Welcome to your meditation practice for today.
If we haven't met before,
My name is Ellie and I'll be guiding you through this anxiety relief meditation practice today.
This is one to have in your pocket whenever you're feeling particularly anxious and you want instant release and relief and grounding.
If you haven't already make your way to a comfortable seat or to lay down.
Remembering to release perfection here so be where you are comfortable.
Don't worry too much about having the perfect posture.
We want comfort,
Grounding and ease here so allow yourself that.
Consciously see if you can soften your shoulders just increasing the space between your shoulders and your ears a little bit more.
Can you rest your head over your heart or in line with your heart if you're laying down.
Close your eyes if you'd like to.
Take an inhale through your nose.
Exhale out through your mouth.
And again inhale through your nose.
Exhale out through your mouth.
At the end of that exhale see if you can give the ground your weight just 5% more.
Allow yourself to fully be held here for the next few minutes.
Allowing your breath to regulate.
And then just starting our practice by connecting to maybe four things you can hear outside of you.
So it could be outside the room that you're in.
Inside the room or as close as your own breath just pick a few things that you can hear.
Now notice maybe four things that you can feel or touch.
Maybe your hands on your knees or in your lap.
The support beneath you.
Feeling of the clothes on your skin just notice three or four things that you can feel.
It's hard to draw your attention back towards your breathing and travel inside with your next inhale.
Notice any areas of your body you can feel a sense of clinging or holding.
Discomfort.
Sometimes when we're moving through anxiety or anxiety is here with us the muscles tend to tense so can you offer them some relief?
Can you ask them to soften a little bit?
Always remember that the emotions and the reactions that we have are not who we are.
So the anxiety you're experiencing right now is not because you're an anxious person.
There's just anxiety happening.
There's anxiety in the room.
So this practice is here to allow that anxiety to release a little bit.
Bringing yourself back to grounding and allowing it just to fade away.
And we're going to do that with a short visualization.
As always with visualization sometimes it's hard to keep the clear image in your mind.
That's actually a really hard thing to do.
So the intention of having the visualization is enough.
Don't worry too much about the perfect image,
The clarity of it.
Just have the intention to follow along with what I'm saying.
Open the palms of your hands as if you're holding something.
So just resting with your palms facing up that could be in your lap or on your knees.
Then we'll imagine the anxiety that you're feeling sitting there in your palms like an external object and you're holding it.
It's there,
It's present and you're holding it.
So the anxiety you're feeling is in your hands.
Can you give that object of anxiety a color?
Maybe it's in your hands and it's blue or red,
Deep purple.
See if you can give that object some color.
Now see if you can give the object a shape.
Is it round?
Is it sharp?
Is it rectangle?
Is it rectangular?
See if you can give your object of anxiety some sort of shape.
Maybe a texture.
Maybe it's smooth,
Rough.
Just notice some texture to it maybe.
Finally,
As you're holding this object in your hands,
It has a color,
Maybe a shape and a texture.
Can you give it some weight?
So can you feel the weight of that object of anxiety sitting there in your hands?
Is it heavy?
Is it comfortable to hold?
Is it light?
See if you can feel the weight of that anxiety sitting there in your hands.
Come back to the color now.
What if the color has started to change?
Notice if your color has started to change.
It may have,
It may not.
What if the shape had started to change?
Start to shift into a new shape or maybe dissolve a little bit.
Feel the weight in your hands again.
Has the weight of that anxiety changed?
Has it gotten lighter or heavier?
Just notice what's there.
Keep feeling that weight and imagine that object kind of lifting off your hands without effort.
Now ask yourself if it's really there at all.
Maybe you can still feel it.
Maybe it's completely gone.
Just welcome what's moving through you right now.
Whenever you're ready you're welcome to bring your hands back to your knees or to your lap.
Come back to your breathing.
Come back to feeling into your body.
Noticing any changes that may have come from the last few minutes.
Really notice the sense of grounding at your hips.
So the connection between your body and the support beneath you.
To that feeling of being held up.
If you notice any further tension in your body can you give it permission to be soft.
Invite space.
You see the role of anxiety in our lives is anxiety comes to make us feel safe.
That's what its intention is.
That's what it thinks it's doing.
It might not feel like that while we're processing anxious times.
But just know that it's not a negative thing.
It's there to keep you safe.
And the way that we let it know that we are safe without it or that we the way we give ourselves some relief from it is to connect with that feeling of safety.
To bring ourselves back into the present moment.
Notice what's around us.
Get out of our heads and into our bodies.
Accept the support of the ground beneath us.
And then just allow ourselves a little bit of separation from the anxious feeling.
I invite you to come back to this practice whenever you feel particularly anxious or overwhelmed or stressed.
You can sit here for as long as you like.
If you're ready to and you had your eyes closed you're welcome to open them.
Thanks so much for practicing with me and I hope to sit together again very soon.
Have a lovely day.
