Cultivating Inner Strength

You already have inner strength in abundance, and this meditation helps you remember that, and cultivate more! We are powerful beyond all measure, but we do need to believe this. This meditation will calm anxiety, ground you, empower a shift in perspective, and build your confidence. This practice is a featured meditation from my 'Confidence Boost Meditation Collection'. If you loved this meditation, you'll love the collection more!

Transcript

Relax in the dancer place Welcome to this Cultivating Inner Strength Meditation by Gabriella Demore. In this meditation, We're going to re-engage you with your inner strength, Your resilience, And your capacity to face life's challenges. You already have it all within you. This meditation is just going to help you get more in touch with all of that inner strength at your fingertips. Let's start by breathing deeply and extending our breath as much as we can. Breathing in through the nose. Breathing out through the nose or the mouth. And as you breathe in, Allow the belly to come out like a gentle balloon. And as you breathe out, Allow the belly to become empty, Squeezing it gently and bringing it in towards the spine, Making sure that you're fully expelling all of the air in your lungs. This helps you to have a nice deep inhalation on the next breath. Make sure your belly, Your ribs, And your chest feel full and at the top of the breath, Start a nice long exhalation, Fully expelling all of the air in your lungs. Continue to breathe deeply at your own pace. The mind will come in to distract you. It always does. Meditation simply notices, Chooses not to engage in those thoughts, And returns your awareness to your breath time and time again. Inhaling through the nose. Exhaling through the nose or the mouth. Allow each exhalation to be like a big internal sigh of relief. Allow your shoulders to drop a couple more millimeters. Allow the muscles in your face to relax. Allow your body to become a little bit heavier in the chair or the floor that you're sitting on. And just taking a moment to tune in to how you're feeling in this moment. Not getting caught up in the story or starting to worry. Simply notice on this day in this meditation, What's happening in my body, In my emotions, My belly, In my heart. How am I today? And just ask the inner critic to step aside for the next few moments as we come into a place of curiosity in this meditation. Becoming interested in ourselves and in our lives and in understanding ourselves in a different way. Let all of that worry or fear around being confident and strong and capable or worry about not being able to do this meditation properly. Just ask that you put the mind aside for the next few moments and allow us to explore with creativity freely. Take one more nice deep inhalation and exhalation. And first, Let's start to call to mind the quality or virtue or value, However you like to think of it, Of inner strength. What words and images and feelings come to mind as you think of inner strength? Bring to mind a vision of what inner strength would look like in your own life. Look at yourself as an outside being. Look at a version of yourself and say, Yes, They've got a very strong sense of self. That person has a lot of inner strength. I can see it on them. This just helps you to get a vision of what inner strength could look like. If that's too difficult, Think of somebody you know or admire that you feel has lots of inner strength and resilience. Someone who you feel is stronger or tougher than you. Just call them to mind and observe them. Now thinking about a definition in your own words of what inner strength would mean for you. This idea, This desire you've had for more inner strength. If you had to explain it to somebody else about what you're craving, What you wish you had more of, How would you explain that to people or simply to yourself? And lastly, If you had lots of inner strength, What would your own vision or goal be of what it would enable you to do? What would you do with this inner strength if you're able to cultivate it? What would you do differently and what would you cultivate? What would having all of this inner strength enable you to do? Remember to breathe deeply throughout this meditation. Return your awareness to your breath time and time again. And taking a moment now to breathe out any of those last expectations or fears about going into this meditation that you have. Any fears or worries about exploring yourself in this new way. Breathing out any self-doubt that you can't do this, That you can't visualize properly. Breathing out any sense of weakness or fear or imperfection. See that as your inner critic trying to get in your way, Another extension of your busy critical mind. Keep putting that main voice to the side. Return to your breath, To your beginner's mind. Return to your hope and desire to find this inner strength within you. To use our imagination, To visualize, To be creative and to be curious. It helps us flex that muscle out of the doing, Busy thinking, Strategic cortex part of the brain and into something a little more imaginative. So just do your best. Now I'd like you to focus on your inhalation. Trace the inhale through the nose. Observe the breath as it moves into your body. Gently breathing and moving your chest, Your ribs, Your belly. And as you continue to focus on your inhalation, I want you to start to imagine and visualize that you're breathing into the body from the fresh air outside a sense of inner strength. You may not know this or be completely familiar with it, But just do your best. Come to it with your beginner's mind. Breathe into the body, A sense of inner strength. Breathe it in on the inhalation and send it throughout your full physical body using your exhalation. It's as if you're drawing from a well of the outside world, Breathing it into the body, Then using the exhalation to spread that sense of inner strength all throughout your body from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. It's as if you are beginning to wear this sense of inner strength in your face, Your shoulders, Your posture. Continue to breathe in and cultivate inner strength. Bring it into the body. Allow your shoulders to drop a little bit more. Your chest and your breath is calm. Breathe it in and do your best to become as familiar as you can with this sense of inner strength. What would it feel like in the body? Imagine how would I feel and move if I felt completely full of inner strength, As if I had a well or reservoir that never ended, That I could tap into and draw from this well of strength at any time I needed it. That there's no scarcity, There's no fear of not being strong. There's no sense of weakness or lack of being incapable here in this moment. Continue to breathe in, Doing your best, Intensifying and exaggerating those sensations, Becoming as familiar as you can with that feeling of inner strength. Breathing it in and out all throughout the front of the body and the back of the body. And now we're going to use your own memory to intensify and add to our reservoir of strength. I'd like you to call to mind a time or situation or perhaps many times when you've personally overcome a difficult situation, A time or a person or an event where you had to draw on your inner strength and use it to overcome this challenge. Think of a memory or situations where inner strength was what you relied on to get you through the challenge. Call this scenario to mind and without getting stuck in the story or memories because perhaps this is a difficult thing for you to think of, Instead rewatch this movie as if you were only watching for the storyline of yourself demonstrating inner strength. Don't think about the challenges or how hard it was, Focus on the part of the story where you overcame this challenge, Where you demonstrated your inner strength, Where you felt strong and powerful and resilient. Continue to tune in and observe yourself and that strong sense of self you used. Reminding yourself that you have plenty of memories of inner strength at your disposal. What does inner strength look like in this memory? How did you behave and move and act? Maybe you didn't look very strong at all. Maybe you look like you were completely falling apart and yet you made it through. As you continue to focus on this memory, Start to tune into how it felt on the inside to use this inner strength to muster the courage to get up and face another day, Face a difficult person, The courage it took to say no or yes and how good it felt afterwards when you used your inner strength. You can ask yourself, How did you know that inner strength was present with you in that memory? Why did that particular memory come to mind? What does it feel like in the body? What did it feel like in the body? Did it feel powerful or persistent or courageous? How did it feel and live and cultivate in your body? And lastly, Just spend a moment thinking of your mind during this time. How despite the overwhelming stress or the difficulties, Ponder on how your mind created space for this sense of inner strength to come through, To propel you forward, To carry you through. Notice how the mind is fearful and scared and overwhelmed and yet inner strength was able to come through above all that, Face the challenge and triumph. I wonder, How did this strength remain in the body, In your self, Even though the mind was going crazy with stress and overwhelm and chaos? If it doesn't live in the mind, Where does your inner strength reside in the body? Where was it hiding? Where do you feel it most in the body? And if you needed to draw on your inner strength at another time, Where could you find it easily? And as the inner strength was awakened and cultivated and used, How did it speak to you and encourage you? What did it say as you were facing this challenge and triumphing? What were its words? Maybe we can do this, We have to do this, This is good for you, You're stronger than you believe. I'm going to be right here with you as we face this challenge. What did your inner strength say? What did it sound like? How did it encourage you and reassure you that it was going to be a lighthouse for you during that difficult time? Remind yourself of its encouraging and calming words that it said to you as it kept you pushing through along that journey. Becoming a little curious about this voice now. Whose voice does this sound like? Does it sound like you? Does it sound like somebody you love, You admire, Who encourages you frequently, Who supports you, Who believes in a bigger version of you than you can see for yourself? Or is the voice a part of you, A younger you, An older you, A wiser you, A stronger you? Who does that voice sound like? And now that you've remembered that you have this well, This reservoir of inner strength within you, I want you to focus on your inhalation again and intensify and exaggerate that feeling. Use your breath again. Even if it's just a very small part of you, Use the breath to breathe in, Intensify and exaggerate this feeling all throughout your body once again. Now we're using our own inner strength rather than drawing it from the outside world with our breath. This is yours. This has always been within you. This has been drawn on time and time again. Even if your mind tells you you're not a strong person, You're not confident, You're not clear. It's there within you. And we've just found it again in this meditation. And each time you do this meditation, You could draw on a different time, A different memory every single time, All of the different examples of strength that you've used in the various challenges of your life. Just send it throughout your body, Throughout every part of you. It is good for you. It is safe for you to do so. Notice if that inner critic comes in, Do your best to put all of those things aside. Even if this is really challenging your identity, Who you feel you are, Who you think you are, Allow yourself to feel strong and capable throughout your body. Remind yourself of your inner strength. Remind yourself of your inner strength. You can feel it rippling throughout your body, Every cell, Every pore, Every hair on your body is being touched by your memory of inner strength. Feeling it so strong and so powerfully now, It's almost as if you are levitating a few millimeters off your chair or the floor. If someone could see you now, They would see you as someone who is confident and strong and resilient. You walk more confidently, Your expression is clear and calm, Your posture is proud and strong. See this new version of yourself as having inner strength running throughout every part of your body. Dropping any need for worry or fear or criticism to come in from the mind. For now inner strength has taken over every part of you. See this new version of yourself now, Proud and filled with inner strength. And as you do this, Let's take a little journey into the next week of your life. If you were to fully embrace this new you with this cultivated awareness and remembering of your inner strength, As it ripples through your body, Watch yourself do the next week of your life differently. As if you are watching a little movie of the next week of your life, Observe this new you moving through every situation with a concrete and solidified and very familiar sense of inner strength throughout you. Notice how you speak to yourself and others, How you think, How you respond to every situation, How you get up in the morning and think about the day, How you do your life with this incredible remembering of your inner strength. Watch your posture, Watch your expression, Watch how your words change, How you speak clearly and confidently, Watch how you interact with others in a completely different way. And lastly, If you have an upcoming challenge in your life in the future, Something you've been worried about or even a recurring situation that always makes you feel weak, Choose something in the future that makes you nervous that you need inner strength to face and get through. And now I'd like you to imagine yourself completing this task or facing this person with this new and cultivated inner strength you have now become in touch with. Watch a different movie of yourself rather than from a fear or worry or weak place that you're anticipating. Watch an entirely new movie of yourself facing this future challenge now from this renewed and very grounded sense of inner strength you have cultivated. We're going to close this meditation shortly and come back to the present moment soon. But before we do, As a reminder to how you move in this meditation, How you feel, How you hear yourself, How you felt your inner strength. Just choose a few descriptive words that you can take away to remind yourself of this experience. It may be the sensation in the body you particularly resonated with, The words, How it sounded to speak to yourself, The posture, Your expression, Or how you interacted with others. Just remember a few things that can help you come back to this place within yourself at another time. How you'd remind yourself of your strength when the next challenge presents itself in your life, How you'd remind yourself of your inner strength the next time a challenge presents itself in your life. We're going to close this meditation now, So let go of any visualization and come back to your breath in the center of the body. Allow yourself to tune into your breath for a few more moments. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Remembering your body in this chair in this room. Noticing how you feel differently now at the end of the meditation than when we began. And when you're ready, Very slowly and very gently come back to your life, Remembering how much inner strength you have at your disposal. And if that's too hard to remember, Use your inhalation to breathe in that sense or memory of inner strength from the outside world on your inhalation, Breathing it fully throughout your body with the exhalation. Thank you for listening to this meditation. You're welcome.