For this meditation,
We want your body to be nice and open.
Whether you're sitting or you're lying down,
Make sure that your pelvis is nice and open.
So if you're sitting with your legs crossed,
Make sure that you're comfortable.
If you're sitting in a chair,
Separate your feet at least as wide as your shoulders.
If you're lying down,
Just make sure not to cross your legs.
Also,
You want your chest to be nice and open.
So if you're sitting,
You can be a little bit upright.
Don't worry about being super straight or elongated spine or anything.
But just let your chest be open.
Let your belly be free.
And lastly,
Make sure that your head is comfortable.
So if you're sitting,
Your head is nicely placed,
Not hanging forward or hanging back.
If you're lying down,
Just make sure it's supported well.
In this meditation,
We're going to focus on what I call the three hearts.
And if you think about your physical body heart for a moment,
Its main function is to circulate blood.
The old blood comes in and gets oxygenated and flows back out into your body.
The flow is important.
It's important that it doesn't get blocked.
And that that heart remains healthy.
In yoga practice,
We talk about the subtle body,
The energetic body.
And we have energy centers,
Circulation centers in that subtle body too.
And same way,
We want to keep them open,
Circulating,
Free,
Healthy,
Vibrant.
Sometimes you can meditate on chakras.
The same idea.
In this meditation,
We're going to focus on three main centers,
What I call the lower middle and upper heart.
When your body's comfortable,
Let your eyes close.
Start taking some nice full breaths in and out through your nose.
Really feel your body receiving the breath.
And you can imagine your exhalation moving all the way down through you,
All the way out through your feet and your inhalation rising all the way through you,
Rising all the way up through the top of your head.
We'll begin this meditation with the lower heart,
Which is an energy center seated in the pelvis.
Like from the belly button all the way down,
Down beyond the physical body.
And imagine it like an orb,
An orb of energy.
See if you can imagine bringing the energy of your breath down into this lower heart,
Down into your pelvis.
This is what we call the lower heart.
If you follow your inhalation upward from your pelvis,
Right into the center of your chest,
This is what we call the middle heart.
Again,
You can imagine it like an orb of energy centered right around the center of your sternum bone,
Right in the middle of your chest.
You can imagine your breath moving in this middle heart.
It's easy because the actual air of your breath is moving in this region of your body.
And then if you follow your inhalation once again from your chest,
Right up to that space between your eyebrows,
What is sometimes called the Anya chakra,
The third eye.
And deeper in the head,
Not there on the surface of your forehead,
But deeper in,
You can imagine the center of what we call the upper heart.
Again,
An orb of energy might even be bigger than your physical head.
I find it really helps to relax the face and relax that space between the eyebrows to get in touch with the upper heart.
These are the three centers we'll be focusing on.
After your next inhalation,
Follow your exhalation all the way down through the middle of you,
All the way down to that lower heart.
See if you can actually feel that region of your body.
See if you can imagine the energy of your breath moving down to that region of your body.
It's almost like we're breathing through gills that are in our hip creases,
Breathing through our pelvis.
The energy of this lower heart,
The energy of our connection to the earth,
Connection to our body,
Connection to pleasure,
Connection to survival,
Our sexuality.
It's our beautiful,
Savage,
Untamed animal energy.
We all have it.
The energy of the lower heart radiates all the way through the lower back and the sacrum,
The space of the womb and female body people,
All of the sex organs,
The hip bones.
This energy radiates all the way down our legs,
All the way to the soles of our feet.
And we're dancing and stomping our feet,
Running,
Holding on to a horse,
That energy of the legs.
Just keep bringing the energy of your breath there.
And with it,
The intention to open,
The intention to promote circulation,
The intention to activate the deep and ancient primal wild energy,
Not wild in the super active sense,
But wild in the untamed sense.
It's like the wilderness below the belly button.
Just breathe into it and own that wild power.
There's all kinds of things that you can experience here.
It can be uncomfortable.
It can be numb.
It can feel like the activation of these energies is turning you on or making your body want to move.
Through this meditation,
We're going to sit with all of it.
Just keep breathing into it.
Keep opening into it.
Entering it.
Put a little more energy in your breath.
You can imagine that energy if there is any stuckness,
If there is any blockedness.
The energy of the breath can help to move it.
You might even move your body a little bit to help it.
You might even put some velocity in your breath.
This is our connection to the earth.
This is our connection to our human,
Animal,
Physical bodied experience of life.
So important.
For a lot of us,
There is tremendous healing that has to take place in this lower heart.
We open to that healing now.
Breathe into that orb of energy.
Then leaving it and leaving it activated,
Leaving it open,
Leaving it circulating.
Bring your attention up.
Ride your inhalation up into the middle heart.
It's not unconnected from the lower heart.
The continuation of this energy rising up through you,
Up through your belly.
It's like a fire that starts below and spreads upwards.
The center of your chest is the center of this middle heart.
This middle heart here in the center of your chest,
It does include your physical body heart,
Your lungs.
Its energy radiates through the mid back,
Down through the diaphragm.
It mixes with the energy of the lower heart in the belly.
Its energy radiates up through the armpits,
Down through the arms,
All the way through the palms of the hands.
The energy radiates through the breasts of female bodied people.
It is the energy of love.
It's the energy of service radiating through our arms that embrace our hands that serve.
This middle heart also includes our emotional intelligence,
Our conscious connectedness to other beings and virtues like compassion and generosity,
Forgiveness.
The energy of the middle heart is very human.
So we can bring that warm,
Fiery,
Wild energy from below up into this middle heart.
Just breathe and open and bring an intention of opening,
An intention of circulation.
You can let there be gentle breath or more deliberate breath or even that breath with some velocity.
This center gets blocked when our heart is broken.
When we live in a world that doesn't always recognize generosity,
That doesn't always act with compassion.
The middle heart is a center of connectedness.
When we're alone,
When we're lonely,
When we're abandoned or feel abandoned,
The center freezes,
The center contracts.
When this center opens and softens,
Sometimes it feels like you're about to cry.
Sometimes it helps to soften the throat,
To soften even the lips.
It's a deep connection between the lips and this middle heart.
Make sure your mouth is soft,
So soft it's even open a little bit.
The lower heart,
Wild,
The middle heart,
So good,
So loving,
So open.
You're going to leave this middle heart in this state of activation,
In this state of softening and opening.
Take all this energy rising up like a fire,
Rising all the way up through the throat.
Relax your head,
Relax your face deeply,
Relax your jaw,
Relax the space between your eyebrows and bring your attention into the center of the upper heart.
The upper heart is centered there in your head behind the third eye,
But its orb of energy encompasses the whole head.
It merges with the energy of the middle heart in the throat.
It extends up above the physical head into what we call the Sahasrara,
The crown of sacred energy.
This center,
This heart,
Here circulates the energy of divine connection,
Transpersonal connection,
Abstract concepts.
This is our power of understanding.
All of our senses like speech,
Hearing,
Certainly eyesight,
The whole brain lives within the domain of this upper heart.
You can't really push yourself,
You can't push your awareness into this upper heart,
You just have to relax your way into it.
Let the energy from the lower hearts just rise up.
How open is your understanding?
How tight are your beliefs?
How rigid are your concepts?
Keep relaxing that space between the eyebrows.
Sometimes I like to imagine that there's a bolt or a screw in that space between my eyebrows.
I can loosen it.
When it loosens,
My concepts loosen.
You just let the breath waft up.
You don't push it.
You don't want to forcibly unblock anything here.
You just keep softening and opening and intending openness,
Intending circulation,
Intending connectedness.
This is where the animal and the human meets the divine.
The upper heart opens.
We connect to everything.
But as you go deeper and deeper into this energy of the upper heart circulating,
Don't lose touch with the middle heart,
Don't lose touch with that lower heart.
This is a great secret.
This is a secret to embodied spirituality.
The soles of your feet to the upper reaches of the cosmos.
There's a connectedness.
Everything is activated.
Everything is open.
Sometimes this upper heart just gets clogged with information,
Gets clogged with media.
Just breathe and just let that energy circulate,
Clear it out.
Clear out anything that doesn't belong there.
The upper heart,
Open and free.
The middle heart,
Open and free.
The lower heart,
Open and free.
Breathe through all three hearts.
Take a few breaths like this,
All the way from the bottom to the top and down again.
Holding on to this expandedness and openness and circulation.
Deepen your breathing now.
May want your body to move.
And then when you're ready,
Take your time.
Let your eyes come open once again.
