Awakening Your Courageous Heart ~ A movement practice

This is an embodied movement practice designed to awaken your heart space and meet what needs to be met, as a body. You can use this practice to work with a person that you desire a more courageous heart with. Someone you love, but that you find yourself withdrawing your heart, your love, or feeling shut down, or contracted in some way. I will guide you to lean into the effort in your body and then start to use movement, breath, awareness, and sound to open up the trapped energy and awaken more courage, aliveness, personal power and flow in the body.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to your Awakening Your Courageous Heart audio practice. You can use this practice to work with a person that you desire a more courageous heart with, Someone who you love, But that you find yourself withdrawing your heart, Or your love, Or feeling yourself shut down or contract or tighten. You will practice loving when it's hard, And that takes courage. So, For this practice, You will want some space to move your body, As well as a place to lay down and integrate afterwards. And you'll want to bring to mind someone in your life that you love, But that you know you pull your heart away from. So you can pause the recording to journal or to feel into who you want to work with today, Or you might already have someone in mind. You will begin this practice standing. So finding your feet, Really feeling them on the earth, Taking a few full breaths, Feeling yourself here, Maybe looking around your space, Maybe bringing hands to your body, Just starting to give yourself a few moments to arrive. You might even say aloud, I am here. And starting to drop into the body, Noticing the physical sensations, The temperature, The movement, The pressure, Really feeling and contacting these sensations, The felt sense of what's alive in your body right now, Without needing to fix or change or shift anything, Just feeling the sensations, Feeling what's alive in your body right now, Feeling what it's like to be you. With your eyes closed or cast down, You're going to begin to imagine this person in front of you, This person that you're choosing to work with today. You're going to see their face, Hear their voice, Feel their presence, Really sensing how complicated and intricate and nuanced this relationship is, Feeling the air and space between you, Maybe even feeling the reasons why you can't love this person fully, Seeing if there's a story or a narrative, Something about what they do or what you do, Just noticing if there's reasons or stories or narratives here, As you see this person, As you feel them, Starting to let rises, Maybe moments in history with this person start to bubble up, Maybe times when it has been really hard to keep your heart open, Just starting to notice what happens when you are here with this person, When things get difficult between you and them, When you wish things could be different, Or that they could be different, Or you could be different, Really taking time here to feel whatever arises today in relationship with this person. And then you're going to start to scan the body, To notice what's happening inside your physical body. Does your heart pull back or squeeze or suck in or grip or tighten? What happens in your belly, Your legs? Really starting to feel and find the places that contract in relationship to this person, Really tuning into the effort in your body, To where they're squeezing or gripping or hardening or pulling, Or tightening, And for just a few moments, You're going to increase that effort, Going to lean into these contractions. So if there's a tightening in your chest, You're going to let it tighten a little bit. If there's a gripping in the belly, Or a furrowing of the back, Clenching of the jaw, Whatever is here, You're going to lean into it really slowly, Just increasing the effort for just a few breaths, Feeling this overall reaction, Feeling this shape that you become, Lose your heart. Taking one more full inhale as you lean into the contraction, And on the exhale, Start to let it all go, Softening the effort, Bringing in lots of breath, And starting to follow the flow in the body, Follow what movements want to happen, Follow where the energy, The temperature, The sensations start to pull you, Bringing in lots of breath, Really trusting how the body wants to move, What starts to happen, Allowing any emotion, Sound, Creating what is here as a body, Feeling how you can follow these openings, The places that were contracted and held, Bringing more movement into them, More curiosity, More breath, Really trusting that your body knows how to move this energy, Feeling these unexpressed movements finally having permission. There's nothing that you have to feel, There's nowhere you have to get to right now, You're just feeling whatever needs to be felt, Whatever layer presents itself, You're meeting it with your movement, With your breath, With your sound, As a physical body. If this feels hard for you, If this feels foreign, Bring some movement to one of the places you felt yourself contracting, Maybe it's to your chest, Seeing how many different ways you can move your chest, Bringing breath there, Sound there, Really trusting your capacity to meet whatever wave comes, Feeling whatever is here as energy. So if anger arises, How can you make it physical? How does it want to push or move or shake? How does it want to sound? How does it want to be expressed? Really trusting the more you allow the body to lead, The more you will start to really follow the energy and trust it and be led to places that your mind could never take you to. So keep breathing, Keep moving, Keep following, Keep saying yes as a body. And if you haven't yet already, Bring some movement into the face, This place we can really harden and get stuck in our thoughts, Moving the skin on the face, The mouth, The jaw, The eyes, Sticking out the tongue, Making some sound, Bringing a little bit more movement to your heart, Really feeling that space, Letting the heart start to lead and guide your movement. Just for a few more moments, Letting the heart guide you, Bringing the breath nice and full into the chest, Letting the movements come from this space. And if this is feeling really good and there's a lot more movement that wants to happen, You can pause the recording. But if you're ready to start to slow it down, You're going to let the movement start to slow down without freezing or stopping, Just slowly starting to feel what's here in the body at the level of physical sensations, Temperature, Tingles, Movement, Feeling the body, The qualities of energy moving in the body, Feeling what it's like to be you. And you're going to bring this person back into the space, Once again imagining them here, And you can put them as close to you as possible, Or as far away from you as you want, Really feeling into what is the right distance. And you're not going to force yourself to stay open, Force yourself to love, You're just going to keep softening, Keep breathing, Noticing when the parts want to contract or tighten or hold, And consciously choosing to soften, Chest, Shoulders, Belly, And as you see them, As you continue to soften, To feel the energy moving, You might also start to allow a little bit of what you're unwilling to feel in these moments, It causes you to grip around your heart. If you soften, If you allow the energy, What do you feel? What do you feel? 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