exhale,

You're just absorbing it,

Letting that breath settle,

Imagining how your heart kind of pumps out into veins,

Sorry,

Arteries moving through your whole body.

And I want you to feel how your heart is held between your lungs.

Your lungs are held by your ribs,

Your ribs are supported by your spine,

And your spine is soft just behind that center plumb line.

And that center plumb line kind of travels right up through the center of the heart organ.

And then when your cells receive the oxygen they need,

They use it,

They eat it,

And they transform it,

And your body releases carbon dioxide,

Transforming oxygen into energy,

Releasing carbon dioxide back into your bloodstream.

And where your body is held,

Your body is held in a place where your arteries have turned into tiny little capillaries.

There is an exchange place,

And the tiny little capillaries then turn into smaller veins,

Which become bigger and branch up through all the same structures.

Your bones,

Your muscles,

All your cells,

Back into big branches of veins running along your spine,

Back into your blood vessels,

Back into your veins running along your spine,

Back into your heart,

Into your lungs.

And there are two chambers in your heart that help separate the carbon dioxide from the blood and move the gas that you don't need back into the lungs,

And you exhale it out.

So as you inhale,

There is a collecting through your whole body,

And it's like waste removal.

But we think of waste as this bad thing a lot of times.

We're like,

Oh it's dirty,

But don't think of it like that.

Think of it like just,

You know,

You're cycling something,

You're transforming something,

And as you exhale it out,

What you exhale is a celebration,

And it's a gift to the tree life and the plant life.

So if you are anywhere where you're looking at a plant,

Like if you have a plant in your house,

If you have a picture of a plant,

You could see one in your mind's eye,

Maybe you're outside,

As you exhale just say,

Thank you.

We are siblings.

Thank you.

We are siblings.

Okay,

And then we're going to continue in our journey just up through the softness of the throat.

And let's just feel a relationship between the throat and the pelvic organs,

Two gates of the body where breath enters into our body,

Where food enters,

Where drink enters through our nose and through our mouth.

One gate that we also release from on the exhale,

Or we might spit out,

We have saliva and excretion from the face,

From the upper end.

And then in the lower end of the body we have gates.

So we have,

Of course,

The gate of the rectum and the urethra where we excrete from our bodies the matter that we don't need.

There's some really important parts of our bodies.

We definitely don't want to hang on to anything that we've already used.

And then of course in these parts of our body there's also receptivity.

We receive other bodies into our bodies.

You might have had an experience of growing a body in your belly and passing it through your body.

Whether or not you had that experience,

Gave birth to someone in one way or another,

You were given birth to.

So it's quite an amazing part of the body just to check into.

It's a gate.

And as we feel the top of the throat and the mouth and the backs of the nostrils and sinuses,

And then as we feel the openings in the genitals and anus,

And just feel how these places in the body are really discerning,

That it's healthy to be receptive to the right things and also to let go of what we don't need anymore,

What's ready to come out.

And again just finding that very center point of the pelvic floor and now connecting it right into the dome of the mouth,

Right top of the throat.

So that's that plumb line,

That center point.

And then from there we're just going to feel the container of the skull.

And I want you to sense your cranial bones.

You can use your hands,

You can use your felt sense to feel the dome of your skull,

The way that the back surface of the skull,

How round it is,

Is balanced in the front by all your face bones,

The way that your skull has openings in the mouth,

The nostrils,

The eyes,

And the ears,

Where senses can come in and expression and gesture can come out.

Feel that these gates and these openings are just acknowledged.

We feel what a gift it is to perceive and receive information in whichever ways we do.

We feel the gift and responsibility that we have to look and smell and speak with love.

Look and smell.

Definitely smell with love.

You know what I mean?

Alright,

So I'm feeling the buoyancy of the skull on top of the spine now and just noticing your head can nod a little bit,

Yes and no,

Or left and right.

It's an easeful movement of your head upon your spine.

And then can you bring your attention to the space inside of your skull and into the space between your brain and your cranium?

And so you might feel actually the shape of where your brain is.

So from your forehead,

Kind of back above your ears and down to the base of the skull,

Imagine the shape of a brain.

There's two hemispheres,

A right and a left hemisphere.

They're separated in the middle by a layer of tissue.

They talk to one another,

The right and the left sides.

Feeling the right and the left,

Feeling the space around the brain,

Between the brain and the skull.

We're just going to let our attention move over the circumference of the brain.

And if there are places where it might feel tight or adhered,

Just through our awareness,

We're just going to relax the brain from the surface of the skull.

Feel that plumb line coming all the way up from the top of the soft palate into the very center of your skull.

And again,

All the way through the top of the skull and into the space beyond.

And feel the very center of the pelvic floor and connect it straight down into the earth or let it travel on between your feet.

So feel that plumb line and that center line that not only connects your tail to your head but extends and reaches infinitely.

It's your vertical axis.

And that around that axis in your bones and in your organs and in your fluids,

There is easefulness and there's no need to control anything around this.

There's not a need to grip or hold on.

There's just an easeful resting into the center.

We bring this into our lives by noticing when we get really controlling in our lives,

When we get impatient,

Neurotic,

Fearful,

When we grasp and grip and we move ourselves out of our own center.

This could be with another person being displeased with their behavior,

Trying to convince them.

This could be with the weather.

This could be with our work,

Colleagues,

Our cars,

Our life circumstances in any way.

There's always forces coming in that demand our attention in one way or another,

That create an emotional experience,

That create many thoughts.

And when we feel ourselves getting tight on the inside,

Becoming obsessed,

Becoming avoidant,

Moving somehow out of our own balance,

Out of our own uprightness,

Our own alignment,

That it can be just as simple of coming back into a sensation of our own center.

Feel the way that your body is united and connected.

Feel the way that your breath can move through those connections.

Feel how you're balanced in receptivity and generosity,

In what you take in and what you give out.

When we're striving for things,

When we're trying hard,

It's important to remember that we are here to respond to what is arising.

No one person is singly responsible for anything at all.

You did not create the conditions that you live in.

It was a collaborative effort between everything that has happened before you,

All the conditions of every other human that has ever lived,

Through the culture that you're from,

Through the family that you're from,

Through all the choices you've ever made,

And anyone has ever made that has impacted yours.

Therefore,

It's not the responsibility of any other person who is not you to change the past or fix the future.

It's definitely not your responsibility to hold the future up by yourself or make anything happen.

We are just here to respond.

And we make responses responsibly.

We can act responsibly when we're in our own center,

When we're balanced,

When we're not falling hard one way or the other,

Pushing or pulling.

Trusting the wisdom of your own body,

Of your inner knowing,

The intelligence that has created you,

That has some kind of collecting and guiding force,

That knew how to grow a human,

That knows how to transform and shift,

And eventually will know how to die,

And will step into something else.

And in whatever way feels good to you to close this meditation,

You might want to bring your hands together,

Simply bow,

Soften your heart,

Release your brain towards your heart,

Release the need to know,

To have the answers.

Feel your own center,

And from that center,

Feel an expansion and an opening through all of your body,

Through your heart and into your mind.

We give thanks for the moment that we're in and trust that we'll find our way into the next moment and the one after that and the one after that.

So this has been the second part of a two-part series on arriving in the unknown,

And I welcome all of your feedback,

Your requests.

I love to know how these meditations are for you and if you want to share your experiences with them.

So until the next time,

I'm wishing you a deeply centered experience in your life and many fulfilling and satisfying and loving moments in each day.

And I'll talk to you soon.