Morning Self Awareness Practice

Start your day with gentle self-awareness by tuning into your heart—how it feels, what it's holding. Then shift into a higher perspective, reflecting on the past month and what you've learned about yourself. Close with a grounding breath technique to center your energy and connect you to the earth, leaving you clear and prepared for the day ahead.

Transcript

My name is Cori. Thank you so much for being here. Let's get in a comfortable seated position. Close down our eyes and meditate together. With your eyes closed, Start to focus on your breath. I've said it many times before, But your breath is your anchor. Breath is boss. So bring your attention to your breath and mindfully slow your breathing down. And as you slow down your breathing, You're signaling to the brain that it's time to relax. It's time to meditate. It's time to have some peace and quiet and a little bit of space to yourself. Whatever that looks like in your practice. It could be five minutes that you're stealing of quiet. It could be 30. But let's start with a sense of gratitude that we can be here. We have a wonderful body that's sitting in a comfortable position. Just breathe. Focus on your breath. The sensation as you breathe in and you breathe out. Slowing the world down with your breathing. Starting to feel a sense of peace and quiet inside of your body. Take a moment to start to send your breath into the center of your chest. So purposefully take a big deep breath down into your heart space. Down into your heart chakra. Right there in the center of your ribs. Breathe down into your physical heart. Just start to bring the breath into that space, That part of your body. So you can kind of connect. Where your breath goes, Your focus will go. So take your focus to your heart space along with your breath. And just breathe there for a few breaths. What does your heart feel like this morning? See if you can start to get used to connecting to the different frequencies, The different energies and feelings inside of specific parts of your body. Because it's telling. You're learning to read and become more self aware. So when you do a simple thing like breathe into your heart space, You're checking in. You're feeling. Making an evaluation, An observation of what that part of your being feels like this morning. Does it feel light? Does it feel full? Does it feel heavy? Does it feel tight in your chest? Or do you feel open and spacious? See if you can get a sense of what your heart chakra and your heart feels like this morning. And it's not about changing it. It's not about judging. It's not about trying to fix anything. It's just about accompanying that part of your body. Like sitting with it for a few moments and saying, Hey, Like, How you feeling? How you doing in there? This is our time to be self aware, Right? Meditation is all about slowing down. Becoming the observer of your mind and your emotions and your feelings. This is a time when unless we're doing this, Something specific, Then we have to kind of sit in our feelings, Sit in what is right now in this moment. Relax your shoulders. You might not notice, But there might be tension in your body. So take some breaths into your shoulders and let them get heavy. Pull them away from your ears on a purpose, Making more space. Relax your shoulders and your arms. Keep your spine always nice and straight. But see if you can relax the rest of your body around your spine. Relax your legs, Let them get heavy in your seated position. I've shared this secret with you before, But if you use your exhales to mindfully attach the part of your body that you want to relax to, When you breathe out, Release, Let go, Surrender, Soften that part of your body. The exhale will help with the sensation of falling, The sensation of relaxing. If you can, Play with your imagination with me for a second and let's self-reflect. Imagine that you're hovering up above your life. Maybe you could be an eagle, A hawk, An owl. Maybe you could just be in your crisscross applesauce, Little Buddha position. In your mind, See yourself hovering above your life as if you would be looking down below. And you could see everything that's taken place for you within this last month. Think about the month that you're in. If you were to look down and look at your life and look at work, Look at relationships, Look at children, If you have them, Look at your intimate closest relationship, If you're in one, Look at all of it. Let it be like a overall observation. Like you can look down below and just see everything that took place. The arguments, Maybe the precious sweet moments, Maybe the happy moments, Sad moments. They're all right there, As if you're watching it like a movie down below. Like you're floating above like an angel, Like you're higher self. You're in your higher self mode and you're looking down and you think to yourself, What did I learn through all of this? What did I learn this month about myself? And just kind of hover and let that sink in and resonate within yourself, Within your being. What did I learn this month about myself? And let things start to come to mind. If you find a happy moment in that month down below, See if you can let one stand out for you. A happy moment from this last month. What do you learn about yourself in happy moments? Who are you? What does your heart feel like when you're happy? Just take a nice big deep breath and let that sink into your body. Let yourself be back in that happy moment for a few brief seconds. Just be there. What did you learn about yourself in challenging moments this month? Look down below, Be the observer. See if you can pull out a challenging moment that won't come to mind. The nice thing about recognizing emotions or frequencies, Energies in your body that don't feel necessarily comfortable. The nice thing about it is that you're recognizing them. And with recognition, When they come again in the future, They're not so scary. You've felt this feeling before and you know that you lived through this feeling before. You survived it, You can manage it, You're strong. This is evidenced based therapy. Taking your body and your mind into places that you've already experienced in a sense makes you more equipped for the future. Go back to your original question. What did you learn about yourself this month? Think about it. Who are you? And then if you purposefully try and just let go of all thought, Imagine that you're sweeping everything clean in your mind. Take away the month down below. Take away the thoughts and the feelings in your body. Use your breath to cleanse. Take a nice, Big, Deep breath. Imagine that you're sweeping the space clean inside of you with that breath. And as you exhale, Release nice and slow. Breathe out. And in your mind's eye, See if you can just see like a clean slate. Maybe it's just darkness there in front of your mind. Or maybe it's light, Or maybe it's colored. But focus on that. No thoughts. If possible, Like detach yourself. Come back to an airy, Empty space. Take a nice, Big, Deep breath. And once again, Checking with your shoulders. You may have gathered some tension from the last exercise. So just breathe out nice and slow. Pull your shoulders down at the same time. Relax your jaw. Soften. Come back into a sense of peace. A feeling of peace. Relaxation. All is well. You took some moments to just become more self-aware. And that's all it was. You don't have to attach to it. You can let go of it. Just a self-awareness practice. It's good to know who you are. Let's do a couple of grounding breaths. Bring you completely back. For this breath, Just breathe in and breathe out. And then on the empty, On the exhale, Hold your breath for four. So let me show you. I'm going to breathe in. I'm going to breathe out. And then I'm going to hold my breath on empty and count. One, Two, Three, Four. Normal breath in. Normal breath out. Hold. One, Two, Three, Four. Normal breath in. Normal breath out. Hold. One, Two, Three, Four. Do that for me. Don't try and lengthen your breath or do anything special with your breathing in and breathing out. Make it very normal. Very normal pace. It's the empty that you focus on. This is a very grounding breath technique. It allows you to, In that empty, In that silence, Connect to your heartbeat. And as you connect to your heartbeat, You connect to the beat of the planet. She beats just a little bit slower. But in that beat, There's connection. You're connecting to your body, You're connecting to the earth, The moment. Within that connection, Know that you're not alone. We're all together. In this together. We'll do one more round of that breath. So just take a normal breath wherever you're at. Breathe in, Breathe out. And then hold. One, Two, Three, Four. And then if you can just gently open your eyes. Come back into your space. Namaste, My friends.

Reviews

Thank you for allowing the hardened guarded parts of myself to soften with your kind and compassionate guidance!

Corey has a great voice. That was a very good practice. Thank you very much.

Wow! I’m blown away again by Cory’s skill. I have been using guided meditations off and on for 16 years or so. With the advent of apps and growth of YouTube there is a staggering abundance.
Cory has an amazing ability to personalize the universal tools of meditation for the listener. She varies the cues so that each meditation has it’s own character, bringing me back for repetition. Magnificent!