Meditation & Coffee - Relax Into It

How to use our breath and body to balance alertness and relaxation, and begin our day with softness and ease, instead of tension and stress. Meditation isn't purely about relaxation...it's also about alertness. But with a bit of practice, we can combine the two for great results!

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 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 lives on my IGTV page. Now, On to the meditation and coffee. Hello friends, I believe that we are live. Yeah, Looks good to me. Happy Thursday, I have got my cup of coffee, Of course. Starting the day, Today's meditation really is about allowing ourselves to relax into the day and start with ease rather than hurtling headlong into everything that we've got to do. So this is a key part of why I even do these meditation and coffee sessions in the first place because it's that tension between using meditation as a way of being relaxed and being calm, Which is what a lot of people think of it as. They think of it as a relaxation tool, Stress relief, And meditation can be a wonderful stress relief tool. Hello to people joining the live, Great to see you. So meditation can be a really great relaxation tool, But it's also about that tension between allowing it to help you be more alert as well. So that was one of the reasons why I even started this series meditation and coffee because I wanted to highlight that tension. And I say tension as if it sounds like a bad thing, But it's not. It's more just this, I guess calling it a paradox is maybe more appropriate. Calling it this balance between finding a state of mind that is alert and that is open and that is ready to face the day and confident and full of self belief. And then flipping that with finding a sense of ease and allowing your confidence to be relaxed and to be kind of quietly confident. And it's about this feeling that you have in your own mind about what you can achieve and being able to use that sense of relaxation and that sense of harmony and feeling good within your own self and using that as the foundation upon which you build everything else. So in that sense, We are using meditation, Yes, As a relaxation tool. Yes, As a way to get calm and get in touch with ourselves and allow ourselves to feel good and get ourselves some very much needed mental space. But we also are using that mental space as the foundation and the calm on which we can then build everything else in our life that is maybe not so calm, That is maybe more ambitious or we actually want to get stuff done or we do want to be really great and successful. So it's that balance between those two things and I truly believe that meditation is a tool that can help us to do those things and that it doesn't have to be separate. Our state of mind when we meditate is not separate to wanting to achieve things in our life and actually one will lead to the other. So that's why today's meditation is about relaxation but it's relaxation in a way that's going to allow us to start the day with clarity and self-belief. So if you haven't already, I invite you to take one last sip of your coffee and then maybe put it down somewhere where you can grab it later and I would invite you to get into a comfortable position. So whether that's with your legs crossed or just sitting up on the sofa or cushion or floor, Wherever you are. And as usual with my meditations, I invite you to bring your attention to your breath and not breathing in any particular special way, Just noticing how you would be breathing anyway. So noticing how it feels in through the nose, Out through the mouth. Allowing yourself to notice the breath coming in and the breath going out. And really the subject of today's meditation is the word softness. Allowing yourself to come into softness, To notice softness. Often if we wake up in the morning and we've got lots to do, We can start the day feeling sharp and a bit anxious and a bit frazzled. And today's meditation is really inspired by wanting to allow our body as we sit here now to be grounded and relaxed. So you're balanced where you are, Grounded, Continuing to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. And we're going to do a body scan and I'll talk you through it and I invite you to notice any areas of tension as we go down through the body from the top of the head all the way to the toes. And we're going to notice the tension and we're almost going to squeeze that part of our body as we go. So squeezing the top of your head as much as you can and your forehead and your eyebrows and maybe even your temples and squeezing, Squeezing and then letting it relax. Letting it relax, Melting the muscles, Allowing them to just sit with how they are naturally. So we're going to repeat that going down the body. So now we're going to do the face. Squeeze the face. Squeeze it and it's quite hard for me to do and also speak but squeezing up my eyes, My mouth, My jaw, Getting really tense. Holding it and then allowing it to relax. And noticing that feeling, That immediate feeling as soon as you let it relax. How does it feel different to how it did before? Are there any areas or muscles that you notice that you didn't even realize were tense before, Maybe? Now we're going to go down the body so the neck and the shoulders. Squeeze, Squeeze, Squeeze, Tense, Tense, Tense. My muscles are quite sore from a workout I did yesterday so I can feel this even more. Squeeze, Squeeze, Squeeze and breathe out, Let it relax. And as you let it relax I invite you to match your actions with your breath and allowing yourself to breathe deeply as you let the muscles relax. And noticing the physical sensation of how it feels to tense up which is maybe our natural state. Many of us go around with our shoulders raised high and tense and we forget that we have the power to physically relax those places in our body. So going down the body, Tensing up the arms, Tensing up the chest. Feeling it, Those muscles contracting as much as you can. And breathing out and letting it relax. Letting the breath come out slowly from your body. You can almost imagine your body is hollow if you like, If that works for you. And each time you relax allowing your breath to fill that space, To fill those muscles that were tense before. And noticing the textures that you can feel as well, Perhaps the softness of your t-shirt or your trousers, The softness of where you're sitting, The feel of your body, The feel of maybe the breeze on your skin wherever you're sitting. Noticing these little moments of softness and relaxation, Even as we prepare for our busy day. Going down the body, Tensing our legs, Tensing our hip area, Tensing where we're sitting, Tensing our sit bones and letting it relax. Now a lot of us hold tension in our hips so perhaps you want to do that bit of the exercise again. And that can feel really good, Relaxing tension in your hips. Now I always invite people to close their eyes when they meditate with me if it feels comfortable but for this meditation if you find yourself getting sleepy, If you find yourself relaxing a little too much, That's fine. You can open your eyes if it helps. Open them, If it helps you to stay awake, You may not need to, But open them and just keep them downcast looking just ahead of you. And using that as something else that you notice, It's really up to you. So going down the body again and now tensing the legs, Trying as much as possible to train your attention on the legs so that you really can target these muscles and tense, Tense, Tense, Tense, Tense, Tense, Tense, Maybe all the way into your ankles and your feet and your toes. Let it relax. And I'm quite a visual person so when I let it relax I think of perhaps myself sitting on a cloud. I imagine that I'm on a fluffy cloud and it's nice and soft or maybe marshmallow. You can also imagine an image such as melted chocolate being poured onto a surface or perhaps you imagine yourself in a warm bath and you're allowing yourself to relax into that. This is really about giving yourself permission to start the day with ease and softness and noticing each part of your body in turn and how it feels to give yourself space to not always be charging around, Pushing through, Starting the day headlong into everything we've got to get done and giving ourselves this space to notice our body, Relaxing specific parts of it where we feel tension and using that as the calm foundation upon which we build the rest of our day. And you don't always have to do the tensing up and relaxing exercise in turn in order. If you notice for example that you're getting a bit of a headache later in the day or that your shoulders are starting to get tense and rise up again or perhaps you hold a lot of tension in your chest or in your hips, Training your attention and learning how to move your attention to these specific areas means that it's more easy for you to do it later in the day. So for example I can feel a little headache kind of forming on one side of my head so I can use this exercise to really train my attention on that part of my head and really intentionally relax it. Noticing the softness, Noticing what it feels like to allow that part of my body to just let go. Just relax, Relax into it. And that could already go a really long way to reducing stress, Reducing pain and allowing ourselves to not carry around so much tension in the body. And reminding ourselves that we have permission to do the day in a way that feels good, We don't have to be rushing around super stressed all the time. Even if we've got a huge to-do list. So I invite you just before we close to feel your whole body and notice if there are any areas of tension that you can still feel and practice sending awareness to those areas and purposefully relaxing them. Using your breath as a tool to physically relax those areas where you notice tension. And if you had your eyes closed you can now open them. Sitting back, Dropping the shoulders, Stretching out the neck if it needs it. So that was an exercise in noticing how we can relax our body and using it as a tool to notice this tension, This balance between alertness and awareness and relaxation. And reminding ourselves that we don't always have to be so damn hard on ourselves all the time. And that if we notice we're stressed, If we notice areas of tension, Whether mentally or physically, We can use our breath and our body as a pretty powerful tool actually to allow ourselves to just relax into softness and realise that that is absolutely okay. So from me to you, Thank you so much for being here. Raising my coffee to you and saying thanks for joining. Let me know if you have any questions about that and I would love to know how it went for you. And as usual I will let you know that I am offering my one to one coaching packages which are open this week. So if you are interested in working with me one to one to use these techniques but in a really personalised bespoke way to you and your life and what you need and help you get clarity and focus and giving yourself a damn break in your own life, Then I do one to one coaching. So please do send me a DM or let me know if you'd be interested and we can chat. Thank you, I'm so glad, I'm really glad, Yeah me too, Honestly like me too. Let's do the day in a relaxed, Positive, Aware but soft kind way. That's what it's all about. So thank you so much for joining, I'm going to love you and leave you. Have a wonderful day, Have a brilliant coffee or tea or whatever you're taking and I really hope to see you back here tomorrow. Thanks so much, Have a great day. 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.

Reviews

Thank you for this relaxing and mood lifting medication. I found the body scan and tensing and relaxing of our different body parts very helpful.