Welcome,
My name is Celia Roberts and I'm the founder of BioMe,
The Biomedical Institute of Yoga and Meditation.
Today we're looking at a Christmas time meditation.
Christmas is often filled with expectations and difficulties that each one of us faces.
It's filled with complicated family systems which are also revered and we love our family and some of us however found the family unit very difficult and family systems are at work that we are sometimes unaware of on Christmas.
So this meditation is to acknowledge you,
Your place,
Your being in the family unit or in the non-nuclear family or the nuclear family.
So come to your heart center and see if you can place a wave of self-compassion in your heart.
Having deep compassion for yourself and how it is you wish to feel on Christmas.
Visualize yourself in your environment on Christmas and see if you can feel a sense of solidity and peace within your heart.
Concentrating on the effulgent,
Gentle,
Beautiful and luminous light of the heart.
I refer to the sutra,
Vishokavayotishmati,
Concentrating on the inner light of the heart.
And from this light in the heart send compassion all around the body for yourself,
For your family,
For any difficulties you face.
Really acknowledge that we have no ability necessarily to change others but we have the ability to change our self and our perceived sense of self and our place in the family system.
Moving from one place that's less reactive to a place that's non-reactive,
Peaceful,
Compassionate and kind.
If you tend to feel anxious at Christmas we need to try and pacify you so you don't get flooded into anger or rage or dissociation or shock.
So if you feel difficulty in the family unit I want you to visualize it and see if you can feel it or see it or be in it differently.
How do you find peace when anxiety arises?
Can you concentrate on the inner light of the heart?
It's unchanging,
Unbroken,
Constant,
Consistent.
Is there a difficult family member that you have to face on the day that you might try and control you or you feel controlled by or is anxious or angry?
Could you just see them now acknowledging their anxiety or their anger and have compassion for the difficulties they face,
Strong boundaries,
Compassionate people have very strong boundaries but also compassion,
Empathy and understanding that they suffer,
They suffer and that they need our help.
And sometimes our help can come in being a passive,
Gentle,
Kind presence,
Non-reactive and if possible non-judgmental.
And we sit in the belly strong,
Grounded,
Gentle,
Peaceful,
Unshakable with a compassionate and gentle heart.
And keep all your strength in your belly,
Your abdomen,
Your energetic centre.
The sit-he related to this area of the body is unshakable in a peace.
Special power related to this area of the body in yoga medicine is unshakable in a peace.
In Chinese medicine,
The area of the body here,
The abdominal centre,
A little bit below the abdomen is called the dandan.
Dandan,
Chinese medicine,
Dandan,
Japanese medicine.
The idea is that a martial artist will fight from this area.
We're looking for the way of the peaceful warrior.
Where we're incredibly strong,
Grounded but also compassionate and kind.
So we have good boundaries,
Compassionate boundaries and we care for our immediate family unit with these good strong boundaries.
Perhaps our extended family.
But we're strong and stable,
Not anxious or angry.
And we try and avoid getting flooded so we take time out when we need to to regain balance and strength in this abdominal centre.
Which is where we stand our ground compassionately from,
With a full heart.
Strong spine,
Strong back,
Soft belly,
Wild heart.
Keep cultivating the energy in the belly centre.
Come back to the heart space,
Building up compassionate loving energy for yourself first.
For yourself first.
Be generous in your kindness to yourself.
Be really generous each Christmas time.
And see if you can give freely compassionate loving energy to those in your nuclear family,
Your immediate family.
Just having an understanding for the hurt and the grief and the difficulties and the losses we all face.
And trying to really bring about a sense of peace and compassion for them,
Generated in your own heart and sent to them.
This is metta,
Loving kindness.
Doing this will make you feel much calmer,
It will increase your oxytocin,
Improve your vagal tone and your heart rate variability,
Giving rise to good physical and mental health.
Sending loving kindness to your family.
And really spend some time now sending loving kindness to difficult people in your family.
And then from here we'll come back to the visualisation of yourself on Christmas.
Sitting peacefully,
Calmly,
Mindfully eating,
Mindfully listening.
Seeing if you can be with these people in a peaceful,
Loving way.
Compassionately listening,
Compassionately and mindfully eating.
Compassionately and mindfully being,
Finding periods of silence where possible,
Or rest.
And observing family dynamics with a compassionate heart.
Just watching the dance of intimacy,
Or perhaps the dance of anger at play and seeing if you can step back and observe with a compassionate heart and soft eyes.
Seeing that all suffer and that we have the freedom to liberate ourselves from suffering through mindful awareness,
Consciousness and compassion.
And then finally if you have expectations about Christmas,
I know we've just done a visualisation about how it could be,
I want you to let the expectations go,
So lower the expectations.
Can we treat it as a normal day?
See if you've got some hidden expectations.
See if we can let those expectations go.
For me,
I find it just enough to just be.
It's tricky.
We really face our grief and our loss on Christmas.
Something that once was sometimes not there anymore.
Or sometimes everyone's expectations around what Christmas could or might look like lead to angst and anxiety for different members of the family.
So let go of any hidden expectations and just visualise yourself being peaceful,
Compassionate,
Mindful and kind.
Kind to self.
Just be.
It's more than enough.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Compassionately mindful awareness.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Letting go of any expectations.
Just allowing yourself to be,
Breathing in and breathing out.
Strong spine.
Soft belly.
Gentle.
Gentle heart.
Soft eyes.
See the world compassionately.
Mindfully.
See the family systems with gentler eyes.
Let go of expectation.
Expectation is about the future based on the past.
See if you can uncover unhidden or the hidden expectations we have around the family unit or Christmas time.
And let go.
Let go deeply.
This will free you.
This will free others.
When we truly let go of expectations we sit mindfully in the moment.
And yet we can project and visualise to calm ourselves down around Christmas and prepare for the event in a mindful and calming way.
So continue to project into the future using the visualisation of how you might feel on Christmas.
How you might be on Christmas.
But do recognise the moment you do that you've moved into the future and away from the current moment.
So this technique can be helpful for some but if you know that just staying in the moment and being moment to moment without expectation at all is enough do that.
And yet we do know that the visualisations,
The projections can be very helpful in helping us deal gently with situations that arise that may be tricky in the future to come.
Continue breathing,
Being and know deep in your heart that this Christmas you'll be here now.
I wish you well.
I wish you really deep peace.
And I wish you an un-shakable peace.
