Hi,
I'm Dr.
Diana Hill,
And this is a meditation for co-regulating safeness within yourself and with others.
Go ahead and get yourself into a comfortable position.
You could be seated,
Lying down,
Your legs up the wall.
Whatever position is best for you to be able to really let go,
So that you feel fully supported by your body,
By the floor,
But also alert and awake,
Ready to receive and give.
And once you find yourself in a comfortable position,
Make contact with the earth,
The ground beneath you,
And imagine that you could grow roots,
Roots that move down through the floor,
Down through the earth's crust,
All the way down to the center,
Feeling rooted and supported by her.
And then I'd like for you also to extend and lengthen upward,
So that the crown of your head reaches up to the sky,
Or if you're lying down,
You feel the expansiveness upward,
Your face,
Connecting to the sun and the spaciousness above and around you,
So that you're both rooted and spacious,
You're both grounded and expansive.
And from this place,
Allow your body to be breathed,
Letting your breath become slow and long and soothing,
Grounding you and expanding you.
Your breath washes over the tension in your face,
Washes over any tension or holding in your shoulders and back,
Washes over and tenderizes your hips,
Your legs,
Your feet.
Let it nourish you.
And as you breathe,
You're breathing in the gifts from the trees and the weeds and the algae,
And you're breathing out gifts to the trees and the weeds and the algae.
There's an exchange,
A flow,
A flow of breath that connects you to all life.
There is no separation in this exchange of life that you breathe in and you breathe out.
And there is an awareness,
A you that is observing this body,
This breath,
This exchange,
And this awareness can have a softening or smiling of the eyes.
It's a loving awareness,
As Jack Kornfield would call it,
A loving awareness of your full experience.
You are the loving awareness,
Observing your body,
Observing your breath,
Observing your connection to this planet.
And with this loving awareness,
You can begin to scan your inner world.
Scanning for places within yourself that feel unsettled.
There may be agitation or unease or something undone or a relationship that feels unsettled in some way.
Finding that within your heart or your body or in your mind,
That which is unsettled.
And bring these soft eyes of loving awareness to just observe,
Make space,
And breathe around and through and in this part of you.
You can name it.
I see you,
Anxiety.
I see you,
Irritability.
I see you,
Fear.
And without getting caught in the content or the story,
You hold it like you'd hold a flower or a butterfly or a prickly pear.
You hold it lightly and with love.
Softening around the space that's unsettled.
And it may change and shift and morph or even dissolve.
But you allow it to be and to do what it does on its own timeline with no intention or desire to fix.
You just bring loving awareness to this part of you.
Well wishes.
A kind heart,
An open heart,
A caring heart.
And a gaze of love.
And breathe.
And if you like,
You can send some meta to this part of you that feels unsettled.
Things like,
May you experience ease.
May you feel loved.
May you feel accepted.
And then I'd like for you to expand your awareness to something within the world.
It could be in your close relationships.
It could be something far away.
It could be something related to our planet.
But something that feels unsettled in the environment around us.
And in the same way that you held yourself in loving awareness.
Soften your eyes and open your heart to include this aspect of our world that is unsettled.
Experiencing unease.
And send loving awareness.
Well wishes.
And breathe.
And again you can send meta.
May you experience ease.
May you feel loved.
May you be accepted as you are.
Sending out loving awareness.
And then finally the loving awareness is like a flow that moves in and moves out.
You breathe it in to your whole body and being.
Resting in loving awareness.
And you send it out with your breath.
With your eyes of compassion.
Loving awareness.
You are loving awareness.
Experiencing it all.
And you can rest in loving awareness.
There is no effort.
No forcing.
Leaning back and resting in this deep peaceful state that holds both the joys and the sorrows.
The anxieties and the ease.
The loss and the new beginnings.
And to it all we say thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to be closing this meditation with a short poem by Pesha Gertler.
It's called The Healing Time.
Finally on my way to say yes I bump into all the places where I said no to my life.
All the unintended wounds the red and purple scars those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin and bones those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again where I find them the old wounds,
The old misdirections I lift them one by one close to my heart and I say holy holy You can stay as long here as you like when you are ready you can come back into the room and continue to be a vector of loving awareness in your day.
Many blessings.