Lay it down beautiful soul and just stop stop the doing.
Stop the organizing.
Stop the managing.
Stop trying to get somewhere or figure something out or prepare for what's coming next just just stop.
Feel the surface beneath your body now,
Really,
Really feel it.
The softness,
The hardness,
The way it rises up to meet you and hold your body.
You don't have to hold yourself up in any way right now,
Not even slightly.
And let your body become heavier and heavier with every breath out.
The shoulders can drop now.
You too can soften.
Uncurl your hands.
And let the belly soften and stop holding it in.
Let the legs roll outward slightly.
And soften the thighs.
Feel the weight of your own body.
We can spend so much time in our head.
That we sometimes forget that we even have a body,
But yet here it is.
Quietly doing everything you needed to do.
The breathing.
The pumping the blood,
Keeping you alive without one single conscious instruction from your head.
It's just doing its thing.
And your body is magnificent.
And right now it just needs you to stop interfering with anything and just let it rest.
Take a slow breath in through your nose.
And a long breath out through your mouth.
Into the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Into the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Your breath,
One of the most powerful tools we have for communicating the sense of safety to the nervous system.
When the exhale is longer than the inhale,
The body feels this as a signal.
A signal that says.
.
.
I'm safe.
I can rest.
I don't need to be on alert right now.
And the nervous system listens every time.
For the next few breaths.
Follow my counts,
Simple.
Slow deliberate.
Just follow my voice.
Breathe in,
Two,
One.
3 4 and out 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 breathe in 2 3 4 and out 2 3 4 5 6 7 8,
Breathe in,
2,
3,
4 and out,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
2 more breaths like this,
Same rhythm,
In for 4,
And out for eight Let the breath return to its natural pace.
Notice the difference in the body already.
.
.
.
.
.
The slight softening.
This small but real sense of the noise receding like a radio gently being turned down one notch at a time.
Your nervous system beginning to trust that it can slow down and rest.
And it will keep slowing down following the guidance and the signals.
I now will guide you through your body slowly and deliberately.
All you have to do is bring your gentle attention to each area as I name it Breathe into each place and let it soften a little bit more with every exhale.
We begin at the top of the head.
Breathing your awareness to the crown of your head,
The scalp.
Do you feel any tension here?
The kind that might come from thinking too hard for too long.
Notice it Breathe it out.
Soften the scalp.
The forehead now.
So much expression lives here.
So much worry and concentration and effort.
Let the forehead completely smooth.
Like water that has stopped rippling.
The space between your eyebrows where we furrow and frown and we strain to figure things out.
Let the space between your brows widen.
Exhaling to release the tension.
And the eyes,
Even behind your closed eyelids.
Notice if your eyes are still working,
Scanning.
Searching can they become completely still,
Heavy,
Dark,
Resting?
As if you're gazing down to the centre of your heart.
And the jaw,
Oh,
The jaw.
One of the greatest holders of unspoken things.
Everything we didn't say.
Every word that we swallowed.
Let the back teeth part slightly.
Let the tongue fall away from the roof of the mouth.
Let the jaw go heavy and loose.
Soften your throat and your neck release,
Release,
Release.
Let the neck be long and soft and completely supported by whatever is beneath your head right now.
Drop your shoulders drop them lower than you think that they need to go and then lower again.
Notice how far they were from where they could be.
Let them drop.
How heavy can you allow your arms to become,
The upper arms,
The elbows?
The forearms.
Memory.
The palms of your hands soft and open,
And each finger releasing.
Can you even soften the fingertips?
Let a gentle awareness settle on your chest.
Notice if you've been holding the chest tight as if bracing yourself for something.
Let it open with the breath.
Let it be spacious and soft.
With every in and out breath.
And the belly,
Oh,
The belly,
So much lives here.
Emotion,
Digestion,
The gut feelings,
The weight of worry.
Let the belly rise freely with the inhale and fall gently with the exhale.
No holding,
No managing Just breathing.
Soften your lower back Imagine someone is gently lengthening up through your spine creating a small amount of space between every vertebrae Feel the tailbone lengthen down and the top of the spine stretch up.
The hips,
The pelvis.
This is where we store so much old stories,
Tension,
Things that the body has been holding onto long after the mind has moved on.
Just breathe,
Breathe into this area and let it be heavy and warm.
And completely release.
Soften your thighs,
Your knees the calves,
All of it heavy.
Warm and sinking.
Breathe into the ankles and the feet,
The soles of the feet,
The place where we meet the earth.
Let them be completely soft and heavy.
And resting.
Now,
Feel the whole body at once.
Thinking.
Warm.
So.
Every part of you released.
And resting.
Without effort,
Which part of you right now is the most still?
The most peaceful.
This is what rest feels like.
Now maybe notice how much quieter the mind has become.
And not because you forced it to be quiet but because you gave the body what it needed and the mind followed.
The mind follows the body always when we give it chance.
And this quiet,
This is yours it's always been there,
Always been inside beneath the noise beneath the stimulation.
Beneath the doing and the managing and the achieving,
Just here waiting,
Patient as the earth.
Now I'm going to ask you to do something that might feel strange.
I'm going to ask you to do nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
No breathing to count.
No body part to focus on Just be in your body in this quiet.
And if thoughts come,
And they will,
Notice them without climbing inside of them.
Watch them like clouds that move across the sky and you're lying beneath it.
They pass.
They always pass.
You don't have to follow them.
Just for now be here in the body.
Doing nothing and in this space.
Feeling a little quieter more present more yourself And that is the medicine.
Of laying it down.
And back into your breath be with the stillness and the peace that's always patiently waiting for you to return.
Namaste beautiful soul.
Namaste.
