I love you.
I am listening.
I love you.
I am listening.
When we live in a state of distraction,
We often forget that there is a heart and a self within us that needs love and attention.
We are often more busy showing up for others in this way,
That we neglect to care for our own hearts.
And this creates a type of separation and alienation from our source of love.
I find one of the most potent and empowering ways to realign with our hearts and our self,
Our deepest self,
Is by saying these two simple lines to ourselves.
I love you.
I am listening.
I remember when I first started saying this to myself,
It was almost as if I felt a rupture in my heart,
As if I had finally connected some missing link,
As if I was brought directly back down to earth.
And with it came a flood of tenderness and sorrow and joy.
So I'd like to do that with you now in the quiet of this moment.
Let's come gently into our bodies,
Treating ourselves as if we are entering some old and ancient temple,
Holding ourselves in this moment with reverence.
It's really just an attitude,
A mental state,
Type of awareness that really recognizes how precious we are,
How precious our life is.
Settling down now into any position that feels comfortable for you.
And we begin every meditation with a focusing on the breath.
We're not changing or manipulating the breath,
We're simply becoming aware of it,
Feeling it brush against our nostrils,
Feeling our ribs and our chest rise and fall.
And feeling the cells in your body kind of settle like sand.
After being swirled,
They kind of fall to the bottom of the sea.
And after watching your breath,
Just really feel the body sinking into itself.
And we sink deeper and deeper with our breath.
Marrying our awareness to our breath,
To the often neglected and overlooked life living in our very bodies.
Breathing in,
I'm aware of my in-breath.
And breathing out,
I'm aware of my out-breath.
In-breath.
Out-breath.
In-breath.
Out-breath.
Out-breath.
In-breath.
In-breath.
Out-breath.
And if it feels alright to you to place both your hands over top of your heart now,
I like to push a little bit so that my hand can feel the rhythm of my heartbeat.
So that my palm can feel the rhythm of the heartbeat,
The drum living within my chest.
And we breathe aware of its rhythm,
Aware of our rhythm.
Bowing our head down slightly to bring our face toward our heart.
As if to bring the mind down to the level of the heart.
As if to quiet the mind.
As if to give our full attention to this great and mysterious center.
Our heart.
It's in this small gesture that we move into a more tender embodiment.
It's in this small gesture that we kneel at the foot of our hearts and open ourselves to the source of our love.
The source of our feeling.
The source of our joy.
Our gratitude.
And we lay our lives down here at the foot of our hearts.
Head bowed.
And if you'd like to repeat after me quietly or out loud.
I love you.
I am listening.
I love you.
I am listening.
I love you.
I am listening.
And let whatever arises come to the surface of you without blocking or resisting.
Whatever feelings,
Whatever thoughts,
Whatever emotions,
Let them swell.
Whatever numbness,
Whatever grief,
Whatever joy.
Just allow yourself to sit in the soup of your life.
Do not run.
Just arrive and offer all of yourself to your heart.
We love our children in this way.
We love our partners.
We try to love each other in this way.
Our neighbors,
Strangers.
But rarely do we show up to love ourselves in this way.
It is in loving ourselves in this way that we nurture our soil.
That we become like the sun warming our very earth.
Loving ourselves like this is like filling our own glass.
And any other love we receive is just extra after this.
You can relax your hands from your heart now.
Settling back into your body.
Feeling whatever energy has changed in you.
Whether you're more grounded or a little more tender.
Maybe there's space around your breath.
Around your body now that wasn't there before.
And let's take one deep breath in and one deep breath out in a sigh.
And opening your eyes whenever you're ready.
I use this practice whenever I'm feeling a little lost,
Disconnected,
Stressed.
It opens an awareness that I've been maybe neglecting or ignoring and it helps bring me back into my body,
Into my heart.
And sometimes I hear things and sometimes I don't.
Either is okay.
It just redirects our consciousness to where it truly matters.
Where true satisfaction,
Love and our highest embodiment really come from.
It's just a nice way to ground back into the moment,
Into ourselves.
So that we may show up more authentically,
More clear.
So I invite you to use this practice in any way when you first wake,
When you go to bed,
In the middle of your day.
Thank you for taking the time to practice with me today.
Be well.
