Visualisation for mindful parenting This guided visualisation is about encouraging a kind and gentle interaction with your children.
It is about remembering the way you wish to parent at a higher level and easily incorporating that loving kindness into your everyday moments.
When you are ready,
Gently close your eyes,
Allowing the eyelids to gently soften and softening the area around your eyes,
The eyebrows,
The sockets,
Your brow.
Gently softening and relax.
Feeling that relaxation pass through your body like a flowing wave of calm passing over and over and through you on a slow calming cycle of relaxation.
Following that wave as it rides through you with every breath in and out.
Bring to mind an interaction in the recent past that could easily happen in the future again that you have had with your child.
A moment where you have on reflection after the event not been satisfied with the way you interacted,
With the way you reacted and responded.
Without judgement,
Without recrimination for how you should have behaved,
How you could have behaved,
Without beating yourself up.
As you watch yourself in this scenario,
See if you can rewind back to the beginning of this interchange before the moment ran away with you and flared up.
We've all had these moments,
They're perfectly normal,
So there is no need for guilt,
There is no need for blame.
All we are doing is looking for that one tiny moment of choice in how you respond.
Right at the start of this interchange,
As you feel it becoming heated or uncomfortable or annoying or irritating,
See if you can notice an opportunity to step into the rising emotions.
I want you to float down into your body and see this situation through your own eyes.
Notice the emotions and sensations that are there.
See if you can find a moment where you can become aware of the changes in your body.
Perhaps where the tension is,
The stress.
Perhaps it is in your shoulders,
Maybe your belly.
Perhaps it is in your mind as the urgency and irritation grows.
And see now as you focus on this tension in your body,
If you can soften the edges of this tension.
If you can just allow the edges to release,
Infusing them with a deep,
Long breath.
And I want you to notice how the rest of the interchange plays out in your mind.
Now that you feel calmer,
Now that you have taken breaths infused with love and with kindness and with joy.
Notice the relaxation and calm in your body and the warmth in your voice now as you engage with your child from this more aware,
More mindful state.
Notice how much better this new scenario feels as it unfolds in your mind's eye.
Notice how much easier it is to have a positive response in your relationship with your child when you are mindful of your own body and of your own responses.
Breathe into this awareness.
And now in your mind's eye,
I'd like you to run other scenarios and interactions with your child where you can choose this mindful moment during your response.
Notice how it feels in your body.
Notice the softening.
Notice the love that infuses the relationship.
And when you are ready,
Knowing you have this ability for a mindful response in all your parenting moments,
In all your interactions with your child,
That you can choose to tap into this awareness whenever you like.
Begin to wiggle your fingers and your toes.
Take a gentle stretch and come back to the room.
