Welcome to today's warm water ritual.
The next 10 minutes are designed to provide you with a little break from your day to day to allow yourself to pause,
To give your nervous system a rest.
We are working with warm water because warm water has this immediate soothing effect on our nervous system.
At the same time,
I'm trying to integrate this ritual into something that you would be doing anyway into your day to day to give you a path forward to integrate mindfulness and those little pauses for your nervous system into your daily activities.
So today we're gonna combine washing our face and getting ready with the soothing ritual of being mindful and meditating around this procedure.
Let's take a couple of seconds to prepare so you have everything in reach once we get started.
Set yourself up in your bathroom or where you would usually be washing your face and where you have all your utensils around you.
Draw some warm water,
Like a nice calming temperature,
Slightly above body temperature.
Prepare the other things you wanna use,
Your face soap,
Something to moisturize your face afterwards,
A facial oil or night cream,
Whatever you're using.
You wanna have a towel in reach so you can dry off your face afterwards.
And then you have all these things ready.
Let's get started.
Let's arrive.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Feel how they are grounding you to the earth.
And be in the here and now.
Start getting aware of your breath.
Feel it moving in and out of your body.
Pay attention to where you can feel it the strongest.
Is it at your nose where you can feel the air coming in and out,
Cold air going in,
Warmer air coming out?
Is it deep down in your belly where you can feel your breath moving?
Try to slow down and deepen your breath step by step.
To truly arrive,
Let's do three deep breaths together.
In through the nose and out through the mouth.
So take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it go from your mouth.
And a second one in through the nose.
And out through the mouth.
Let it go and really feel all the efforts falling away.
And one more of those together.
In through the nose,
Deep into the belly.
And let it all go through the mouth.
And relax.
Let's start incorporating warmth in our face into this practice now.
Rub your hands together to get them warm.
Generating some heat through the rubbing motion.
And once you feel them getting warm,
Press your hands onto your face and feel that warmth relaxing your face.
Pay attention to where you are still holding.
Any tension,
Any strength in that face.
For many people,
That's the jaw.
Deliberately let go of your jaw and relax those muscles.
Relax the tongue.
Relax the eyes.
And let the warmth of your hands help you with relaxing your entire face.
Now reach for the warm water.
Make your hands wet.
Bring them to your face.
So your face gets the first layer of warm wetness.
Find the movement that feels best how you wanna move your hands over your face.
Maybe going from the forehead across your eyes all the way down your cheeks to the edges of your mouth.
Maybe you wanna go into a circular motion from the right cheek across the forehead to the left cheek.
When your face is nice and warm and wet and ready,
Apply your cleanser or your facial soap.
Again,
Find the movement that makes the most sense.
Don't just think about being efficient and cleaning your face,
But think about stroking motions that feels like you're giving yourself a massage.
Giving your face some love,
Caressing it,
Stroking it gently,
Maybe going from the inside to the outside.
And really spread and rub in that cleanser.
Let it sit there for a second.
Press your hands over your face again and cover your whole face.
Relax into your warm hands for two more breaths.
And drop your hands.
It's time to now wash off the cleanser.
Wet your hands or take a cloth,
How you would usually do it,
And gently clean off your face.
Again,
Those motions are not just to actually take off the cleanser from your face.
It is about stroking yourself,
About being mindful of each of those movements,
Feeling your fingers gently gliding across your face,
Enjoying the movements almost like a little massage.
Feel out which movements you like the best.
Is it long,
Consistent motion?
Is it quick circles just with your fingertips?
Is it using both hands simultaneously or rather after each other?
Once you're done with that,
Reach for your towel and dry off your face.
Try gently dabbing the towel across your forehead.
Once you're ready,
It is time to moisturize.
Be now deliberate about all the movements you're doing,
Not just what your hands are doing in your face.
So reach for your moisturizer.
Feel the bottle or the tub underneath your hands.
Unscrew it very deliberately,
Paying attention to what the material feels like,
What the opening of it sounds like.
Put some moisturizer on the tips of your fingers and bring it to your face.
Start spreading it around,
Picking the motion that feels the most soothing to you,
The one that you enjoy the most.
Taking pauses and just letting your warm hands remain on your face,
Covering your eyes for a second.
And one more time,
Relaxing into your hands,
The warm hands,
Helping the face to relax even more.
The relaxation and warmness coming from your face,
Radiating through all of your body now.
Feeling your shoulders letting go,
Feeling a warm,
Radiant energy spreading from your chest.
Feeling that calm moving all the way down into your pelvic area,
Through your hips,
All the way down your legs,
Into the ground,
Until your whole body feels like you've just been into a hot bath for an hour.
Just from that warmth,
Radiating from your super relaxed face.
Coming slowly to an end of this ritual today,
Taking your hands off your face,
Relaxing your arms,
And taking two deliberate deep breaths together,
In through the nose,
Deep into the belly.
And letting it go through the mouth and I'm really relaxing one last time,
Letting it all go.
And the very last one in.
Open your eyes.
Give yourself a little bit of time to reenter into your life from here.
Calmly putting away all of your worries,
Putting away your utensils,
Pouring out the water,
And making it a very deliberate step to open the bathroom door and step outside,
Step back into your day,
Taking that calmness and that warm energy with you into the rest of your day or into your night.
Thank you for joining me today.
Thank you for taking the time for yourself.
And integrating a little mindfulness into your day today.
