So this isn't really a meditation,
But it's a practice,
An exercise of both gratitude and compassion.
What we'll do is simply send a message.
Maybe to someone you just like to reach out to,
Someone who has sent you a message but you haven't responded to yet.
Just a little opportunity to connect with someone.
I find in my therapy sessions that it's often kind of powerful to actually do something in the session together.
And so here,
Instead of talking about it and then doing it,
I thought we could actually do it together in the moment.
Before we do that,
If you like,
You might just take a couple deep breaths.
It's always nice to take a couple deep inhales and exhales.
And you can allow the body to relax in any way it might like to relax.
Just grounding yourself a little bit more deeply in the present moment,
Waking back up to reality.
And so I will do this with you.
I will time it based on my experience,
But if you ever need more time,
Just press pause and take as long as you like.
For the first part,
Let's find someone to send a message to.
And so this could be just reflecting internally for a little while,
Or it could be looking through the contacts in your phone,
Or it could be looking at the previous messages in your chat history.
So let's just take maybe a minute to reflect on someone you might like to reach out to.
And this could be someone you maybe haven't been in touch with for a while.
Maybe it's someone that you talk to every day,
And it could even be yourself.
So let's take a minute here.
And in whatever way you want to,
Pick one person to send a message to.
You can begin.
Okay,
I picked my person.
And this is someone that I actually talk to almost every day.
But here it might be nice to just express some appreciation for his role in my life,
For being a really good friend,
And someone who I can kind of just be myself with.
So that's what I'm going to do.
And now that you've picked this person,
Just take a moment to reflect on whatever you might like to say.
And it could just be saying,
Hi,
How are you?
How you doing?
How have you been?
Or it could be a bit more.
You could even say you're being guided through a practice right now.
And you picked this person as the object of your practice.
This could also be a voice memo,
Which might take you out of the guided practice and that would be okay.
You could just record it and then come back.
I think I'll do a voice memo.
So I wanted to give you that option.
Okay.
So now you can write your message or record it in whatever way you want to.
You can begin.
Okay.
Okay.
So now if the moment feels right,
You can press send.
And maybe just feel the energy of this message popping up on the other side.
And maybe just noticing what this practice felt like,
How you feel right now having sent this message.
And you might take a few more deep breaths if you like.
You can always take a few deep inhales and exhales.
It just takes a few seconds.
I'd love to hear from you what it was like or maybe what you shared if you want to say more about it.
I'd love to do this with you again whenever you might like.
Sometimes it's helpful to just have someone else encouraging you and reminding you to do something that you could easily do on your own.
You just forget to do it or it slips your mind.
So here's a reminder.
