Okay.
Welcome.
Let's start by arriving all at once.
You're here.
Why don't you begin by taking a deep breath?
Allowing your lungs to fill until they're comfortably full.
You don't have to force it or shove the air in there or anything.
Just take a comfortable inhale at your own pace.
And when it feels comfortably full,
Just letting the exhalation fall out of you.
We're going to keep this pattern of deep intentional breathing as we work our way through this brief meditation.
If you're here today,
You're perhaps feeling some anxiety.
It could be a nebulous,
Ambiguous sort of anxiety.
It could be something specific,
But just for the next couple of minutes,
We're not going to push it away.
We're not going to fight it.
What we're going to do is just shift our attention to the sensation of sitting.
Feeling your sit bones on the chair or the seat.
Feeling the bottom of your thighs on whatever you're sitting on.
Feeling your feet on the floor or your feet inside of your shoes.
Noticing this sensation of sitting your legs and your feet.
Feeling whatever is coming up for you there.
We are arriving back in our body.
Now I want you to become curious about where is the anxiety in your body?
Do you feel it in your chest?
Perhaps it's in the back of your head or the top of your head.
In your stomach.
In your throat.
Just bringing a sense of curiosity to whatever bodily or somatic sensations are associated with the anxiety in your body.
Noticing it.
I know sometimes for me,
I'll feel my anxiety as a tightening in the back of my head or in my solar plexus.
In my solar plexus.
That's different for everyone.
I'll just direct your attention back to your breathing.
I have that deep comfortable inhale at your own pace.
And then allowing that exhale to fall out of you whenever it wants.
Continuing the breathing.
Feeling our forehead.
Maybe allowing the forehead to become relaxed and smooth.
Allowing a sense of melting,
Relaxation around the eyes.
Maybe allowing your face,
Your forehead,
Your eyes.
Inviting them to become smooth,
Expressionless.
Letting go of any tension that you're holding in this area.
And shifting your attention to the shoulders and the neck.
Perhaps inviting sensation of release through the shoulders and the neck.
Letting go of tensing and the grimacing.
Often if we're feeling particularly anxious,
Often if we're feeling particularly anxious,
We can hold this in our neck and our shoulders and can lead to headaches and all sorts of other physical discomfort.
So again,
Inviting the shoulders and the neck and the forehead and the facial muscles,
The eyes.
Allowing all of that to become smooth,
Relaxed.
As you continue to as you continue to breathe deeply,
You might notice the sensation of the rising and the falling of the chest or the belly.
Noticing the sensation of the rising and the falling of the chest or the belly can help us arrive back in our body.
I know for me,
If I've fell down a rabbit hole of anxiety for long enough,
I feel totally dissociated from my body.
I can be living in some parallel universe where nothing's ever going to be okay again.
So we can break that spell by arriving back in our body.
And the rising and the falling of the chest or the sensation of the breath in the nostrils.
These can be useful anchors.
Now you might experiment with placing your hand placing your hand over your heart on your chest on your belly in a small way of demonstrating compassion,
Patience,
Goodwill toward yourself.
If your hands on your chest or your belly,
Maybe you might notice the rising and the falling of the breath.
Now that your hand is on top of your chest or your belly.
I want you to imagine sensing the possibility of emanating a sense of goodwill and hopefulness.
Towards yourself.
Towards your own organism.
That's been feeling so afraid.
Can you direct that flavor of goodwill towards yourself?
Perhaps towards the part of your body where you notice the anxiety.
Perhaps breathing into that possibility for a couple of breaths here.
In the end anxiety for me anxiety for me sort of shows up as a core fear that perhaps everything might not be okay.
So for me,
It might look like,
You know,
What what if I'm not safe?
What if I'm not loved?
What if I go mad?
What if I'm ill?
What if I don't fulfill my deepest potential in the short amount of time that I have here?
I don't know.
Maybe you relate to some of that.
You know this I can maybe share two things.
If you're feeling this way in some capacity today,
I think I want you to know that millions of others and myself know that pain.
In fact,
It seems that the world relies on not all of us being in the same pain on the same day and at the same time.
So there might be days where you need care and patience and understanding from yourself and from others.
And then there might be days where you'll have the opportunity to provide that support in turn.
So perhaps maybe today is your day to be gentle on yourself to give yourself this permission.
Just as you would give it to a loved one or a small child.
Lastly,
I invite you to reflect back on all the hundreds of times that you thought you might not make it.
Times of pain and confusion uncertainty.
If you're here now sitting here doing this meditation,
It means you so far have a 100% success rate at moving through and growing from those painful experiences in the past.
I know that is incredibly obvious and corny.
But it is true.
Nonetheless,
If you think about it.
So while we wrap up here,
I invite you to have faith in yourself today and maybe even faith in where life is guiding you.
Prayer that I say to myself many times each day when I'm struggling.
Sometimes I'll just say please guide me.
Please be with me.
Please guide me.
Admittedly,
I don't really know where that prayer is going,
But it seems to help.
Okay.
Thank you for stopping by today.
I hope you're feeling a little bit better.
If you enjoyed this,
Maybe take a minute to rate the session and give me a follow if it was helpful.
I'll try to keep making stuff.
I think might be useful.
Okay.
I'll see you next time.
Thanks.
