Seeking Integration - A Meditation On Mind, Body, & Power

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.

Begin by finding a place that feels comfortable to be in.

This could be a seat you can lie down.

You're welcome to move around.

I find that sometimes a walking meditation really suits me.

So wherever you are,

Be in a place that is comfortable and that feels private for now.

Listen to headphones or shut the door.

Let's start by closing our eyes.

So as you close your eyes,

Allow your eyes to relax.

And you can imagine how your eyes are attached and controlled by your brain.

And if you bring your hands to the base of your skull and feel along the base of your skull right to the center of the base of your skull,

There's a little divot.

It's called your occiput and it's a soft spot and it's just about where your brain stem is.

So if you could touch inside of your skull,

The base of your brain would kind of comes down from your cranium.

And becomes your spinal cord.

And the muscles that control the subtle movements of your face,

Including your eyes,

Are the suboccipital muscles.

So you can use your fingertips to gently massage up underneath the ridge of your skull.

And as you do so,

Continue to relax your eyeballs.

Relax your whole face.

So the invitation right now is to relax your central nervous system by relaxing your eyes,

Massaging your suboccipitals,

And taking some deep breaths.

Allow your belly muscles to relax and expand as you inhale.

Feel that your breath can touch the sides of your body,

The sides of your lungs,

Into your back,

Into your heart.

And then even though oxygen just comes into your lungs,

The movement of your breath can actually travel anywhere in your body.

The yogis say that the true mind is within the heart.

And in some branches of esoteric anatomy,

The mind was also believed to be in the heart.

So early anatomy.

And we might also consider that now the mind is in the heart.

There's the part of our thinking mind that we feel up in our heads.

And then there's our knowing mind,

Which is often very related to our heart.

And the experience that I'm sure you've had when you know something,

But then you think something else and you get confused in that space between knowing and thinking.

The knowing usually is resonant with the heart.

It has to be resonant with the mind.

And you get confused in that space between knowing and thinking.

The knowing usually is resonant with the heart.

It has to do with a deeper desire.

Like,

I know that I want this thing,

Or I know that that thing isn't quite right for me.

But then our minds come in,

Our thoughts come in,

And they talk us into another direction.

And this kind of tension often manifests as pretty extreme suffering for many of us,

Or states of confusion and disconnect from our true voice.

So as you relax your face and your eyes and your brain,

And as you feel your breath enter your body,

Just bring your hands to your heart space,

Space of your chest.

And imagine a unity between whatever you feel inside of your head and your breath,

And then the space inside of your chest.

And it can look like anything.

For me,

I imagine kind of a swirling,

Like if you were to drop some dye in a glass of water,

And the way that the color would move into different parts of the water and slowly infuse all of it with its tint.

I imagine that the color inside of my chest,

The color of my heart space,

Is that kind of just drop.

And as I inhale,

There is a swirling and a movement of that color through all of the space inside of my body,

And then I just kind of open up my mouth and I just kind of open up my mouth,

And then through the rest of my entire body.

Now if you bring your hands together and rub them really fast,

And I'm not going to do it because I don't want the sound to be in this recording,

I'm going to do it with my hands,

And then I'm going to do it with my hands.

And then I'm going to do it with my hands.

And then I'm going to do it with my hands,

And then I'm going to rub them really fast,

And I'm not going to do it because I don't want the sound to be in this recording.

But if you rub your hands together really,

Really fast,

Until you create heat,

Do that for a minute.

Okay,

And then when you're done just let your hands kind of rest down somewhere,

Feel the increased sensitivity in your hands.

Feel the way that the space around your hands becomes palpable.

Your nervous system actually extends outside of your body.

So we have the ability to sense and to perceive things that are outside of our own skin.

And you can feel this,

I think,

Right now in your hands.

And you might be able to just easily transfer that feeling up into your head or imagine it.

Kind of feel the way that sensation is available outside of your skull.

You might be listening to sounds that are around you in your environment,

But you can also just kind of feel the space around your head.

And what I want you to imagine now is every other person on earth feeling this space.

What,

Seven billion people now,

Around there,

Feeling the space outside of their skulls and relaxing their brains and relaxing the front of their brains where they make decisions and the middle of their brains where they store memories and the backs of their brains where they are instinctual.

And feel your own brain again and imagine everyone else feeling their brain.

And then can you imagine that just as in your brain there's neural pathways there are these electric impulses that travel between one part of the brain and another.

Can you imagine kind of like a big brain between everyone on earth and little electric impulses that are shooting out from your brain and meeting someone else's and maybe that person is on the other side of the world where it's a 12-hour time difference than what you have right now.

So if you're listening to this during the day then for them it's at night and maybe they feel that impulse in their dreams.

And then maybe somewhere else in the world someone is perceiving something that you've never seen except in magazines and that impulse is then traveling to you.

So you can imagine this kind of web that exists between all of our brains the ways that we perceive and receive information.

And then bring your hand to your heart again to your sternum and if it's comfortable for you you might want to bring one hand to your back as well a little bit between your shoulder blades.

Your heart is fairly central in your body,

The organ.

And oftentimes you know we think of our hearts and we get really big and in the front of our bodies but then ends up kind of squeezing our back bodies.

So as you feel your own hand on your back and then maybe and then the hand on your front can you breathe into now the circumference around your heart?

Feel what that space is and feel how it's different than your head.

Do you feel the emotional flavor of this when I just pay attention to my heart all of a sudden I feel so much sadness and also so much love and I think that those two feelings are so important to us as humans.

So whatever you're feeling in your chest in your heart space can you breathe into that?

And just below your heart is your stomach and your stomach is it's on the left side and you can even feel it if you kind of push up underneath the left side of your ribs and then on the right side is your liver you can also feel that and now as you feel your own heart the actual organ and the feelings around it can you imagine again every other person in the world feeling their heart what would that be like if we were to support one another to feel our hearts to get out of our heads?

So maybe right now you just imagine every other person on earth putting a hand on their chest and feeling whatever feelings are there and as you imagine that can you feel in your own heart a simple recognition of feeling that's it just a recognition that feeling is there and can you imagine in everyone else's heart a recognition that feeling is there and then just as we imagined our brains being connected can you imagine our hearts connecting and recognizing that feeling is there and everyone else that's it feeling is there and breathe into that web for a minute and then we'll place hands at the third chakra so the space of your abdomen that's between your chest and your navel and then you can feel into your back body as well around your base of your ribs notice what's there in this part of your body can you breathe does your breath touch everywhere there are a lot of tension does it feel hard to access don't judge it just pay attention and as you feel this part of your body feel that you have the ability to make choices in your life and that within those choices there's agency you can decide for you what what it is whatever it is in the moment how you're gonna feel what you're gonna do on some level or another hey you are free and notice I feel it in myself notice the instinct that comes up to argue with that I'm imprisoned in so many ways might be true but not in every way at least and the very deepest level we each have agency to decide to feel we can decide in a moment to feel angry we can decide in a moment to be compassionate we can decide to take an optimistic view of something so on some level we have agency for many of us we have a lot of agency the choices that we make what we consume all of these is our will we put our energy into choices that create momentum and action feel the power that you have and see if you can relax with it maybe be a little excited about it breathe it in and as you exhale again just imagine every other body every other person young old you know every nationality ethnicity genders all kinds of people putting their hands on their body and recognizing that there is some kind of choice and then consider that every choice you make has impact even the small choices if you wake up in the morning and you're in a bad mood the choice to be friendly instead of grumpy is going to have an impact that's a choice mm-hmm and then can you imagine this level of our beings all connected there is some a great dance I'm forgetting her name right now she was a I believe Brazilian performance artist oh gosh forgetting her name she did an amazing dance where everyone kind of was connected in a cloth that they all wore on their bodies and so when one person pulled one way everyone will get pulled and they had to learn to move together and feel the pull of each other so you could imagine that right now that we're all wearing the same fabric and that we can pull against each other we can pull with each other we can tear apart we can clump can you breathe into the space in your body and imagine every other person is breathing into that space in their body so if your hands are still in your body you can just let them go and I'm going to invite you right now to take a deep inhale and let the inhale move through the third chakra move through the heart space move through the passage of the throne into the headspace and as you exhale feel the exhale relaxing the headspace relaxing the heart space relaxing the third chakra and then let's take an inhale and feel the inhale moving from the top of the head into the heart and into the belly and then as you exhale feel the movement of the exhale kind of toning not tensing but just toning the belly owning the heart on in the head and continue to breathe and feel the touch of your breath moving through these places in your body and feel how these three points can bring some awareness of your alignment and your uprightness so the uprightness of the structure influences the consciousness that is contained and when I say uprightness I say it with all of the expansive meaning around that and I don't necessarily mean you have to have perfect posture or anything I mean uprightness in terms of how you feel your own connection and if you're like me and you have some scoliosis uprightness might you know look a little curved and that's totally fine love your body the way it is but feel that it's connected so to close our meditation today let's bring the hands to touch and in the meeting of the two hands we symbolize the vertical axis that is also symbolically held within the spine of space in front of the spine it's the connection of our earthly bodies to our heavenly spirits that connection from what is below to what is above and what is above to what is below that all of us are here as representatives of you know something that we don't understand the consciousness that is greater than all of us you might call it God you might call it breath somehow it infuses our bodies and becomes the thing that defines us so may you experience uprightness in your being that is an integration of your mind your heart and your will we are action in the world and you can lightly bring your hands to your forehead and just ask maybe your understanding of spirit or just ask and put it out there for right thought and by that I mean thoughts that create space for happiness in yourself and with others and then bringing your hands to your heart knowing the touch of your hands against your sternum and asking for right perception that our emotional experience of the world not be tainted by our shadow by the ways that we have been indoctrinated and inculturated if that's word by things by feelings that really don't serve may our perception be wise from our deep hearts and then bringing your hands to your belly and asking for right intention and right action that as we make choices in the world may we make the choices that create the world we want to live in and then bowing and feeling how your fingertips and your head kind of both point to and meet at the heart space and then as you're ready you can release and open your eyes and regard whatever is around you I guess if you had a walking meditation your eyes have been open the whole time I hope this meditation serves you feel free to come back to it at any point a meditation or any time that you feel the need to integrate between the forces of your mind your ego and your emotions and bye for now