This is Janine Tandy and welcome into the practice.
Today I'll be offering you a head-to-belly breath as an opportunity to move away from head-based consciousness and into gentle embodied presence.
We spend so much of our time in our headspace engaging with devices,
With our screens,
Having multiple tabs open often,
And that can cause a lot of overwhelm,
Overstimulation,
Rumination.
So this is an opportunity to allow that to release and welcome you into a different experience of embodied presence.
So let's begin.
The invitation is to take this practice either seated or lying down,
Depending on what feels best for your system right now.
So perhaps taking a couple of moments to make those adjustments as needed.
And then with the next couple of breaths,
When you inhale in,
Draw your awareness to the middle of the forehead.
What houses thinking mind?
And visualize as you exhale,
Moving that energy all the way down the body into the belly center.
You can even use the visualization of a waterfall,
As if the waterfall was beginning in the forehead,
Dropping down into a cool,
Calm pond located just behind the navel.
So as you inhale in,
Again,
Attention to the forehead.
And exhale,
Slowly moving that perhaps higher toned energy down into the belly center.
And you can even invite in specificity.
So if there's a particular thought or content that feels really potent,
That maybe needs a bit of softening or letting go,
You can visualize that or even name it as it draws down from the headspace into the belly,
Dissolving into this calm,
Cool pond of presence.
It's nice slow breaths,
With each inhale coming back to the forehead as another opportunity to then use the exhalation to drop into grounded presence.
And let's take three more rounds like this,
Moving from head based energy and dissolving that into calm,
Embodied presence in the belly center.
Without rushing,
After that third exhalation,
Just slowly come back into a normal rhythm of breath for you,
Noticing how you're feeling right now.
And thank you so much for your time and your attention,
And may this be of benefit.
Take care.
