Calming & Grounding Coronavirus Meditation

This is a practice of diaphragmatic breathing, taking Prithvi (Earth) Mudra. This practice is designed to connect you to the calm within, ground and centre in your own energy, so you can walk from this place throughout your day as we are faced with the global coronavirus. May this invite more peace to your being at this time.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this calming and grounding meditation.

My name is Brianna,

I'm a qualified yoga and meditation guide.

I felt called to create this meditation just in light of the events that we're all experiencing at the moment.

The bizarre and unprecedented scale of what's happening with the impacts of coronavirus across the world.

So this practice here is a practice to really center and ground you in your own energy.

I was working along the street today and I saw a sign that said don't try to calm the storm,

The storm will pass,

Calm yourself.

And I really felt called to try and spread that calm a little further than myself because like so many paradoxes in this world we live in,

If we all took time to calm ourselves the storm would calm because we are the ones creating this.

So if you'd like to join me for this meditation,

Preferably in a seated position either on the floor,

On a cushion or on a seat,

If you feel you need to lie down for your body then you are more than welcome to choose that for yourself also.

Just take some time to set yourself up now in a position that feels comfortable for you to sustain as much stillness as you possibly can in your body.

So taking time to ground down through the sit bones,

Feeling both sit bones in contact with the earth and then feeling that rebound as the energy lengthens the spine,

Stacking one vertebra on top of the other.

Maybe feeling the back of the neck slightly lengthen as you lift the top of the head towards the sky.

Feeling the shoulders soften away from the ears and the shoulder blades nestle into the little pockets of the back of your body.

Bringing your awareness to the centre of your chest and peeling your heart open,

Moving the heads of the shoulders backwards and then relaxing the shoulders once more away from the ears.

Moving your awareness now to your belly and noticing if there's any tension holding there,

If you can just gently release.

You might notice the breath flowing in and out of your belly here.

We'll come back to the breath in a moment.

So feeling this bright posture as you feel stable through the base through your legs and then alert through the spine and open and receptive through the upper body.

Begin to notice if you can hear any sounds around you.

Allow your awareness to jump from sound to sound without creating any story,

Any reason why it's there,

Just notice.

Enjoying your awareness to the sounds you can hear happening closest to your body.

And starting to tune into the sound of your breath.

Now bringing your awareness to the sensation of your breath flowing in and out of your nostrils.

Noticing the qualities of the breath in this moment as best you can without judgement.

So noticing if the breath is smooth and long or if it's short and sharp and shallow you might be able to become aware of the temperature of the breath,

Sensation of it on the top lip and then even getting curious about whereabouts in the breath,

Whereabouts you're travelling in your body.

Is your breath moving down into your belly or is it in the chest?

Just seeing if you can notice as much as you can about the breath.

Now having established that connection,

Starting to work with intention with the breath.

As you draw the breath in,

See if you can breathe down deep into your belly.

So coming into diaphragmatic breathing.

This is the breathing where the breath resides in the belly and doesn't need to expand the rib cage or expand the chest.

It's a very grounded breath,

Sitting as low as you can in the base of your body.

The diaphragm,

The muscle that sits up underneath the rib cage,

Usually in an umbrella shape.

As you breathe in the diaphragm inverts,

Pushing the belly out to expand and inviting the air into the ribs,

Into the lungs.

So noticing different sensation as you use the diaphragm to breathe and invite the air in through the nose rather than sucking the air in through the nose.

It's more as though the diaphragm working and pushing down,

Expanding that space for the lungs.

Almost creates this vacuum of space that the air then naturally flows into rather than too much effort involved in drawing the breath in.

Breathing here as best you can for the next few moments.

Practising this diaphragmatic breathing,

Pushing the belly out on the inhale and then softening the belly on the exhale.

So continue to work with this diaphragmatic breath as you tune into the words that I'm saying.

Practising this diaphragmatic breath really allows you to send a message to the nervous system that you are safe.

That it's okay to stop and breathe and enter into a state of rest and digest.

At the moment a lot of us are most likely operating in a state of fight or flight.

So much information coming to us through social media,

Television media,

Radio,

Conversations with friends and family about this impending danger.

And so much of it is unknown.

Those voices that are coming through those channels are trying to weigh in their expert opinion but really none of us really know.

And I think that if we can accept that we don't really know how long this is going to last or the true effects of it on lots of us as individuals and all of us as a community and a society.

If we can accept that and we can come back to ourselves and just take it moment to moment I believe we'll all be better for it.

So know that you can come back to your breath,

You can send to yourself through diaphragmatic breathing at any point throughout your day when information is coming to you and it's all getting a little bit too much.

So as best you can amongst the chaos that is swirling around you at times know that you can come back to your breath,

Know that you can find stillness and you can create this calm within you.

And that doesn't actually have to be disturbed by what's going on around you.

You can walk from this place.

So for this last part of the meditation I'd like to invite you to take a mudra,

This prithvi mudra or earth mudra.

A mudra is a gesture that you take with your hands and it's a way of inviting a certain sense of energy and feeling into your body or setting an intention for yourself.

If this doesn't resonate with you then you can just continue with the breathing sitting as still as possible.

If you would like to take the mudra you're going to take your palms and you're going to bend your thumb and your ring finger together and keep your pointer,

Middle finger and pinky finger extended.

You can join your index finger and middle finger together.

And then you'll bring the back of your palm to rest anywhere on your legs that feel comfortable.

And you can do this with one hand or with both hands.

So earth mudra is really about centeredness,

Stability and that sense of endurance and stamina,

Reliability.

So this is a beautiful posture for you to take to really cultivate that within you.

When you can't really obtain that from outside of you,

The place to turn is in.

So taking a moment to set yourself up,

Continue with your diaphragmatic breathing and sit here for a few moments really seeing if you can cultivate that energy of centeredness and solidness within you.

If your mind starts wandering away from your breath,

It's completely normal,

Your mind is designed to think.

Just know there's nothing you need to be thinking about right now apart from your breath.

Gently release the thoughts,

Know that you can come back to them if they're important to you at a later time.

And come back to the breath,

Feeling it flow in and out of the nose.

Okay.

Good.

At some point over the next few breaths,

You're slowly releasing the mudra.

You might even like to bring your hands to rest when on top of each other in your lap.

You could join the thumbs together,

Right palm on top of left.

Taking some time to just let go of the control of the breath,

Control of the body,

To allow yourself to return back to your natural state.

You might like to take a few moments to notice how you're feeling.

Perhaps something has shifted for you either mentally,

Emotionally,

Energetically or physically since the start of the practice.

I invite you to take a few long inhales here before you open your eyes and exit out of the practice.

Just to allow yourself to really feel this feeling of centeredness and solidness within yourself before moving out into the rest of your day or if you're winding down before you're coming to rest your mind and your body.

Knowing that this is always there for you to come back to.

Your breath is all you need to feel centered in this world.

Reviews

This was fabulous however it was very hard to hear, even with my volume on high.

Love this meditation. Very grounding and the way she guides you through it is extremely calming. Looking forward to other meditations from her in the future.

So beautiful! Thank you so much💕🙏🌺🌺 May you feel at ease.🙏

🙏🏻 lovely thank you, be safe 🙏🏻

Really nice back-to-basics guided meditation. Not too much talking. Just enough to guide, and then nice periods of silence. Thank you;

Great. A bell to signal the end would help me. But loved it

Very balancing and helpful. Thank you

Very calming. Thank you.