Welcome to this practice for compassionately building your emotional resilience.
I will shortly be taking you through a sequence that will guide you into deep relaxation and help you to gently explore and process your emotions and cultivate the inner strength that you have through the somatic rest and self-compassion techniques.
Before we start,
I would like to invite you to subscribe so that you get early access to my new practices.
I would be delighted to have you in the Wellness Words community.
Make yourself comfortable,
And take a few moments to move into a position that feels restful and cosy.
Notice here if there is any tension or discomfort that you are accepting,
And see if you can make a small movement to just make yourself a little more comfortable in this moment.
Notice the position of your tongue and move it into a more relaxed position.
At the same time,
Relax down the jaw so your teeth are slightly apart.
Release any expression from your eyebrows and allow your face to just relax back.
Now notice where you feel the breath in your body without changing anything,
Just noticing.
Maybe in your chest,
Nostrils or your stomach.
Just rest here with this sensation of your body being breathed,
Just noticing as you rest back.
With your attention still placed on your breath,
On your next exhale,
Exhale out through your mouth in three parts,
Closing your lips to briefly pause your breath after each part.
Take another comfortable inhale,
And repeat the exhale in three parts again,
This time imagining that the first part of your exhale is exhaling from the top of your body.
Pause for a moment,
Exhale from the middle of your body,
Brief pause,
And exhale from the base of your body.
One more time,
Inhale,
And feel the exhale cleansing the top of your body,
Pause,
Middle of the body,
Pause,
And finally the base of your body cleansed by the exhale.
Allow your breath to return to normal now,
And drift your focus from your breath and into your mind's eye.
Become aware of any expectations you may have placed on yourself for this practice.
Imagine these expectations are like stickers that you have placed on your body.
One by one,
As you bring the expectations into your conscious awareness,
Allow the stickers to unpeel.
It may be that you expect a problem to be fixed if you practice,
Or you may be expecting a feeling of relief.
Just allow yourself to unpeel these expectations,
As they can disrupt your mind body's emotional processing.
Instead of holding expectation,
Vow to allow your mind body the spaciousness to process in whatever way it needs.
If this resonates with you,
You may wish to set this as your sankalpa,
Or your intention for the practice.
I release all expectations and offer my mind body the spaciousness to process emotions without expectation.
Allow your intention to sit with you for just a moment,
And now release your intention and drop your attention into your body,
Allowing your attention to guide you to your sensations in your body.
As you rest back here,
Allow yourself to be drawn to whatever your attention feels like drawing you to,
Whatever sensation in your body.
As you experience the sensations,
Remain resting in stillness,
And in your mind's eye,
Put some words to the quality of sensation that you're feeling.
It could be tightness,
Churning,
Jitteriness,
Or even spaciousness.
Without any judgement,
Allow yourself to use some neutral descriptors to describe the quality of sensation that you're feeling in your body.
Pick one of the descriptors and bring to your mind a time where this word was used to describe a pleasant experience that you have had.
For example,
The feeling of constriction when a loved one gives you a big hug and you feel the constriction is actually enveloping and comforting.
If you find yourself trying to edit any imagery or place judgement,
That is okay and normal,
But simply remind yourself to release this judgement and allow your mind to process the sensations with whatever words and imagery come to mind.
This allows your mind to connect with your body,
To process as you rest back here and watch with no judgement.
Drift your attention back to the sensations within your body,
Imagining that your attention is like a vast lake of water that becomes choppy with judgement and expectation.
And the sensations in your body are like sediment in the water,
Slowly becoming more still in the bed of the lake as your attention settles from judgement and moves to acceptance.
As you rest here,
Allow the sediment of sensation to be there,
But allow it to settle to the bottom of the lake,
Allowing the water to look cleaner as you rest back into stillness and allow the sensations to be just as they are within the lake of acceptance.
And as you rotate your awareness around each energy centre,
Imagine that simple awareness allows your sensation sediment to settle back down,
Cleaning the lake of consciousness and bringing clarity and ease into your experience as you rest deeply in stillness.
Place your awareness on this space between your eyebrows,
The third eye centre,
And feel into any sensations that you experience at your third eye centre.
Drift your awareness down to the pit of the throat,
The heart centre,
And feel into any sensation of movement or rhythm at your heart centre.
Allowing yourself to rest here deeply as you notice the sensations residing at your heart centre.
Drift your awareness down to your navel centre,
Lower abdomen.
Rotate awareness to the back of your body,
Just beyond the tip of the tailbone,
The base of the spine,
And feel into any sensations you experience here at the base of your spine.
Allow your attention now to rest at the lower abdomen in the front body,
Navel centre.
Feel the energy and sensation at your navel centre,
Your heart centre.
Feeling any rhythm at your heart centre,
Pit of the throat,
Your eyebrow centre.
Drift your attention up to the crown of the head and sense into any sensations at the crown of your head.
Now imagine you could feel the energy just above the crown of your head.
Sense into any sensation of energy just above your physical body.
Visualise this energy as a radiant violet light shining above the crown of your head,
All the way onto your body.
Feel this light shining in as much detail as you can.
Know that this is an energy layer beyond the physical body,
So allow this radiant violet light to shine bright with self-acceptance and compassion for your very physical experience of human emotion.
Allow this light to shower you with a sense that it is okay to have the emotions that you have,
And you are okay just as you are.
Rest here deeply with comfort of emotional acceptance.
Resting deeply,
Restoring your energy.
Allow the violet light to expand as you rest deeper and deeper.
Now drift your attention onto your breath.
There is no need to change the shape or the rhythm of your breath here,
Simply allow it to be exactly as it is.
As you breathe in,
Imagine a sense of clarity washing over your mind,
Bringing a sense of awareness and understanding.
As you exhale,
Visualise the release of mental clutter or tension,
Allowing your thoughts to dissolve and dissipate with your exhale.
Inhale understanding,
Exhale mental tension.
Resting deeply as you inhale understanding and exhale tension.
One more time,
Inhale understanding and awareness,
Feeling it through your entire body.
And exhale tension,
Allowing the body to fully release to the earth beneath you,
Feeling the heaviness of release.
Allow yourself to be still and restful,
Knowing that your mind body is processing whatever it needs to process,
And you have created this space for your entire being in deep somatic rest.
Imagine you're opening a beautiful door to self-gratitude.
As you open the door,
A beautiful yet calming sensation of thankfulness glows onto you.
Feel the deep gratitude energising you,
A huge smile washing over your face.
This door represents the gratitude you have for yourself,
For creating this experience of deep somatic rest for yourself.
Bask here in the beauty of accepting yourself exactly as you are in this moment,
Resting back in your true nature.
In this moment,
Be reminded of your sankalpa,
Your intention for today's practice.
I release all expectations and offer my mind body the spaciousness to process emotions without expectation.
Rest here deeply in the knowing that you have honoured this vow to yourself today by practising,
And allow yourself to rest in the gratitude you have for yourself for upholding this promise to yourself.
Whenever you're ready,
With your eyes closed,
Begin to bring in a sense of the environment around you.
Listen in to any sounds,
And focus in on my voice as you become re-attuned to the external world.
Take a deep breath in through your nose,
And try and pick up some sense in your environment.
With your eyes still closed,
Bring one of your fingers to your thumb,
And gently rhythmically tap your finger and thumb together.
As you're doing this,
Focus in on this self-compassionate cocooned state that you have created for yourself.
Continuing to tap your finger and thumb together as you feel this deep gratitude and self-compassion for yourself.
Allow yourself to emotionally process the events in your life and in your day.
If you're new to my practices,
This action is an anchor that rewires your brain to bring in this state of relaxation whenever you tap your finger and thumb together.
This may require a few sessions to fully rewire the neurons to associate the tapping motion with this regulated state,
But once it is connected in your mind,
You can use this anchor to bring in this state of gratitude and nervous system regulation whenever you need it in your waking life.
Now begin to gently move the rest of your body in whatever way feels wakeful to you.
Just go slowly and lightly,
Moving intentionally with ease.
Your practice is now complete,
So when you're ready,
Open your eyes and allow yourself to just adjust for a moment to being awake and present.
I hope you have enjoyed this practice today.
Recently I've had an influx of subscribers and followers,
And I've had loads of lovely comments on Insight Timer.
So I'd like to say a thank you to each and every one of you for sharing this space and giving me this opportunity to bring you my unique practices that combine yoga nidra with somatic rest techniques.
I'd love to know where you're practicing from today and your experience of this practice.
So drop me a comment below sharing where you are today,
I'm looking forward to seeing where everyone is in the world.
And I'd like to share this invitation with you to subscribe if you haven't already,
As each subscriber moves me closer to my goal of sharing these life changing practices to more and more people.
Thank you so much for being here today,
And whenever you're looking to practice next,
I'm here on the wellness words.
