This is a guided meditation for moving into compassionate relationship with the self if you've made a less than preferable choice.
What I mean by that is moving into relationship with self if you notice that you're leaning on coping skills that you'd rather not be leaning on such as overworking,
Sleeping too much,
Eating too much or not enough,
Utilizing different substances in order to disconnect your mind and your body from the present moment.
So I'd like to invite you to start with a gentle breath in to a count of four and a slow easy release to a count of six.
Please let your mind start to float back across the previous days or weeks and notice a time when you've engaged in a behavior that was less than preferable.
Invite that time to become the center of your awareness.
You may find that your mind or your body would rather not do this.
You might notice feelings of internal shame or embarrassment start to percolate or an internal dialogue or debate about the choices that were made in that moment.
If you notice these experiences,
Take a moment,
Place your hand on your heart space and invite in another gentle breath.
And as you release,
Invite those feelings to soften and move away from you and welcome in another gentle breath.
Imagine that your hand is extending loving kindness into your mind and your body.
Invite the experience that you've identified to become the center of your awareness.
Greet that experience with curiosity and also thank it for being known in this moment here and now.
It's hard for our minds and our bodies to go back to the difficult things in the past.
It takes great courage and bravery.
Thus gratitude is loving and appropriate in this moment.
As you move into relationship with this experience,
Invite your mind now to drift 30 seconds,
A minute,
A couple minutes prior,
Right before the choice was made to do the thing.
Notice what was happening in your mind and your body right before.
These moments right before these choices often embody the feelings and the thoughts that we're trying to soothe,
Soften,
Or even numb ourselves from.
These are the experiences that need our loving care and attention.
You see,
The coping skill,
The substance,
The sleep,
The overworking,
The avoidance,
Whatever it might be,
Those are coping skills.
Those are the things that our mind is using to help us feel okay in the moment because whatever is happening prior to that moment feels so big.
And so overwhelming.
From this light,
Those choices,
The relationship with those experiences don't leave much room for shame because they come from our brain doing the best that it can in the moment with what tools and skills it has accessible.
So thank your mind and your body.
Extend gratitude towards yourself for your resiliency in the face of difficulty and always endeavoring to keep you safe so you can keep breathing and putting one foot in front of the other.
Now that you've found that version of you that was in such deep pain,
Was experiencing such complicated emotions that the only natural course of action was to do the less than preferable thing,
I'd like to invite you to deepen your relationship with that part of you.
Hold that version of you in your mind and your body.
Open your mind's eye.
Cultivate a curiosity with what you're noticing.
Ask that part of you,
Hi,
What else could we do in this moment?
What do you need that you do not have?
And if that part of you replies beautiful,
You might notice that that part of you doesn't quite know itself.
And if that's okay,
We're going to learn as we continue to grow and heal.
And so perhaps for now,
Ask that part of you if you could give it a warm,
Gentle hug.
Perhaps if you could sit beside each other,
Hand in hand,
And simply be together without shame,
Without judgment,
Simple loving acknowledgement that sometimes life is hard.
And sometimes we make choices that are less than preferable.
But those choices are always in the endeavor to help us keep breathing,
Living,
And moving forward.
We're going to stop this gentle meditation here with you alongside that part of you in relationship.
And I'd like for you to find a pen and a paper.
And to move into a writing exercise with this part of you.
With your dominant writing hand,
Explore more deeply what is the emotional world of this part of you before the substance,
The sleep,
The work is brought on board.
And then switch the writing utensil to your non-dominant hand and invite that part of you to reply.
You might find that you get several pages of written material here,
Or it might be a quick back and forth of just a couple lines.
Our true desire here is to let that part of us know that we see them with loving,
Gentle compassion.
That we want to learn more.
That they're not alone.
