Today we're going to do a grounding and heart opening meditation practice.
This is one of the most powerful and direct ways that I've found to really arrive in the truest,
Kindest,
Most integrated and nourishing aspect of my human personality,
And my body,
And my lived experience on this earth.
When we can arrive in our body,
In our breath,
In our moment-to-moment,
Present-time experience,
And work with keeping our heart open,
Keeping ourself nourished and vitalized and present,
Something amazing can happen,
And we feel so good to be alive.
We feel so available and loving in relationship,
Both to ourself and to our world.
And we feel connected,
Which is something that we all long for,
Whether we know it or not.
So I invite you to start by just allowing your life force to arrive in your body.
There are many ways to do this.
One helpful way is to just imagine breathing your life force in from the past,
From the future,
Consciously retrieving your life force from any person or event or situation where it might be tethered.
With each in-breath,
Just feeling more and more of your awareness and your presence and your vitality returning to your body,
Filling up with your healthy self,
With your life force.
And on the exhale,
Just letting the earth hold you more and more and more,
Releasing tension,
Releasing the busy,
Agitated energy that's so easy to accumulate in our lives,
Letting gravity love you by letting it hold you deeper and deeper,
More and more fully,
Feeling the points of contact with the earth,
Your sit bones,
Tailbone,
Pelvic floor,
Your feet and your legs.
It's often helpful to imagine a golden bowl in your pelvis that holds your whole body,
Your physical body,
Your energetic body.
And from that rooted ground,
You can imagine your two sit bones and tailbone plugging down into the earth.
And from that strong root,
Allowing your spine to rise up effortlessly toward the crown of your head.
From this three-pronged socket of your two sit bones and tailbone plugging into the earth,
You can imagine your spine rising up like a stack of golden coins.
So we're coming into our body more and more,
Becoming more aware of the life force,
The breath,
The subtle movements in the body.
And with each exhale,
Just allowing the earth to hold us in this present moment of our life to nourish us exactly as we are.
You don't have to fight any part of yourself if you feel agitated or busy or tired.
Whatever's present is allowed to be here.
And it's being held by the earth,
Being held by this deeply rooted support that you're connecting to underneath you.
And now we're going to drop our awareness from our pelvic floor,
From that rooted three-pronged socket.
We're going to drop down into our grounding cord.
And as you study with me more and more,
You'll realize there's lots of ways to do grounding cords.
But today we're going to just visualize it's like a root,
Like a column of light that releases down from your pelvic floor into the earth.
And we're going to let that root drop.
Imagine it being quite luminous,
If that feels clear for you,
Like a golden luminous or pearlescent color.
Let it drop down about four feet underneath you.
We're tuning into the energy of the earth.
You don't necessarily have to imagine the basement or the foundation of wherever you are,
Or the rocks and the magma of the earth.
You can really just visualize this energetic,
Expansive,
Grounded,
Loving energy of the earth that your awareness is dropping down into.
And let's drop about 20 feet now.
Roots reaching down.
And as your awareness drops down to that depth,
You can start to breathe up into your pelvic floor from that depth.
So you're breathing the vitality and the nourishment and the life force of the earth up into your body,
Just like a tree receives its life force nourishment from the earth,
From its deep,
Deep roots,
Effortlessly rising up,
Soaking up into your body.
Drop 100 feet,
Breathing up from the depths,
200 feet,
400 feet,
Just dropping quickly now into the vast expanse,
The loving stability and space of Mother Earth.
You're keeping some of your awareness in your body,
But most of it is dropping in that depth.
And you're breathing up from that place into your body.
And as we drop thousands of feet into that primordial space,
Into the infinite expanse of the earth underneath us,
You start to feel there's a warmth there.
There's a loving,
Life-giving,
Powerful force that wants to nourish us,
And it can come just effortlessly up through our grounding cord up into the body.
You can imagine it's like a warm,
Liquid light that starts to permeate your pelvic floor,
Your low belly.
And I invite you to drop all the way into the infinite expanse of the earth,
And there's a spot with your name on it in the core.
In the core of that warmth and that love and that life force that's available there,
You can plug in to that spot with your name on it in present time and breathe up from that place into your body here on the earth.
Let it fill you.
Let it nourish you.
Let it rise up in your body,
Filling your pelvic bowl,
Saturating your tissues everywhere that you are in connection with the earth.
Feeling so grounded,
So open,
So supported.
And when we feel this much sensation and nourishment and stability in our body,
It's much easier to still the mind,
To stay present,
And to notice how we are and what's happening.
Let yourself fill up.
Let yourself be nourished.
In our modern culture,
We often feel so disconnected,
So undernourished,
So in our head and in our busy,
Busy,
Anxious minds.
One of my teachers would call it floating head syndrome in our western culture.
So just noticing what happens to your mind and your experience of your life when you allow yourself to be so rooted,
So supported,
Settling more and more into the support underneath you.
Breathing up life force and warmth and love from the depths into the personal space of your body,
Exactly as you are.
We don't need to perfect or improve any part of ourself to be loved by the earth,
To be loved by life.
You have always been and will always be enough,
Exactly as you are.
We can always have preferences for certain mind states,
Certain experiences,
Certain emotions over others.
That is human and natural.
But fundamentally,
No matter what weather pattern is arising in the sky of your body and your mind,
You are whole and well and enough,
No matter what is moving through.
So in this grounded,
Nourished connection with the earth,
Just allow whatever arises to move through.
The ocean doesn't mind if there's big waves or little waves.
The sky doesn't mind if there's dark,
Roiling clouds or fluffy white ones.
They're just arisings in the space.
They will arise and they will fall away.
You do not have to fight who and how you are in any given moment,
Especially when you feel grounded and supported by the earth underneath you.
So taking a few moments to focus on the depths of the earth,
The vitality and warmth there,
And really consciously breathing that up into your body.
Letting yourself open in your pelvic floor and to receive up into your spine,
Your organs.
And with that root plugged in,
The depths in that spot with your name on it,
Allowing yourself to visualize that from that root all the way up into your heart center,
The root of your heart center,
In the middle of your chest.
That root connects to this lotus bud in your heart.
Or you can imagine it as a rose or whatever flower you want.
I'll teach it as a rose today.
A rose bud in your heart center.
And with each inhale,
You receive that warmth and vitality of the earth up into the root of the bud,
Up into the base of your heart center.
And it fills up with this warm,
Loving energy on the inhale.
And on the exhale,
A petal opens on the bud of the rose.
And as that petal opens,
It sends kindness and light and compassion and vitality out into your body.
Inhale,
Receiving life force,
Warmth and love up into the center of the rose bud.
On the exhale,
Another petal opens,
Softening your heart,
Opening your heart gently as your heart is being so deeply nourished.
We are receiving and we're letting go.
We are receiving love and we're expressing love.
First,
We're just doing it toward ourself.
It's just spilling out into our body.
Spilling out,
Infusing out into every organ in your body,
Any points of tension or pain in the body.
As each petal opens in the rose,
Light and kindness just spill out into your body.
And this loving and self-compassion is infused and activated by the warmth and love of the earth coming up into you.
As you breathe that life force up into your nervous system,
Into your soma.
So I'll give you a few moments to practice this.
Inhaling,
Receiving,
Filling the heart up with light.
Exhale,
Releasing,
Letting go and sending kindness out to every cell.
And if your heart feels tight,
As it often does in our culture,
In our busy world,
That's okay.
Just let it receive this soft,
Gentle,
Loving,
Accepting energy.
And if the petals don't even want to open,
That's okay.
They can just swell and soften and be nourished.
We don't have to push ourself to feel or do anything right now.
Just allowing ourself to be exactly as we are.
If your petals of the rose in your heart center are opening,
Let even bigger petals open.
Even more petals,
More and more.
Let there be thousands of petals on this rose.
Let it fill your whole chest.
Let that kindness and compassion spill out beyond your body into the space around you.
And as your heart opens more and more,
You can allow it to extend kindness toward pain in the body,
Pain in the mind,
Painful memories that might be stored in your tissues.
It's like the sun shining on a shadow.
It starts to brighten and release the cold,
Stuck energy there,
Allowing it to be seen.
As it is said,
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
So we're letting the warm golden sun of our heart,
The radiant opening petals of our rose,
To just shine light and care on every cell of our body,
Every pattern in our mind stream,
However it is in this moment.
If you get lost in thought,
Just come back to your root.
Come back to that spot in the core of the earth with your name on it and just breathe up from that place.
And let that warmth and presence just come up into your heart and help it to open and receive.
It's like the earth or the divine is living through you as you.
It is loving through you as you.
Letting your heart open with that,
Knowing that vitality.
And if you find petals that don't want to open or spaces in your body or mind that seem to resist being shone upon or loved or warmed,
I might read you this quote from Rainer Marie Rilke,
We can explore using today for this.
I love this quote.
Be patient toward all that is unsettled or unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves,
Like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually,
Without noticing it,
Live along some distant day into the answer.
As the vitality of the earth comes up into your heart,
Love the questions themselves,
Love the constrictions,
Love the fear or the pain or whatever is here,
The agitation.
Live into the question of it.
See if you can extend some love and warmth to it,
Even if it's not ready to receive it.
Hold it like a book in a foreign tongue.
Allow it to be there,
Curious and kind.
And just keep receiving vitality and keep receiving life force and keep extending into the willingness to open.
There is a willingness to open.
There is a willingness to love.
Let your heart center fill up with that willingness,
That capacity.
And breathe.
Let the love pouring out of the petals of the rose of your heart embrace and shine on every part of you.
Filling your whole body,
Your whole field of energy around you.
You can let your heart get even bigger than your body.
Let it bloom all the way.
As my teacher Ajah Shanti says,
The biggest embrace of love you will ever make is to embrace yourself completely.
Then you will realize you have just embraced the whole universe and everything and everybody in it.
There's something so powerful that happens when we're willing to love ourself exactly as we are and to allow the earth and the space around us and the divine to love us exactly as we are.
No matter what weather pattern is arriving in our sky or no matter how busy the waves of our mind are,
That loving presence is always here.
And we can just release into it,
Can absorb it and live with that as our touchstone for our wholeness and our wellness.
And from there can come our compassion for ourself and for everyone else.
Breathing in,
Receiving life force up into your heart.
On the exhale,
Let the heart soften and open more and more.
Petal by petal and love any part that's not ready to open.
There's space for everything in the heart.
Very well done.
Just take a few moments to relax and you can let go of any visualization or technique.
And just notice how you are.
Notice if you can let go one more layer into the earth.
Notice the warmth and vitality and presence that might be more available in your body now.
Notice that your heart may feel like a living vital center inside of you.
A touchstone for wholeness and wellness now.
You can return to this practice whenever you would want,
Even in the midst of your day.
Just breathing into your heart,
Inviting it to soften.
Extending love and compassion toward yourself,
No matter what's arising in the space of your life.
May this practice serve you well.
May you have a beautiful day.
Enjoy yourself.
