Welcome,
I'm Heidi and thank you for joining me in today's meditation.
Please find a comfortable seated position and connect your feet to the ground,
Then close your eyes.
Take a moment to feel the earth beneath your feet.
Now bring your awareness up your legs to your hips.
Is there any tension in your hips or lower back?
Try to soften and relax those areas.
Walk your awareness up your spine,
Stacking one vertebra on top of the other and sit tall.
Soften your shoulders away from your ears and keep your chin neutral.
Notice if there is any tension in your jaw or cheeks.
See if you can relax and soften those muscles.
Focus on your breath now.
Feel the air moving in and out of your nostrils as you inhale and exhale.
Notice how the breath fills and expands your lungs on the inhale and softens on the exhale.
As you inhale,
Pay attention to your belly expanding to make room for your lungs to fill with air and notice your belly falling as you exhale.
Keep your awareness on your breath.
When your mind wanders,
Bring your awareness back to your breath.
By practicing this,
You will eventually start noticing the spaces between your thoughts lengthen.
You will begin to experience quiet and calm moments of stillness.
It is in these moments that you can start to experience living in the present moment.
Seeing each moment for what it is as it's happening without the old stories of the past and insecurities of the future.
It's about the clear and present now.
Eventually you'll start to recognize moments in your day-to-day life that would benefit from creating the same space between actions.
You can add the space between something happening to you and how you react to that action.
By creating space between an action and your reaction,
You give yourself time and power to decide how to respond to it.
Take a moment to think back to the last time you reacted to an event.
Did you react immediately,
Fueled by emotion?
How did it make you feel?
Powerless?
Regretful?
Did you wish you had reacted differently?
To create space between your thoughts and meditation,
You focus your awareness on your breath.
Do the same to create time to respond.
Responding creates more space between an event and what you do or don't do with it.
In that space,
You give your immediate emotions some room to breathe and an opportunity to better understand what is happening.
Then you can make a plan with a calmer and more present state of mind to respond.
A response that you can stand by with no regret and a response that gives you power.
Please bring your awareness back to your breath.
Take a slow breath in and then sigh it out.
Please open your eyes.
Responding is harder than reacting.
This is a skill that you need to practice to retrain your brain and change your default behavior.
Meditation can help,
So keep practicing.
I also invite you to journal a plan for what you will do instead of reacting in a certain situation.
Here is an example.
If I receive a hurtful text from someone,
Instead of texting back,
I will write how I feel in my journal.
Or when I feel my heart racing and my blood boiling during a conversation,
I will excuse myself,
Go for a walk,
And return when I feel ready to do so calmly.
Take a moment to write down what you would do to create space and regain your power to your responses.
I hope this practice helps you and I hope you have a wonderful and empowering day.
Be well and namaste.
