Today's meditation is on forgiveness.
So let's start by finding a comfortable seat.
You may want to sit in a traditional meditation seated position with your legs crossed and a tall straight spine.
You might want to sit on a chair or the couch with your feet flat on the ground.
It may even feel good to lie down today for this meditation.
And before you close your eyes,
Just allow yourself the grace of these next few moments.
This invitation to turn inwards,
To tap into the stillness,
The silence,
The quiet inside you.
When you are ready,
You can close or lower your gaze.
Start to bring awareness and attention to your breath.
The breathing technique I will offer you for today's meditation is called the diaphragmatic breath.
And so if you would like to,
You can place a hand on your lower belly and one across your heart just to connect in with yourself.
So the breathing style is as follows.
As you breathe in through your nose,
You expand your belly,
Your diaphragm.
And as you exhale through your nose,
Your belly contracts in towards the spine.
So repeating that breathing in through the nose,
Belly expands.
And as you exhale,
Exhale slowly,
Really elongate the exhale and belly contracts in towards the spine.
So that is a breathing technique I'll offer you for today.
And you're welcome to follow that style of breathing at your own pace.
Or you can simply just connect with your breath in a way that feels really natural and easy for you.
The most important part with meditation is this conscious connection to breath.
You are doing it right.
Research in meditation tells us that there is a distinct increase in compassion and empathy from a meditation practice.
There is tangible scientific evidence that meditation increases the centers of the brain that affect compassion and empathy.
So as you breathe,
Follow the diaphragmatic breathing,
Allow yourself to acknowledge we all have seasons.
We all have ups and downs.
We are all learning to be with ourselves and learning how to be with others.
Our mind and our brain is constantly making up stories and narratives and looking for information that validates that story,
That gives our brain literal dopamine hits to validate our stories,
Whether they're factual or not.
Working on active forgiveness during meditation is a really tough thing to do.
I know.
It's important that we remember that forgiveness is not about absolving the person who harmed you.
It's about freeing yourself to move forward and hopefully getting to a neutral place where perhaps you can maybe one day have compassion that this person did not have the tools or ability to love you in a way that you needed to be loved.
Perhaps they were not taught how.
I will caveat this by saying forgiveness is not for everyone.
For some people,
For some of us,
It's not a necessary part of their healing or their ability to live in peace.
And sometimes forgiveness really begins with forgiving ourselves first.
So whatever brought you here today to this meditation,
Allow yourself to be with it,
To be open,
To make room for all of the emotions that arise.
Meditation isn't about being zen-like all the time.
It's not about quelling our anger.
In fact,
Sometimes it puts us more deeply in touch with our anger and our pain,
Helps us to move through it,
To be with it,
To harness it.
Taking a deep breath in.
And as you sit and breathe for the next few moments,
I'm going to repeat a series of mantras for you around forgiveness.
And I invite you to repeat them silently to yourself after I've said them,
Or you can simply just take them in and receive them.
Choose what feels best.
Keeping your awareness on your breath,
The inhale,
And the long and slow exhalation,
I release the heavy burdens of guilt,
Fear,
And humiliation.
I let go of the past in order to move forward.
I forgive myself and others for how we all behaved when in survival mode.
I am no longer a victim.
It is a new day.
I accept the past.
Taking a deep breath in and then letting it go out through the mouth this time,
Just sighing it out,
Releasing it.
When you are ready,
You can bring awareness back into your body.
It might feel good to move your fingers,
Your toes,
Sway your spine from side to side.
When you're ready,
You can gently open your eyes,
Looking around the room that you're in as if you're seeing it for the first time.
Take one more deep breath in.
Thank you for showing up for yourself today.
You are doing it right.
You are on the right path.
Thank you for meditating with me.
