Under The Spotlight - The Sculpture Garden Meditation

A brief 7-minute meditation to help you develop skills for showing up, at your best, whenever the spotlight is placed upon you. When in stressful interpersonal settings, it is easy to shrink and contract, without even knowing it. More conscious awareness of your body can be a gateway to getting back on track, and making the impact and contribution that you are capable of.

Transcript

This brief meditation is to help you develop skills for situations where you sense that a spotlight of scrutiny or judgment from others is to be placed upon you,

And is adapted from an exercise by Dr.

Stephen Hayes.

We'll start off with you imagining something.

So,

Close your eyes and take three easy,

Longer and deeper breaths in and out.

Let your breathing return to normal and feel yourself comfortably seated in your chair,

Your feet firmly on the floor,

Your hands on your lap and your spine naturally tall and extended,

If that is comfortable for you.

So to begin with,

I'd like you to think of a situation that involves you with one or more other people,

That brings with it some bad feelings for you.

Not a situation that might be a maximum 10 out of 10 level of stress for you,

But more of a 5 to 7,

Something that brings you down if you let it get to you.

It can be a recurring meeting with a challenging boss from your past,

Or an unreasonably demanding colleague,

Client or stakeholder of some sort,

Or job interviews,

Something that the very memory of it has a bit of trepidation around it for you.

You've got something of substance in your mind there.

So spend a few more moments re-familiarising yourself with this situation and how it was for you.

Imagine now that you're a sculptor,

And your body is the statue you're sculpting.

And you're sculpting something for a garden for people to walk through and look at your exterior,

Your outsides.

And you will sculpt something representing you at your worst when dealing with that situation you have come up with.

So when people are viewing from the outside,

People get a little sense of how you feel on the inside,

When it's you at your worst when dealing with that issue or situation.

And now take a mental snapshot of that sculpture.

Now take a breath,

And with your eyes still closed,

Come back to your normal posture.

So next,

You will commence another sculpture.

You will start to sculpt your body in the shape of a statue that shows you at your best in dealing with that same issue or situation.

Because there are times in your life when you have handled this type of situation in a way that's helped you move forward in ways that are better than the previous posture.

Now put yourself in this alternative shape,

Reflecting you at your best,

And then take another mental snapshot of this other sculpture.

Now in your mind,

Look at this second snapshot.

What is different?

Is it more open?

Wider?

Is it taller?

Is it bigger?

It is most likely less shrunken and less contracted.

Much less contracted than for the first sculpture.

What does this mean for you when this type of spotlight is again upon you?

You have a choice here.

A choice that might sometimes be difficult to surface.

But one that is there,

For whenever the type of stress we've explored emerges in your life.

You can embody something that is more open and bigger in the face of whatever this situation is.

You have a choice.

Now,

Take a deeper breath,

And when you're ready,

Open your eyes.