Settle The Nervous System Through Awareness Pendulation

This gentle meditation will support you to get grounded in a short amount of time, through the practice of awareness pendulation. When we rhythmically and slowly pendulate or shift, the awareness between different parts of our experience, we experience a deeper and more coherent sense of our being. The nervous system naturally settles into a more parasympathetic state as we do this.

This is a shortened version of Grounding and Orienting Meditation by Alisha Musicant (also here on Insight Timer). This version is set to gentle music (credit Chris Collins).

Transcript

Settle into a comfortable position to start our practice together.

Begin by taking a few deeper breaths,

Letting the breath fill the abdomen and then release completely.

One more full breath in and full breath out.

Good.

So we'll start our practice.

Begin by tuning the awareness into the ground beneath you.

Sense the feet.

Sense the surface that you're resting on.

Have a sense of the earth supporting you.

Then we shift our attention upwards through the body into the area of the head.

Sensing the area around the head,

The space around.

Sensing the space above.

Sensing the sky.

Feeling now both ground below and sky above.

We then shift our attention into the right side of the body.

Feeling right arm and leg,

Right hand,

Right foot.

Feeling the space outside the right side of the body.

Gently shift the awareness across the body to the left side.

Feeling left arm,

Left leg,

Left hand and foot.

The whole left side.

Now feeling both right side and left side together.

Then shifting the attention back into the back side of the body.

Having a sense of the spine,

The back,

And the area behind the body.

The space behind the body.

Resting into your back body and shifting the awareness up towards the front of the body.

Feeling the whole front side.

Sensing the front of the face,

Chest,

Belly,

Legs.

The whole front side and also the space in front of the body.

Feel now both back and front together.

Shifting the awareness towards the inside of the body.

Without trying too hard,

Just notice what you notice.

Maybe some subtle sensations.

The breath coming in and out.

Sensing that there is an inside.

And then sensing the outside,

Noticing what's around you.

A sense of space around you.

Starting to tune into sounds,

Near and far.

Gradually when you're ready,

You can open the eyes and notice what's around you with your eyes.

One last time,

Let the eyes open.

Feeling the ground,

The sky,

Right side,

Left side,

Back and front,

Inside and outside.

Feeling now your whole body.

Feeling a sense of your groundedness,

Your rootedness,

As well as the upliftedness,

Uprightness.

Finding yourself here in space,

In present time,

Right now.

Beautiful practice today.

Reviews

Very relaxing. Thank you!

Lovely practice. I feel peaceful and grounded. Thank you! 🙏🏻🦋💕

Beautiful. Thank you

Very good meditation that should be listened to again and again

Amazing! Nervous system settled in such a short time. I’ll use this practice throughout the day.

Awesome thank you! Great grounding tool to have in my pocket.

Fantastic aligning and grounding practice. Very peaceful and a great start to the day.

Great grounding practice. If there is a longer version that would be great as well 😌

Beautiful practice! Very grounding and relaxing.
I would have preferred a little more time for breathing in and out as I'm not able to take a deep breath in such short time.
ButI loved the audio nonetheless.

Thank you for sharing it with us. 🙏💚🙏

Such a helpful grounding meditation in a short amount of time — thank you!

❤️

Very nice and useful grounding meditation. Thanks very much 🙏🌷💝