Meditation & Coffee - Balance

You don’t have to be anything other than you are when you sit to meditate. You can arrive at the practice in whatever mood or mindset, and it’s ok. It will accept it. The challenge is finding a balance between alertness and awareness, and calm and relaxation and lack of judgement. This meditation uses a simple nature metaphor to allow us to practice this sense of balance - of “straight back, soft heart”. Enjoy!

Transcript

Hello! You are listening to Meditation and Coffee, The weekday meditation podcast that helps you start your day off calm, Aware, Intentional, Focused and most importantly, Awake. Because did you know that the word Buddha actually means awakened one? I'm Hannah, Your host and founder of the online meditation community Breathe Like a Badass and I am obsessed with starting the day with good coffee and seriously simple meditation. As a trained meditation teacher and a female entrepreneur, My mission is to help anxious yet ambitious women cut through overwhelmed negative self-talk, Constant comparison and fear so they can get the calm, Clarity and focus that they need to build happy, Fulfilling, Freedom filled businesses and lives. Meditation is not magic but it's a pretty good place to start. So whether your coffee is a shot of espresso, A latte decaf or even a tea or a chai, I invite you to join me every weekday to start your day off right. FYI, These sessions are recorded live on my Instagram page at Breathe Like a Badass so if you'd prefer to join in and watch them live, You can do so there every weekday morning between 8 and 8. 30am London time. The videos are also available after the lives on my IGTV page. Now on to the meditation and coffee. Good morning friends we are live. Yay. Let me write down what we're doing today. So today I've literally just called this meditation balance but another possible title for it was straight back soft belly or straight back soft heart. The idea is that there are two separate but obviously connected parts of when we meditate. There are two contrasting elements straight back soft belly, Straight back soft heart. And it's basically the idea that when we meditate we're trying to be alert but also relaxed. We're trying to be alert and awake but also remember to not take it too seriously, To come at it with a sense of playfulness, To come at it with a sense of relaxation. And I think this really goes to the heart of something that a lot of people do talk about with meditation which is that it's not just a relaxation hack, It's not just as an alternative to a massage, It's not about switching your brain off, It's not about emptying your mind, It's not about pretending that you don't have any issues, It doesn't mean that, It doesn't mean any of that. All it means is that we're giving ourselves a break to be with ourselves and to get to that place of balance where we're able to be alert and be aware and know ourselves and be alert to our issues and our mind and the kind of state of mind that we're in at that given moment. But then also be relaxed and be balanced about the way that we see it and not take it too seriously and foster a more compassionate and open way of looking at ourselves and looking at the world and other people as well. So there are those two kind of conflicting, You could say conflicting elements about when we meditate and it's really interesting from a practical point of view as well, This isn't just kind of theory, It's also from a practical point of view like how do we actually meditate when we sit down? What if we don't feel calm? What if we don't feel particularly zen when we sit down? What happens if we want to feel relaxed when we sit down and actually we feel the complete opposite? Does that mean we're doing it wrong? Or what happens if we feel really sleepy when we sit down and actually we're so relaxed and so tired and so exhausted that actually we do want to feel a little bit more alert when we sit down but actually we struggle to do that. And this meditation that we're going to do today is really just about practicing that balance, Practicing those two different conflicting elements of meditation and reminding us that when we sit we are at once trying to be alert, Be aware but also cultivate a kind of sense of curiosity and playfulness and kind of ease and not taking it too seriously. Of course I have got my coffee with me today so if you have yours I invite you to take a sip right now and join me in starting the day with this coffee and meditation of course. I've got my coffee in my Spanish mug today, It is bright yellow with beautiful bits of deep blue painted on the side, I did get it from Spain, Unfortunately I haven't been able to go this year because of all the Covid stuff which is a shame but you know lucky in so many other ways so I'm sure that I'll get there at some point. Yeah so this mug is reminding me of sunnier sunshiny times in Spain so it's a mug of joy this morning despite the fact that the weather in the UK has turned pretty cloudy and grey, Still pretty hot though. So without further ado that's enough about me and my coffee cup although this is meditation and coffee and as you know if you've listened to any of these sessions before you'll know that this is not designed to be just a pure meditation session. If it was I wouldn't do any of this pre-chat I would just go straight into the meditation, That's it but I feel that often it's useful to know why we're doing what we're doing, Why I'm using the techniques that I'm using and also just to have a bit of a chat as I start the day. So let me know what you're drinking, Tea, Coffee, Water, Chai, Matcha, If you're having this in the evening maybe you've got a glass of wine with you, Hey there's no judging. But we're just going to try and do this meditation, Practice that sense of balance and I also wanted to bring up the fact that I got this idea of doing this meditation today from a pack of mindfulness cards that I have. So this I'm holding up right now, A card that says straight back soft belly and it's a pack of mindfulness cards, I'm going to show you it. And it's just, I literally just got it off Amazon, It's a pack of mindfulness cards from a company called Mindfulness Everywhere. I'm not affiliated with it at all, I'd never even heard of it before I saw the cards on the internet but I thought they're really cool, They have like lots of different colours and they just have really simple little daily meditation mindfulness prompts just to remind you of some of the major principles and to help you kind of live a more mindful life. So yeah, Straight back soft belly is on this card so that's what we're going to do today because I kind of thought yeah, That's a good idea, Let's do that. So one way that we're going to do this is through nature metaphors. Now anyone who's seen any of these sessions before will know that I really love nature metaphors as a way of becoming more mindful. Nature metaphors have been shown to be really helpful for people suffering with anxiety and depression to help them describe what they're feeling without necessarily having the words to say oh well I feel anxious or whatever and they can use nature metaphors, They can talk about trees or rocks or grass or the sky or the weather to explain how they're feeling and that's one of the reasons why I think it's really useful. So take one last sip of your coffee or whatever you're drinking if you're joining in with us today and allow yourself to notice where you're sitting. Coming into position, Whatever that means to you, You can sit with your legs crossed or just whatever feels comfortable, Making sure that you're feeling balanced and noticing where you're sitting, Noticing what it feels like to be sitting here in your body today. Taking a couple of really good deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth and as you exhale allowing your shoulders to drop, Relaxing the skin of your face, Skin around your eyes, Skin of your jaw and your jawline and your neck. And now I invite you to close your eyes if you haven't already, If it feels safe but if not you can leave them open, Just looking a few feet in front of you, Allowing your eyes to glaze over. And now I invite you to bring your attention to your body and imagine that you are a beautiful tree in nature. And this is using the nature metaphor that I mentioned earlier. So imagining that you're a tree and what I mean by that is feeling the bottom part of your body as you sit here now, Imagining that they are your roots and that you're grounded and solid and secure and deep and heavy and you can feel the gravity and the balance of your roots really grounding you in place where you sit. Whatever that means to you, Noticing the feeling of sitting where you are, Noticing your hands perhaps on your lap or your knees, Your thighs, Your seat on the chair or the cushion and really allowing yourself to drop into this place. Feeling grounded, Feeling rooted, Noticing the gravity keeping you in place. And this is part of the groundedness part of meditation where we allow ourselves to be stable and rooted and find comfort in that sense of security and safety, Groundedness within our own body and really using those sensations as an anchor so that if and when we get distracted we can come back to this feeling of yep I'm sitting here today in my body safe, Secure, Balanced and grounded. And if you get distracted that's totally normal but you can just bring it back as soon as you notice to this feeling of real heaviness but in a positive way, Heaviness in a grounded way, In a secure way. And then just as the lower part of your body is acting as the roots of the tree, I now invite you to bring your attention to your spine, To your shoulders and to your head and the upper part of your body and imagining that that is the branches and the leaves of the tree. And imagining that there's a cool breeze blowing in the wind and that you can be open and allow yourself to respond to that breeze. So we're playing with opposites here, The bottom half very grounded, Very secure, Very rooted and the top half opening up allowing your spine to get long and open, Dropping your shoulders and allowing the top part of your body to be relaxed, To be open, To be like branches in the wind. It doesn't mean that you have to kind of move around as if there's wind but you can if you want to but it's more a feeling, It's more a lightness of touch, A lightness of attention on those parts of your body and maybe you lift your chin slightly to allow you to look up and notice this feeling of lightness and openness in the top part of your body even as you notice the groundedness and the gravity of the bottom part of your body. Maybe you take a few good deep breaths in and allow yourself to really open and inhale, Opening yourself up to this breeze, This cool breeze, This feeling just being leaves in the wind in the top part of your body. And again we're playing with opposites so the top part of your body very loose, Very open, Holding our practice with a sense of openness, Not gripping too hard onto it, Just noticing what's here, Noticing what it's like to be in our body right now, No pressure, Just open, Leaves, Leaves in the breeze, Leaves in the breeze, Very cool, Very open. But then also just when we feel like we might float away and completely be untethered we remind ourselves that we have the groundedness of the bottom part of our body too. The spine that connects those two parts, On the one hand grounded and solid and secure at the base, But on the other hand open, Loose, Turned towards the sky at the top. Maybe you drop your shoulders and open your chest out a little more too, Just reminding ourselves of this openness. And as we notice our entire body while we're doing this, We're reminded that this is what meditation can help us do. It can help us to get comfortable with these opposites, This feeling of groundedness on the one hand but openness on the other. It can also remind us that when we meditate we don't want to take it too seriously, We just want to show up and notice how our body feels right now with no judgement or harshness. And it also reminds us that we can take what we need from our meditation practice. So like I said earlier, If you're feeling sluggish, Maybe you focus with slightly more attention on the openness on the top of your body, The feeling of imagining that you've got a cool breeze running over you, To encourage you to feel more alert and awake during your practice and more curious about what's going on. Whereas maybe on the other end of the scale if you came to your practice feeling agitated, Feeling like you weren't calm or sort of grounded enough to meditate today, Then maybe we notice more what's going on in the bottom half. Maybe we really try to focus our attention on that rootedness, That balance, That gravity, That idea that we can be strong and secure in our body. So we show up and we bring our attention to our body and we notice what we need and we take what we need to achieve that balance between the two. So again I invite you to bring your attention to the bottom half of your body and just checking in with those areas that feel good, That feel grounded. Any area that feels particularly secure, Particularly rooted, Maybe your feet or your thighs or your hips, Rooting in to that area, Getting curious about what it feels like, Temperature, And now moving your attention up your torso and your spine and allowing yourself to open even more and noticing what that feels like. Noticing any areas of your body today that feel particularly loose, That feel open. Breathing cool breath and air into any areas that could do with a little more breeze, A little more openness. And now together just as we close I invite you to take some clean deep breaths in through the nose and imagining your breath entering your body and touching all those touch points so as it goes in through the nose we imagine the coolness of that breeze, That looseness. And as your breath travels down into your body deeper and deeper into your stomach, Noticing those areas of groundedness and rootedness too. And again as we exhale, Allowing the exhale to relax even more into those feelings of rootedness and groundedness, But also bringing a sense of ease and relaxation to the top part of our body, The areas that are open and loose like branches in the wind, Like leaves in the breeze. One more breath, Do it with you in through the nose, Hollowing out and exhaling. If you had your eyes closed you can open them now, Just coming back into the room, Little stretch if you need to. So yeah, Thank you so much for our practice today, That was a meditation on this idea of balance, This idea of coming to meditation as we are, Not trying to force it, And taking what we need and getting curious, But also reminding ourselves that we don't have to be this perfect picture of Zen when we meditate, Nor do we have to be super relaxed, But nor do we have to be crazy crazy alert, You know, Noticing every tiny thing as if we're sort of like playing a game of whack-a-mole. It's more balance, It's getting to that place of alertness, Yes, But also calm, But also curiosity and playfulness without being too serious or too intense about it. And it is a practice and it is a balance and it will feel different on different days, So maybe bookmark this practice and come back to it and notice how on different days it feels different, Easier maybe on some days more of a challenge on others. So thank you so much from me and my Spanish tile mug, I wish you a wonderful weekend, Let me know if you're watching this on the replay as well and let me know what you thought. Maybe you went to another image, Maybe a tree doesn't work for you, Maybe you found yourself feeling as though you were sitting on a mountaintop or whatever visual images came to mind, I'd love to know, Let me know. I will be taking a week off from doing meditation and coffee, I'm going on holiday next week for the first time since Christmas 2019, Which is crazy, So I'll be taking a week off, There won't be any meditation and coffee sessions next week, However you're welcome to go back through the catalogue, There's nearly 40 meditation and coffee sessions on my IDTV or on Insight Timer now, So if you're wanting to continue your practice I would love to have you, Go ahead and listen to those replays and comment on them, Let me know what you think, Give me your feedback, Give me your constructive criticism and I will see it all when I get back from holiday and I'll incorporate it into our future sessions. So thanks so much for being here, Have a wonderful day, A wonderful weekend and a brilliant next week and I'll see you here again in a week's time. Have a great day, Thanks so much, Bye bye bye. That's it for today, Thanks so much for listening and spending your morning with me. If you like this podcast and you are as obsessed with coffee and maybe meditation as I am, Please go ahead and leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you normally listen as it helps spread the word and get the message out to more brilliant women just like us who need it. You can also share with your friends on Instagram tagging me at Breathe Like a Badass, I always love to see you there. If you like this and you'd like to hear more from me and Breathe Like a Badass on how to use meditation to get the calm, Clarity and focus you need to build a happy, Fulfilling, Freedom filled business and life, Head on over to my other full length interview style podcast, Just search Breathe Like a Badass anywhere that you normally listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you for the next one.