To start our time,
I invite you to bring to mind a time that you experienced stress in the last few days.
Maybe you're choosing a time that you felt stress in the last few minutes.
No matter how recent it is,
I invite you to take a couple deep breaths and close your eyes if you're comfortable,
Letting yourself imagine the scene of you experiencing stress as though it is playing on a movie screen in front of you.
Taking a nice deep breath,
You can imagine that you're almost sitting back in a theater,
Sitting back in a chair,
And across the theater on the screen,
What's playing is this scenario where you experience stress and you are getting to watch yourself experience that stress.
Taking another nice deep breath,
Nice long inhale,
Nice long exhale,
Let yourself notice what you see playing out on the screen.
How does your mind imagine this?
And even if something seems a little silly or a little random,
I encourage you without judgment and with curiosity to just notice what do you see happening in front of you.
And as you're imagining the stressful scenario play out before your eyes,
You can simply check in and see how much do you feel like you're able to sit back in that theater chair watching this and how much do you feel almost sucked in to the movie in front of you.
There's not a right or wrong here,
You're just noticing how you experience that.
And if you have a preference of wanting a little more space,
Being able to sit back in that theater chair more and have the stressful scenario be separate from you on the movie screen,
As you imagine that,
You can breathe into that space between the chair and the screen.
And if you don't feel like you need that space to be as clearly defined,
You can continue with how that imagery and that connection to the movie screen is playing out naturally.
With a nice deep inhale,
Nice deep exhale,
Let yourself notice your posture in this scenario.
What's happening with your body?
What do you visually notice and what do you even feel inside when thinking about this scenario?
And is there anything happening inside that you would like to exhale?
Any impact of the stress that you're carrying that you don't want to carry anymore?
And if so,
I invite you to be curious as you breathe and as you exhale,
Can you imagine exhaling that stress?
Can you imagine whatever you're feeling in your body,
Little by little,
Bit by bit,
Almost breaking up and leaving your body like a mist or little particles,
Or if it's something that you imagine as a weight on your back or your shoulders or your chest,
Can you imagine it lifting little by little,
Becoming even just a little bit lighter with each breath?
And to any extent that you're experiencing relief,
I encourage you to really breathe into that,
Letting it have almost a snowball effect that would help to increase continued relief little by little,
Breath by breath.
And as you do this,
You can let yourself imagine and notice what happens to the you that's on the screen.
It's that movie screen where you were first noticing,
Okay,
This is me in a stressful scenario.
With this breathing that you've doing,
Any relief that you've experienced,
How does that change the posture or the facial expression,
The movement or lack of movement?
What do you see playing out in front of you,
Whether there's a significant amount of relief or just even a tiny amount of relief?
And if you'd like to spend more time noticing this,
You can pause the audio.
Otherwise,
I'm going to close us with a prayer.
Lord God,
In our stress,
In what can feel like a never-ending cycle of heaviness,
I pray for your mercy and grace to enter in and allow there to be exhales of relief,
Spaces and moments,
Or even if it's just a tiny bit,
Or even if it's just a tiny bit of hope,
That you would give us eyes to see beyond what we are experiencing in the present moment.
Would you remove from us the things that we're carrying that we don't need to carry?
Would you lighten the load and melt the stress and tension that our bodies might be carrying?
I pray this in your name,
Amen.
