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 overwhelm,
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 live on my IGTV page.
Now,
On to the meditation and coffee.
Good morning,
Good morning.
We are live for another meditation and coffee.
Let me just post the comments of what we are doing today.
Today's meditation and coffee is hilariously called Chill and the reason for that is because it's been absolutely mad,
Humid,
Hot,
35 degree,
Like 100 and whatever weather here in the UK for the past few days.
And today my coffee is still an iced coffee,
Precisely because of how hot it is.
Right now I'm sitting here with the windows closed because there are still planes flying over the house,
The flight path from Heathrow Airport is still over the house and that's not necessarily the best thing that you want when you're recording a guided meditation.
So I've got the windows closed and it is absolutely sweltering in here.
So there we go,
The things that we do for our meditation practice.
But I've got my iced coffee so I can't complain too much.
Good morning,
I hope that wherever you're listening to this or watching or joining us from you have also got your coffee,
Tea,
Chai,
Matcha,
Whatever it is that you start your day off with,
Let me know what it is that you are watching with,
Let me know what you're drinking.
As regular watchers will know,
This is genuinely my first cup of coffee of the day.
So,
Oh it's nice that it's an iced one.
And ironically,
Like I say,
The title of today's meditation is Chill.
And I kind of did that as a bit of a joke because of how hot it's been but also because today I think it's Wednesday,
It's midweek,
You might be feeling quite a lot of pressure in your work or just in life in general.
Maybe you had high hopes for what you were going to accomplish this week and it's already Wednesday and you're thinking like,
I haven't really got enough done as much as I wanted to,
Monday and Tuesday have already run away from me.
Or maybe you're thinking,
Oh my god,
I've got loads to do before the end of the week.
Maybe you're thinking that you really wish that it was Friday and it already feels as though you've had a whole week and you really need a break.
So,
You know,
Wednesday,
They don't call Wednesday hump day for nothing because it really is about getting over that hump.
So,
You know,
Today we're just going to do a really simple meditation that is designed to remind you that even though it is Wednesday,
Middle of the week,
Still got loads to do,
Maybe you haven't done as much as you wanted to this week.
And obviously,
I am mainly talking about myself when I say that.
But I do know from experience that if I'm struggling with something,
A lot of other people might be struggling with it too.
So yeah,
Today's meditation is really a simple one about how we're going to use our body to remind ourselves,
Excuse me,
Got a frog in my throat,
To remind ourselves that we can choose in many situations to relax,
To chill,
To give ourselves more space,
To allow ourselves to get into a mental and physical state where we actually do feel pretty relaxed.
And from that state,
We can then be more productive because we're not kind of holding ourselves in this kind of like tight,
Stressed out grip.
And we can actually choose,
Okay,
Right,
Feeling stressed,
Taking some distance on it,
Taking a step back.
Right,
Now I'm relaxed using these techniques.
What can I do?
What do I want to do?
How can I move forward from this period of stress and feeling like I haven't got done enough?
So long story short,
That's what we're doing today.
So if you're going to join us for the meditation,
I invite you to take one last sip of your coffee,
Water,
Tea,
Whatever it is that you've got in front of you,
Which I'm going to do.
And we are going to start the meditation.
So as usual,
I invite you to get into a position that feels comfortable,
Whether it's with your legs crossed or literally just however you want.
I always sit on the sofa to do these.
So I just allow myself to get comfortable and balanced and supporting your spine without leaning back too far.
I would encourage you to sit up for this meditation because it is about chilling,
It is about relaxing.
So if you're in a position where you might be tempted to fall straight back to sleep,
I advise you to maybe get a little bit more alert without adding any extra tension into it.
Of course,
Whenever we do meditation,
We want to be alert,
But not so alert that we're stressed or tense.
So to do that,
I invite you to notice your spine and make sure that it feels nice and straight and stretched out.
And opening your shoulders,
Allowing your chest to open and dropping your shoulders as well.
So that you are open,
Balanced and grounded,
But also feeling pretty relaxed.
Allowing yourself to melt into where you are sitting,
Noticing how it feels to be sitting here today.
Are there any textures you can feel?
Feel the gravity of your body sitting where you're sitting right now.
And allowing yourself to fill your lungs,
Open your chest,
Clear out those sinuses with some good deep breaths in through the nose.
And out through the mouth or the nose.
And you can close your eyes if it feels safe,
If it feels good,
Or allow yourself to leave them open with your gaze just slightly in front of you,
Allowing your eyes to glaze over slightly.
Now often when we sit,
Especially in silence,
If we're not used to doing it,
And we're someone who's always busy,
The first thing that we notice is that our mind starts going a bit crazy.
It shows us lots of thoughts,
It tells us lots of things we should be doing.
It starts to doubt ourselves,
It starts to think are we doing this right?
We start to notice things around us that could maybe start to distract us.
And that's completely normal.
Being distracted when you meditate is absolutely part of the process.
If you weren't distracted when you meditated it would be more strange because that's what our brain does.
So if you notice that you're distracted,
I invite you to bring your attention back to your body and how it feels to be sitting here as you are right now today in this moment.
And we're now going to do a body scan.
I'm going to talk you through it.
But we're going to do a body scan that is primarily intended to allow us to focus our attention on different parts of our body and then,
Yeah you guessed it,
Relax them.
We're going to chill.
This meditation is about chilling,
Learning to chill.
So I invite you to bring your attention now to the top of your head,
Literally the top of your head where your hair is.
Noticing how it feels.
Noticing any tension.
And as you continue to breathe in and out,
Using the breath,
Sending that breath to the top of your head.
And as you breathe out,
Allowing yourself to relax that part of your body.
If you've never done this before it might feel a bit strange.
But that's what we're practicing.
If you've never done it before,
That's great.
Coming to it as a beginner,
Perfect.
And even if you're not a beginner,
We can always practice these techniques.
So noticing the top of your head,
Noticing where it might be tense or tight,
And trying very deliberately,
Very gently,
To relax that part of your body.
Moving down to your eyebrows.
Doing the same thing.
Really tuning your attention in to that part of your body,
As if you have a little tiny torch and you're getting super curious,
Investigating this part of your body for areas of tension,
Areas that you might be tight or gripping.
And as you continue to breathe,
Trying,
If you can,
Without adding more tension into it of course,
Allowing those parts of your body to relax.
So allowing the muscles around your eyebrows to gently unclench and gently relax.
And the muscles around your eyes as well,
The eye sockets and your temples.
Those areas can hold a lot of tension,
Especially if we're someone that works at a computer all day.
Our eyes can hold a lot of tension.
Also I invite you to notice the muscles around your eyes,
Muscles around your temples,
Seeking out any areas of tension or tightness.
Relax them very deliberately and gently.
And continuing to do this as we follow the body down,
So your cheekbones and your jaw.
Breathing in and breathing out,
Allowing yourself to relax any tension there.
The chin and the rest of the jaw.
Your neck,
Muscles in our neck of course,
Can hold a huge amount of tension.
Maybe we spend a lot of time with our shoulders shrugged up towards our ears.
So just inviting you to notice that.
Notice any tension,
Tightness or gripping in your shoulder area.
And as you breathe in,
Breathing out,
Very very gently allowing yourself to release any tension.
Down your shoulders.
The top of your back.
Your arms,
Top of your arms.
Your elbows.
Your forearms as well.
And your wrists.
Maybe allow yourself to give yourself a little bit of a wrist exercise here,
As I'm doing.
We hold a lot of tension in our wrists,
Like I say especially if we spend a lot of time on the computer,
If we type a lot,
Or even if we just use our phones.
So allowing yourself to really relax your wrists.
And the top of your hands and your fingers as well.
And of course,
As usual,
Whenever you get distracted,
Perfectly normal,
Bring your attention back to the last part of your body that you notice really tuning into.
Practicing awareness of our body in this way is a practice.
Often we're not used to zoning in on these really individual parts of our body.
It feels a bit strange.
It can feel a bit challenging maybe.
Like we're not used to doing it.
And that's fine.
On my Instagram today I've posted something about how we're all beginners when we start something.
We suck at things usually when we first do them.
No one starts out being an expert and it's exactly the same with this.
So continuing to scan down your torso,
Your chest,
Side of your body,
Your belly and your lower back.
Areas that can carry a lot of tension.
Allowing yourself to continue to breathe deeply and noticing tension or tightness in these areas.
And as you breathe out,
Releasing it.
Allowing yourself to relax in those spaces.
From moving down to your hips.
Your hips can be an area of a lot of tension.
Often in yoga we do a lot of exercises to release tension in the hips because they carry us.
They carry our bodies,
We walk,
We sit up straight.
A lot of tension can collect in our hips and our lower back.
So I really invite you to spend some time noticing any tension or tightness in your hips.
Sending your breath there as you breathe out and allowing those muscles to relax.
Getting curious about what it feels like when you relax with a particular part of your body and mind.
And now moving down to your thighs.
Your inner and your outer thighs.
And your knees.
Knees as well,
Maybe somewhere that carries a lot of tension for you.
Maybe you have weak knees or maybe you do a lot of exercise.
So allowing your knees to really feel the benefits of this exercise.
And you are allowed to move by the way.
If you feel like you want to relax or shake out a part of your body when you're doing this,
Feel free.
This isn't statues,
We're not doing a meditation exercise where we're trying to stop ourselves from moving.
There are meditation exercises like that but this isn't one of them.
So feel free to shake it out or stretch or flex if you need to.
Moving down to your shins.
And moving your attention to your calves.
Calves as well can carry a lot of tension,
Especially if you do running or you work out.
Or even if you just walk around,
Our calves can really bear the brunt of a lot of our movement.
So again,
Really allowing yourself to notice if you have any tight or tense parts in your calves.
And moving down to your ankles and your achilles.
And again,
Allowing yourself to flex if you need to.
We're not robots,
We're humans,
We can move and flex.
Remembering to breathe and allowing your breath to be the thing that allows you to release the tension,
Allows you to relax as you go through this body scan.
Reaching the rest of your ankles,
The top of your foot,
The sole of your foot,
And your toes.
It might feel a bit strange to think that you're releasing tension in your toes and you're relaxing your toes,
But actually when you try and do it,
It actually feels pretty good.
So now I just invite you to check in any other areas where you are still noticing some tension.
I can still feel some in my hips.
And applying the same technique to those areas again,
Giving them another go round.
So breathing in and breathing out.
And trying again,
If it doesn't quite connect the first time and you think,
Oh no,
I still feel pretty tense there.
That's great,
Try again.
Breathe in and breathe out and really bring your attention to those areas and allowing the breath to release the tightness.
Now I invite you to bring your attention not to only one part of your body,
But if you can,
To your whole body.
Maybe imagining yourself in a bubble or imagining yourself bathed in warm light.
Just holding the whole of your body in this space and allowing your body to breathe itself.
It's a really wonderful phrase from the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein.
Allowing the body to breathe itself.
So as we continue to breathe in and out,
Holding your whole body in your attention,
Noticing what it feels like to just breathe in and out in your body today.
And remembering that each time you breathe out,
You can allow yourself to release another little bit of tension.
Let go of another area of tightness that you notice.
Checking in with your posture as well.
We're releasing parts of our body,
We're releasing tension yes,
But we still want to maintain a relatively alert,
Upright posture.
Meditation is not purely about relaxation,
It's also about staying alert and kind to ourselves.
Noticing.
So even as you relax,
Keeping your spine pretty straight,
Keeping your shoulders open,
Maybe your chin slightly turned to the sky.
Really feeling this space,
Feeling powerful and positive about who you are and the fact that you started your day or whenever you're doing this with just a little bit of time to check in with your tension,
With your tightness in your body and allowing yourself some time to let it go.
To relax,
To chill,
To just be.
Rather than always feeling as though you have to be doing all the time.
So now as we close out,
I invite you to take one more deep,
Deep breath.
And as you exhale this deep breath,
Really allowing yourself to get rid of any last remaining parts of tension or tightness in your body and maybe breathing out audibly so people sitting next to you,
If there was someone next to you,
They might be able to hear you.
So breathing in,
Breathing out,
Giving yourself permission to do that and drop any last parts of tension,
Any last remaining areas of tightness.
Let's do one more together.
In through the nose,
Sending breath to all those different areas,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Allowing the breath to be audible and really getting rid and allowing yourself to release and let go of any other areas of tension.
Do one more,
One more just to close out the meditation,
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
And as you do that last exhale,
I invite you to bring attention to your feet,
Noticing what it feels like to be grounded and relaxed and yeah,
A little bit more chilled this Wednesday morning as we finish this meditation.
And now if you had your eyes closed,
Feel free to open them,
Giving yourself a little bit of a stretch if you need to,
Coming back into the room,
Noticing how you feel now compared to when we started.
Let me know how that went,
Let me know if you feel even 5% more chill than you did when we started,
That's the goal.
I kind of like the metaphor of the coffee,
The iced coffee with this chilled meditation because yeah,
Coffee has got caffeine in it so it's supposed to wake you up and make you alert but also it's chilled,
It's iced so we're getting a little bit of both,
We're getting a little bit of alertness and waking up-ness but we're also getting some real calm,
Some real time to just be and chill and not get too worked up even though it is Wednesday and there's still loads to do and it's the middle of the week.
That's good,
That's very good,
I need to top it up with some more ice cubes but still pretty good.
So let me know,
Let me know how that went for you,
Let me know if you have any comments,
Questions,
Anything like that I'm always open to hearing from you and of course yeah,
As usual please do let me know if you have any requests for further meditations,
Anything that plays on your mind during the week or anything that you're particularly struggling with,
Let me know and yeah these meditations are free.
If you'd like to buy me a coffee to say thanks or to allow me to continue doing them for free you can do so,
Just go to my PayPal link paypal.
Me.
Me forward slash breathe like a badass that would be hugely appreciated.
I can keep myself in some iced coffee for a few more days which is always lovely.
Thank you,
Thank you for being here,
It's much appreciated,
It's really great to see you.
I hope that you find some time to chill throughout the rest of the day.
I also invite you to remember that when we do these techniques in formal meditation,
As in we're sitting down kind of really focusing on them,
A lot of the techniques that I focus on are ones that you can kind of remember as you're going about your life.
So even if you don't have time to do a 15 or a 20 minute meditation five times a day,
Which let's face it not many people do,
You can take the techniques and you can apply them very quickly.
So we were practicing breathing in and then as we breathe out allowing ourselves to release tension.
You can do that anywhere,
Anytime of day.
So if you're sitting in front of your computer and you notice that your shoulders are up by your ears.
Oh yeah,
I can breathe in and allow myself to release tension.
Okay,
Relax my shoulders carry on.
So there's a lot of different ways that you can bring these techniques into your daily life,
Even if you don't have time to meditate for an hour a day.
So yeah,
Just wanted to remind you of that.
So that that's me.
That's me for another session of meditation and coffee this morning.
Chill.
I hope that you find the time to chill.
I hope that maybe you can get some iced coffee or your own version of iced coffee if it's very hot where you are like it is here in the UK.
It'll probably be raining next week.
So I'm not complaining.
But you know,
The iced coffee is definitely needed.
So thank you so much.
Have a wonderful day.
It's been great to do this meditation with you.
Yeah,
I invite you to chill and have a wonderful day.
Thanks so much.
I'll see you tomorrow for another session of meditation and coffee.
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.
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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.
