Be At Peace With Yourself

This heart-centered practice is an opportunity to meet self-judgment, perhaps in a new way. We look at judgment as the armoring covering our truth and heart. Opening our somatic and intuitive experience to look at this armoring as the block to inner peace. Peace is a natural state that opens us to our full capacity and when we are armored or locked against it we are out of tune with the nature of our life force thus create constriction, stress, and suffering. What would it be like to be at peace with yourself in all moments of this life?

Transcript

So today I'm going to invite us into a practice where we get familiar maybe in a different way with the judgments that we're holding against ourselves.

In some ways we're super familiar with these places,

These stories,

These things that we're holding against ourselves as weapons and as our identity.

But today I'm going to invite us to look at them as the armoring,

The ways that we're creating walls and armoring our heart and withholding from ourselves and from others the truth of who we are.

And we're going to do this not through the mental body,

Though we'll invite the mind to be part of our imaginings and envisionings.

But we're going to do this through feeling and sensing in our body.

You're also welcome to invite your intuitive intelligence and the nature of your subtle body to come right along with the fullness of information about where you're holding against yourself.

And so if you're ready to practice,

Go ahead and settle in.

Maybe find yourself wiggling in your seat,

Taking some shoulder rolls,

Dropping in and down,

Softening the eyes or even fully closing,

Turning inward and letting the external world go for this moment.

We actually tell ourselves a lot about how safe we feel when we're able to let go of our senses being directed outward and allow our senses to be directed inward.

And as you begin to notice the beauty of the breath,

Its simplicity and complexity,

How it arrives,

How it leaves,

And invite the question,

The curiosity of what would it be like to be at peace with yourself?

What would it be like to be at peace with yourself?

And as we take just a few more settling breaths arriving to really feeling that place of connection between your body and the floor or your seat,

Maybe allowing the release of the shoulders and the jaw,

The freeing of the belly and the diaphragm.

Letting this question,

This curiosity become an exploration.

Opening yourself to imagining what it would feel like to be at peace,

To hold no weapons,

To be in no armoring,

Be without judgment,

Condemnation,

Shame,

Not use tactics like manipulation or guilt.

So let's go on a little journey and see what it would be like.

I'm going to take three heart breaths to open into the heart space.

So placing two fingers or your hand there.

We're going to inhale through the nose,

Imagining it to move through the heart space,

Holding at the top of the inhale.

And as we're holding,

Inviting this place in our heart to begin to open and melt.

And when you're ready,

Releasing the exhale out the mouth.

Again,

Holding at the bottom of the exhale and inviting the heart to melt.

Repeating that three times.

And now we're going to invoke some courageousness.

We've opened to our heart,

Bringing in the core,

Bringing in our courage.

It takes great courage to be willing to turn towards ourselves.

It takes great courage to be willing to take off the armoring we've put up against ourselves.

So allowing yourself to imagine what color courage would be today.

What's the vibration of courage?

And with each inhale,

Can you draw the color and the vibration in through the heart and allow them to fill the body?

And I invite you to see yourself as this courageous being.

Feel yourself full of courage.

We'll begin to walk deeper into our heart space.

I notice the beating of my heart picking up just a bit as I wonder what I might meet.

And I bring that vibration and light of courage to bolster me in knowing I am able to look and see the truth.

As we walk into the center of our heart,

We invite an image,

A vision,

A beautiful picture to come forward.

It might not seem like a beautiful picture at first,

But it is beautiful because it is telling us the truth we're ready to see now.

And the picture we're inviting to come forward is an image of the armoring,

A symbol of where we are against holding the energies of not enough,

Of judgment.

What do you notice if you invite your armoring to come forward?

Maybe it shows up like a suit of armor or a bed of nails or a straight jacket or just a brick.

Allow yourself to work with any image.

And if you're not seeing an image,

Just trust yourself to continue to invite the armoring to come forward.

Maybe you won't see it and you'll just feel it or you'll know it.

The most courageous act we could make in this moment would be to offer peace to ourselves by releasing this armor.

Maybe just a tiny,

Tiny bit of it.

Sometimes we worry that we won't know who we are if we're not judging ourselves.

Sometimes we worry that others will judge us more if we're not judging ourselves.

Sometimes we've just landed in disbelief that we are worthy,

That we are amazing,

That we're not a mistake.

But with every courageous act of releasing a bit of armoring,

Laying down a judgment,

Choosing peace with ourselves,

We open our capacity to remember and hold the truth of who we are as an active embodiment.

There's a million ways you could think about your infinite nature,

The truth of who you are as a full.

Right now I'm just going to invite you to imagine that you are a star and that with every bit of armoring you lay down,

You're able to see the shining,

You're able to see the light,

You're able to shine a bit brighter.

We're going to switch the image and just work with the same one together for a few breaths,

Actually imagining some armoring living right across the chest like a breastplate.

It's full of dings where it's taken jabs.

It's bent and disfigured and tarnished.

It's well worn.

I've seen many battles.

This breastplate,

It might have been needed for a while,

But it served its purpose.

And with hands full of courage streaming from my heart,

I began to unclasp it,

Unhooking it at the shoulders and the ribs.

And as I slide it down my arms,

I notice how tender the skin underneath feels as it has room to move that it hasn't before,

As it can feel light and air in a way that it hasn't before.

Perhaps we put our breastplates down on the floor and we get next to them.

And we lay with this piece of armoring.

This brings some words of thank you and love and gratitude and letting it know that you send it with love on its way.

Our armoring aren't bad.

They aren't wrong.

They are what we've chosen in the moment when we couldn't choose differently.

And as we open to experiencing more of life and to living from a heart-centered place,

We understand that we can let them go.

So maybe now we walk down towards the river.

We place our armor inside the river and begin to watch it float.

And as we turn back towards ourselves,

We return to the inquiry of what would it be like to live at peace.

So taking the next few breaths in silence to feel what peace with yourself would be like.

Beginning to follow the exhale.

As we swim up.

Returning your awareness to the center of your chest.

Returning to gratitude and appreciation for yourself.

That courageous act that you just went through and laying down judgment or shaming,

Blaming yourself and an opening to peace.

This invitation will extend past our mat.

Remembering this in every moment,

You'll have many opportunities as you go through your day to practice peace with yourself.

One of the most radical,

Rebellious,

Revolutionary acts you could be part of today would be to choose to love yourself and to not be violent in your emotions and in your thoughts with yourself.

And that is the invitation that I leave you with.

Go with radical,

Courageous love into your day.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you 💜 interesting symbol for me was a mermaid. I’m going to sit with that one. Something about fantasy.

I come back to this one and others by Elisha often as I know her words will land softly and illuminate my heart!

Ever feel like a guided meditation was written specifically for you? This was for me. Namaste

Exactly what I needed today...

Very intense and affectionate for being disarmed, thank you!

This meditation is one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had through guided experiences. It speaks to my artist archetype most of all. I was able to hold myself as I would a dear friend or wise teacher, with tenderness and gratitude. Namaste 💖

Very nice! Namaste.

Wonderful breakthrough to freedom!!

Wonderful! I felt the armour being lifted quite emotional. Thank you 💜

Excellent. Loved the imagery. Just what I needed today.

Wow, that was truly amazing! I was able to lay down many of the weapons against myself in a non judgmental way and the imagery really helped. I feel light, and more free! Thank you for this beautiful process. I know I will return to this one again and again when I need to shift my self doubt and judgment to return to connection with myself. 🙏