I'll invite you to find a comfortable posture to practice in.
You could be seated,
Standing,
Or laying down.
Always choosing what's going to be of most support in this moment.
And as you continue to arrive in this position,
Allowing your eyes to close or just lowering your gaze.
And we'll begin by checking in with our body and just seeing what's alive right now.
And as we notice things like texture and pressure,
Vibration,
Weight.
We can also see if we're in a posture that allows us to be awake and relaxed at the same time.
And as we stay with the body,
Let's invite our bodies to soften into this moment,
Creating space on our forehead,
Making a little more room between our eyebrows,
Easing our eyes into their sockets,
Unclenching our jaw,
Making sure the upper and lower teeth aren't touching.
Softening our tongue,
Our gums,
The sides of our mouth and the roof of our mouth.
Feeling the release of our neck and throat.
Giving our shoulders permission to dissolve along with our arms,
Elbows,
Hands and fingers.
Using ease to our belly,
Softening our chest,
Softening our heart.
Hmm.
In this practice,
We'll be staying in the realm of our heart space.
As we continue on a path and practice of forgiveness,
I'm going to invite you for a moment just to contemplate what forgiveness means to you.
.
If you have any thoughts or words or images that came up,
I'm going to invite you now to see if you can connect with a deeper felt sense of forgiveness.
Maybe you can recall a time in which you received forgiveness or you gave forgiveness and what that was like maybe in your body.
Is there a softening in the eyes?
An opening of the heart?
Maybe there's no sensations and that's okay.
.
In this practice,
We'll be offering some phrases to a specific person in your life.
Then we'll also be working with ourself and we'll be bringing to mind a different situation for each and seeing if we can offer some phrases of forgiveness.
And as I offer some of these phrases,
You're welcome to recite them verbatim.
You're welcome to edit and rephrase them in a way that might resonate more with yourself.
And you're also just welcome to rest in the reverberation of me saying the phrase.
Before we begin,
I just want to remind you that forgiveness is a path that we can be taking a longer journey on and that some things may not be forgiven immediately.
And so we just walk on this path.
Seeing if things can become a little bit easier over time.
We'll begin by inviting you to bring to mind someone in your life that has caused harm for you in some way.
Perhaps if this is the first time doing a practice like this,
Maybe choosing someone or something that's a 3 or 4 on a scale out of 10.
10 being the most harmful experience ever.
Just so that we can build our capacity over time.
So going ahead and inviting someone to mind.
Maybe as this image comes to mind,
You might already notice a reaction.
We can bring mindfulness just to notice.
Maybe there's a tightening in the chest or a pulling back sensation.
And just recognizing that maybe there's some discomfort being felt.
And seeing if we can just allow ourselves to notice and be with that.
I'm going to take us through some phrases now.
For any harm you have caused me through your words,
I forgive you as best as I can at this time.
For any harm you have caused me through your words,
I forgive you as best as I can at this time.
For any harm you have caused me through your thoughts,
I forgive you as best as I can at this time.
For any harm you have caused me through your thoughts,
I forgive you as best as I can at this time.
For any harm you have caused me through your actions,
I forgive you as best as I can at this time.
For any harm you have caused me through your actions,
I forgive you as best as I can at this time.
Just imagining these phrases going out to this person and just noticing if there's any changes in bodily sensations or feelings.
Maybe there's a softening.
And maybe there's a tightening.
Just bringing curiosity to whatever is arising and bringing courage with a willingness to be with your experience.
I'm going to invite you to gently let the image of this person fade away.
And now I invite you to hold up an imaginary mirror,
Imagining that you're looking at yourself now.
Perhaps bringing to mind a situation where you created some harm or did something that you regretted.
It doesn't have to be a huge thing.
So with the situation in mind,
We're going to offer these phrases again and I'll repeat them two times each.
For any harm I have caused myself through my words,
I forgive myself as best I can at this time.
For any harm I have caused myself through my thoughts,
I forgive myself as best I can at this time.
For any harm I have caused myself through my thoughts,
I forgive myself as best I can at this time.
For any harm I have caused myself through my actions,
I forgive myself as best I can at this time.
For any harm I have caused myself through my actions,
I forgive myself as best I can at this time.
Seeing if it's possible to allow these phrases to come back to yourself.
Again,
Maybe a softening,
Maybe a tightening in the body,
Just noticing.
And then gently putting the mirror away as we bring this practice to a close.
I invite you just to come back to that sense of forgiveness from the beginning.
And taking a moment just to reflect on the powerful and sometimes difficult possibility of giving and receiving forgiveness.
And remembering that sometimes forgiveness isn't just a one and done thing and that sometimes it's a path that we get to continue to walk on.
And also remembering that we can forgive someone and that doesn't mean that whatever was done is okay.
Noticing your feet coming back to the sense of being grounded.
Opening up to the sounds around you.
And then taking a deeper breath to signal the end of this meditation.
