Taking a deep breath,
Bringing this nourishing breath into the body,
Feeling as your inhale expands your lungs,
Making more space in the lungs,
Expanding the diaphragm.
You feel as the diaphragm is being pushed downward by these expanding lungs,
Making more space in the chest cavity.
As the diaphragm expands downward,
It touches your kidneys,
Giving a gentle hello,
A gentle massage of the kidneys.
The breath is your chi,
Your life force energy,
And as your chi expands within this body,
It activates the potential energy in your kidneys,
Activates your vitality,
Your motivation.
Feeling this gentle rhythm in your body,
The inhale,
Lungs expand,
Diaphragm lowers,
Kidneys are rubbed.
The exhale,
The kidneys and diaphragm pull upward as the lungs empty,
Making more space within this physical body,
Welcoming your tailbone to connect in with the earth.
The base of your spine,
Your tailbone reaching downward into the earth,
Connecting you,
Grounding you,
Feeling supported,
Following the ebb and flow.
As you inhale,
Then the lungs expand,
The diaphragm sinks downward,
Touches the kidneys,
And you connect in with the earth through the tailbone.
Exhaling to bring your body back to rest,
Your awareness back up into the spine,
And back up to these lungs that are emptying.
Bringing this breath into the body requires that we ground.
It's like filling a balloon.
We're just tying down the string so that the balloon doesn't float away.
Filling up the balloon of your lungs with life force energy,
With chi and breath,
And connecting you to the earth through the tailbone.
When we're tethered,
We can fly.
We can fly without worrying about becoming lost.
This gentle,
Loose tether provides just enough support that we can move and flow,
Experience,
Express,
Try new things,
Bringing your awareness up to your mind,
Noticing what your mind is doing,
What thoughts are popping in.
We watch those thoughts and just notice how interesting it is that my mind wants to be on that right now.
Certain people are popping into your mind.
The to-do lists are popping into the mind.
When I'm done with this,
I'm going to do an action first,
And second,
And third.
Here in your mind,
Opening up that to-do list and seeing the long scroll,
Holding it up,
And the scroll unravels,
And noticing how long this list is.
The list unravels and is infinite in length.
As soon as you cross off one item,
Two more are added.
And the question comes in,
Is this how I want to live my life?
Or my master is my to-do list?
Or the list rules my every moment,
Telling me what to do.
Whenever I have a free minute,
It fills in the blank.
Whenever I choose the present and choose fun,
The to-do list requires attention,
Awareness,
That nagging,
Juggling,
Pulling us out of the moment.
And we look at rolling that to-do list back up,
But once it's been unraveled,
It can't be put away again.
I invite you to take that to-do list and crumble it up.
Crumble up the paper,
Creating a great big ball,
A wad.
And we ask that this to-do list completely be crumbled into the wad.
And we take a moment to look at it,
Noticing how much space this takes up.
All the things I want to be and do.
This wad of ideas,
A wad of shoulds,
In this wad are the things we do for others,
The things we do for ourselves.
And we take a hold of this big wad of crumbled up to-do lists,
And we're just going to throw it out into the universe.
Throwing it and noticing as it goes through the atmosphere,
It starts on fire,
Starts burning up.
You're welcome to break this into several wads and just keep throwing to-do lists out into the universe,
Watching them burn up.
Maybe they explode.
Noticing how quickly these to-do lists can deteriorate into nothing.
Throwing into the universe the to-do list of what you are doing for others.
It burns up.
Throwing into the universe the to-do list of all the things you need to fix and clean up.
Watching it burn.
Throwing the to-do list of all of our great ideas,
Creative energies into the universe.
Watching it burn up.
Taking the mundane to-do list.
Going to the grocery store.
Doing laundry.
Throwing that to-do list out into the universe and watching it burn up.
And we come back to our mind and notice how much space has been created.
There's a peace and quiet.
I heard a little bit of worry.
What if I don't get it all done?
And we're just going to flick it away.
Flick away that worry.
And we set an intention that whatever it is that we need to do can show itself to us in the present moment.
That if it's important,
It will come back to us.
Bringing your awareness to your heart.
This space at the center of your energy body where we stand in the present moment.
We notice how much more space there is in the present moment because we've released the to-do lists that grip the future.
When we don't have to juggle and balance the future,
There's so much more space in this now moment.
And we find at our heart that so much of our to-do list was created from the past.
From our experiences,
What went well,
What didn't.
The shoulds.
Our regrets define our to-do list.
This year I'm going to do better.
Write it down.
And now that we've released these to-do lists,
We find ourselves with less of the burden of the past.
More space.
And the question is,
What do we do with all of this space in the present moment?
Tuning into your heart and listening for the messages that your heart has to share.
Your intuitive self lives here at the heart.
And we simply listen.
When we cultivate space here at your heart,
Here in the present,
There's more space for joy.
There's more space for unbridled laughter.
There's more space to listen.
There's more space to be.
Here at your heart,
There's space to create in this moment.
There's space to connect.
We've created space at your heart to simply feel.
See how you feel.
Decide what you want to do,
How you want to be in this moment.
When we release the weight of those to-do lists,
The weight on our mind,
We find that we're breathing more deeply.
And we return to noticing those lungs inflating,
Expanding the diaphragm,
Activating the kidneys.
As we become more present,
Our life force expands and activates our vitality,
Activates our motivation.
As the to-do lists release from the mind,
Inspiration can flow down into our life force,
Into this motivation center.
Inspiration being fueled in the present moment and the ability to then take action right now.
Setting the intention to move forward in the world with this clear mind,
Present heart,
Deep breath,
And connection.
Connection to your own momentum.
Knowing that when we are in such alignment,
We can achieve more than any to-do list can empower.
Creating with ease and with alignment.
I bow to the Tao and all things,
To the teachers before me,
And to each of you for shining your light so bright.
