This is a guided meditation by the Institute of Embodied Psychotherapy,
Facilitated by Kateryna Gajansky.
In this first video,
I'm going to guide you through connecting with your body through using creative visualization.
So if you feel comfortable,
Please close your eyes and I will do so too,
To help you connect with feeling your body in the chair and maybe taking a few deep breaths into your belly and start to slowly shift your attention from being in your head and your thoughts to slowly,
Slowly,
Slowly starting to descend into sensations in your body and following your breathing all the way from beginning to the end.
So following your each inhalation and exhalation.
So I will close my eyes and I'm breathing into my belly to a count of four and breathing out slowly lengthening my out-breath,
Maybe to a count of six,
Breathing in on four,
Breathing out on six.
Breathing in through your nose.
Breathing out through your mouth.
And becoming aware of the sensations of your breath.
When you're breathing in following the in-breath and when you're breathing out,
Following the out-breath.
Breathing in.
And breathing out.
And with each breath,
Imagine dropping deeper and deeper into the felt sense in your body.
Becoming more and more aware now,
Not just of the sensations of the breath,
But what are the sensations?
To you feeling your body.
So zooming out your attention from being just with the breath to being with the whole of your body.
From your feet and toes.
All the way up to the top of your head.
What are you aware of?
Just scanning your body quickly for any sensations.
Maybe you're feeling some tension somewhere in your body.
Maybe there are pleasant sensations or maybe some parts of your body feel stiff and constricted.
Noticing the temperature in different parts of your body,
So just being aware of the whole of your body,
What stands out for you.
So we are exploring your inner landscape,
The landscape of your body.
And see if you can explore the sensations non-judgmentally.
Just noticing what is present for you without judging it or pushing it away or resisting it,
Opening yourself to your sensations as they are.
And then imagine that your body is a landscape.
What kind of landscape comes to mind?
What is the first picture that arises in your mind's eye as they invite you to think?
About your body as a landscape.
I'm just allowing that picture to become visible.
In front of you,
And then imagining that you're stepping into this landscape.
So that you are standing or sitting right in the middle of it.
And the picture becomes even more clear and even more vivid.
So looking ahead,
What is it that you see?
What is in front of you.
And then look to your left side.
What do you see to your left side?
And to the right side of your body.
And then behind you.
And then looking down.
At your feet.
And the earth underneath you.
What do you see?
And finally,
Looking up at the sky.
And looking at the weather.
What is your internal weather right now?
Right this very moment,
If the weather is a metaphor for your feelings,
For your emotions,
For your mental state,
How you're feeling right now,
What you see in the sky.
Do you have a sunny weather?
Is it cloudy?
Is it rainy?
Is it overcast?
And again,
Without any judgment,
Just allowing that weather to rise.
And accepting that this is how it is right now for you.
Your internal weather.
In your internal landscape.
Just noticing.
What you see in front of you and above you.
And then I would like to invite you to take a mental photograph of this landscape.
To include the weather,
To include the sky.
So everything that you see in your mind's eye.
Take a photograph.
And then I would like to invite you to step out of this picture,
Of this landscape,
And to see it as a photograph or a picture right in front of you.
So you might need to step a few feet away from it so that you can see the whole of your landscape.
As if it's a picture on the wall.
And just observing.
What do you see?
And maybe from this newer perspective,
When you step back.
You see something else,
You might maybe notice something on the picture that you haven't noticed before once when you were inside this landscape.
And then I would like to invite you to think about.
A title for this picture or to come up with a description,
Maybe like a sentence or two.
What does this picture says about you?
How are you right now?
This weather,
This landscape.
If it has a title,
How would you call this picture?
If it was a painting or a photograph in a gallery,
What would they say underneath it?
And the invitation now is to write that down.
In your journal,
The name.
And what does it say about you and also to take some crayons or colored pencils and to draw to the best of your ability to draw this landscape.
And you might want to,
On the back side of your landscape,
To write a bit of a description.
Of what this picture is about.
And taking as much time as you need to do this.
And also maybe journaling how easy or difficult it is for you to connect with others.
To your body in this way.
So this is a gentle way that we.
Introduce connecting with the body.
Through creative imagination.
And we would use this in our therapy practice with clients who find it difficult to come into sensation.
But find it easy to visualize.
So if you can just spend a couple of moments.
Reflecting.
If you're more of a visual type and that was the way in,
Or it could be through just feeling the sensations in your body and that was your way in,
Or it could be through breath.
So just finding out for yourself,
What is the way that I connect with my body?
What is the easiest way that I connect with my body?
