So coming to this meditation means you're experiencing some stress and I'm going to take you through a sequence of very simple but very effective practices that work more or less immediately.
So first what I would like you to do is just stretch your limbs,
Stretch your arms,
Stretch your legs in any way you like,
Maybe move a little bit,
Any shaking that you like to do,
Shake it out of your fingers.
It can be very pleasant when you're stressed to stretch the muscles in your face so you can really open your mouth wide,
Stick out your tongue,
Open your eyes very wide,
Make any movements with your jaw,
With your facial muscles that give it a stretch.
We tend to have a lot of stress in our face when we're stressed so really allow yourself to make weird faces but just stretch,
Stretch your face.
You can also interlink your fingers and then push your palms away from you and then stretch your arms and really stretch your hands and fingers and when you do that if you stretch your arms like this so your fingers are interlinked and your palms are facing away from you,
You can really feel the stretch in all the joints so you can really extend the stretch through all your shoulder joints,
Through your elbow joints and your wrists.
Really stretch the stretch and so like this do any stretching that you like,
Any twists,
Any movements,
Any shaking out.
Very good.
And then when you're ready I invite you to slowly sit a bit more still but if your body wants to move then allow it to move.
There are no rules.
And the next thing I invite you to do is something called the physiological sigh and this kind of sigh immediately slows your heart rate down and regulate your nervous system and it goes like this,
It's very simple.
You take a full inhalation through your nose and when your lungs take a full inhalation through your nose and when your lungs are completely full you make some effort to draw in a little bit more air so it sounds something like this so that last extra little inhalation resets your nervous system and then you can just exhale through your mouth and you can even make a little sighing noise so you do the inhalation full inhalation then extra little bit when you're fully inhaled and then exhale allow that sigh to be audible and you can do that two or three times at your own pace and you already may notice now some more relaxation,
Some more calmness allow the facial muscles to really let go towards the floor allow your shoulders to drop down notice any tensing any bracing of muscles in your body and just allow them to relax as much as they can and then next what I want you to do is to find a presence anchor and a presence anchor is simply a place in your body it can also be a place in a room around you or an object but I suggest to find a place in your body where you feel some kind of groundedness security some kind of safety a pleasant place so just take a moment to find this anchor of presence of security groundedness and just know that this presence anchor is there for you you can be in that presence anchor so maybe it's your seat for instance where you can really feel gravity holding you or maybe it is the sensations of your breath going in and out of your body and allow yourself to enjoy this grounding secure feeling of the presence anchor breathe into it and if you haven't found it it's a perfect bridge to the next practice I would like you to do which can also be used as a presence anchor and that is a soothing self-connecting touch so what I like to do sometimes it happens automatically but now we're going to do it intentionally is to place one hand gently on your chest and one hand on your belly and if you didn't find a presence anchor this can be a very pleasant present presence anchor so have a a soft gentle touch on your chest and on your belly with your hands and just feel feel the warmth of this touch of this touch on your chest and on your belly and also feel the warmth and with your hands conversely you can feel the breathing that is happening and this kind of touch is also very pleasantly regulating your nervous system so allow with that touch and with your presence anchor maybe they are both the same thing allow more stillness to come allow more relaxation to come any amount maybe it's just a little bit maybe we're only moving the needle of stress a little bit down but then focus on that movement focus on that movement of less stress there's no such thing as small or big here just notice relaxation without judging how much you're relaxing just notice the slowing down the soothing touch with every second there's a little bit more release possible and as an added bonus what you can do is for just a few cycles here only if you want to as an invitation you can lengthen your inhalations a little bit and lengthen even more your exhalations so exhaling longer than inhaling is also a way to manage and reduce stress and to increase relaxation so if you want to do that practice of consciously breathing in preferably through your nose a bit longer but make sure that you exhale even longer so maybe four seconds in and six seconds out and see what that does and if you don't want to do that then just skip this one and keep pleasantly self-connecting and slowing down and then for the last part of this relaxation practice I'm going to play what I find a beautiful piece of gentle music and I invite you to just let go into listening and you can keep doing if you want the practices you can keep you may do some more stretches or you can repeat one or a few physiological sighs or connect more with your presence anchor or continue or again do the gentle touching of your chest and of your belly or you can just completely let go and let every effort go that will be my suggestion but you can choose you can let go completely and just listen to the music for about seven more minutes and when the music is over that will also be the end of this meditation
