Hello and welcome to a brief meditation that will help you set healthy boundaries with the people in your life.
So find a comfortable place to sit or lie down.
Stay present throughout the exercise.
If you feel discomfort at any point,
Come back to your breath.
Breathe in and out deeply,
Slowly.
And then as you're ready,
Come back to my voice and join us again.
So let's settle in.
Once you're comfortable in your position,
We're going to take three deep breaths.
So first,
Exhale all of the air out of your body.
Inhale through your nose.
Hold at the very top,
Maybe sip in just a little bit more air.
Open your mouth,
Large exhale.
Two more times,
Go at your own pace or follow my breath.
Now if at any point throughout this exercise you're feeling anxious,
You are feeling negative energy coming to you and you need to find some calm,
Come back to these deep,
Deep breaths.
Let's begin.
We're going to focus on a specific boundary for a specific person.
Any boundary or person that you'd like,
But try not to get muddled up on,
I want everyone in my life to treat me this way,
Or I want this one person to respect me in this and that and the other thing.
Focus your attention on one boundary that you can set with one person in your life.
I'll give you a few moments to figure out which boundary is the most accessible or most important for you at this time.
Now let's identify what you want out of setting this boundary.
Maybe you want to feel more respected.
Maybe you want freedom.
Whatever it is,
Try to whittle it down into one word or a very short phrase if you can't do one word.
And let's sit with this for a moment.
Sit with your desire,
Allow it to start burning inside of you.
Where do you feel this outcome in your body?
In other words,
Where in your body will you feel something when the boundary is respected?
And if you can locate the feeling in your body,
Begin to really allow yourself to feel that feeling.
Let yourself have that release in your chest that you'll feel when they respect your boundaries.
Really feel that deep,
Deep tension release when they start giving you more freedom.
You don't need to name the feeling that you're feeling.
If you'd like to,
And if the words come to you easily,
Absolutely.
Feel free.
I am a words person and identifying what I'm feeling often helps me to feel it even further and more deeply.
So if you relate to that,
It's okay to name the feeling.
And at the same time,
Let's try to let it exist in our bodies peacefully.
We'll spend just a few more moments sitting with this feeling.
Now we're going to let the words come.
What do you want?
What do you need?
Try not to scramble for these words.
Try not to sit and search through the depths of your brain to find these words.
Sit in silence,
Commit to the silence and let the words come.
Now if you're feeling caught in a wave of words,
If you're feeling overwhelmed,
Let's narrow it down.
You want to be brief and you want to be direct.
See if you can turn all of those words that you've just connected with into as few words as possible that will get your point across.
I'll give you a few moments.
And if no words came,
That's okay too.
Stick with the feeling,
Stick with your body and join in whenever you're ready.
Now while you're sitting with and crafting these words and how you want to say what you need to say,
I will offer you a few grounding tips.
The first thing I'd like to mention is that this is not a space for us to imagine their reaction.
Let's avoid visualizing them in any way because this is out of your control.
Visualize only yourself speaking from your heart,
From your gut with power and sensitivity.
And as you craft these words,
Make sure you're being honest,
But also feel respect for the other person.
You want to talk about the way that you are feeling,
Not the way that you think they are feeling.
And we want to avoid placing blame on the other person.
We don't want them to be defensive.
We want them to be open.
A formula that might help is the following.
When you do this,
I feel this.
Can we try that?
Let's sit with our boundary creations for just a few more breaths.
When you're ready,
Come back to that feeling that we identified in the beginning of the meditation.
Come back to how it's going to feel for you when this person shows respect for your boundaries.
Notice your breath.
Is it different from the breath that you started with?
Maybe it's slower,
More deeper,
Or more full,
More easy.
If your breath feels more tight or more tense,
Don't worry.
We're about to take a few breaths together to bring us out of this meditation.
And we're going to use big sighing breaths.
So let's do one together.
Exhale everything.
Inhale all the way to the top.
And then open your mouth.
Make a sound as you sigh your breath out.
Two more.
And last one.
When you've finished your last breath,
Start to bring some movement into your body.
You might want to open your jaw.
You might want to wiggle your fingers,
Shake your head side to side,
Whatever feels best as you re-enter the world around you.
When you bring this boundary to this person in your life,
Remember the easy formula.
When you do this,
I feel this.
Can we try that?
And if you're feeling stressed or anxious,
Come back to your breath.
Notice the way that it flows in and out of your body no matter what you're doing.
Connect with the feeling.
If you're nervous,
Connect to the feeling.
Remember that you're doing this,
You're setting this boundary for a reason.
And that reason is this feeling.
I wish you the best of luck in setting these boundaries.
And feel free to return to this meditation with any other boundaries that you might want to set either with the same person or a different person.
This track will always,
Always be there for you.
Thank you,
And good luck.
