Be Where Your Feet Are: Calm The Anxious Heart, Return To Your Body

Beginning at your feet, the meditation will guide you upwards through your body. Using gentle embodiment techniques, this meditation requires you to sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground. The guidance is gentle, slow and encouraging.

This practice will help return you into a space of conscious awareness in your body if your mind has been racing with anxiety or fear.

My hope is that by the end of the session, you feel less anxious, more present in your body, and more grounded.

Transcript

Welcome.

With everything that's going on in the world at the moment,

It's very easy to get into a state of feeling anxious,

Overwhelmed,

Afraid,

Because we live in the world.

But first,

We live in our bodies.

So this meditation is a practice inviting you to return to a state of equilibrium by coming back to your body using breath and traveling up the body from your feet to your head slowly over the next half hour or so,

So that we can inhabit our bodies and come back to deep experience of the present moment,

Deep conscious awareness of being at home in the body,

A site of safety,

So we can nurture ourselves and find a place to return to,

Coming out of the busyness of the mind,

The mind heading in all directions.

Sometimes it's easy to abandon the body when our minds go into overdrive.

So let's sit together now and come back to the body and we're going to start at the feet.

So this meditation is more suitable for sitting up,

Sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor.

So if you aren't already in that position,

If you just take some time to get into that position,

Sitting on a chair with your feet on the floor.

And if you feel safe to,

You can close your eyes or at least cast them downwards towards the floor,

If you like a bit of light to come in,

A bit of vision.

I'm doing this meditation for you today because a healer I once went to gave me the advice to be where your feet are.

Be where your feet are.

And it's a simple little phrase but it's really helped me when I come into a space of overwhelm or anxiety,

My mind whizzing around,

Getting into frightening scenarios or stress or worry.

Just that little phrase,

Be where your feet are,

Brings me back into my body,

Into my experience in the moment and helps me ground in return.

Very often we are safe in the moment and anxiety is fear projecting into the future.

So coming back into the present moment and back into deep awareness of our bodies can help us come down out of that white noise of anxiety.

So beginning now with your feet flat on the floor,

Just press through your feet a little,

Pressing them into the floor so that your feet are grounded,

Planted and just feel all the edges of the feet pressing into the floor and release any pressure and just be naturally and start to lengthen your breath,

Lengthening the inhale,

Lengthening the exhale,

Pushing down through the feet,

Grounding into the earth.

And we're going to travel our awareness from the feet,

Pressing into the earth,

Up the legs,

Bring your awareness to your strong shin bones along the front of your legs and your calf muscles at the back of the shins.

If you want to you could even flex into those calf muscles and give them a little squeeze and just thank your legs for how strong they are,

Carrying you around all day,

Walking you through your life.

Send a little gratitude to your strong capable legs.

Traveling up the thighs now,

Awareness of the bones of the thighs,

The muscles in the thighs,

Sending gratitude to the strength of your thighs.

And coming into your seat,

Feel your seat on the cushion or the pad of the chair and you might even do a little wriggle there,

See if you can feel your seat bones,

See if you can just tilt your pelvis forward a little bit to straighten your spine slightly.

Be aware of the cradle of your hips,

Maybe sway a little side to side,

Feeling your hips anchoring and holding the trunk of your body.

We hold a lot of emotion in our hips so just spend a bit of time with your deeper conscious breath,

Breathing into the cradle of your hips.

Now start to bring your awareness to your belly.

Sometimes we can hold tension in the belly,

Sometimes we walk around with our bellies pulled in unnaturally.

So just bring your awareness to your belly,

Notice if there's any physical manifestation of anxiety in the belly and if there is,

Just breathe into the belly,

See if you can unfurl any anxiety that's resting in the belly,

Soften your belly and breathing into it and feeling how if you take deep conscious breaths,

The belly is definitely part of those big breaths,

The belly moves,

The whole trunk of the body moves when you're breathing deeply and with awareness.

Bring your left hand onto the belly just for a bit of soothing,

A little bit of soothing grounding weight,

Weight of the hand,

The left hand cradling the belly and carrying on with some nice deep aware breaths and to the belly unfurl any anxiety,

Noticing what's there and just observing with compassion,

Not judging,

Just observing and breathing.

And then as we travel up the body from the belly,

I would just like you to lift your heart slightly,

So as you lift the heart you'll notice your spine straightens,

Your shoulder blades go down,

Your back a little bit,

Deepen your breath,

A little bit straighter through the spine,

Breathing into that little motion and that little adjustment,

That little lift of the heart.

Now I want you to bring your right hand with splayed fingers across your heart,

So one hand is on the belly,

One hand across the heart,

Just feel the warmth and the weight of your hands on your belly and on your heart across your chest and take some deep breaths there.

Now I want you to feel for your collarbone,

Your right fingers,

Find your collarbone and applying quite a bit of pressure,

Just massage along your collarbone,

So just like you're feeling for your collarbone through the skin with your fingers,

Massage along the collarbone from the left through the dip in the middle,

Along to the right,

Carrying on with your deeper,

Slower breath while you do it and just go back and forth a few times,

Feeling for and massaging your collarbone as you breath,

Breathe nice and deeply and try to stay aware of what your body's doing.

Left hand still on the belly,

Spine nice and tall,

Shoulder blades apart and down,

Just feel for your collarbone,

Giving it a bit of attention.

Now the ends of your fingers,

Moving on from massage,

I want you to bring your fingertips together and thump your fingers along the collarbone,

Again moving from left to right,

Slowly thumping along the collarbone with the fingertips,

One end to the other and you might even make your breaths a little audible while you do that,

You might even turn your breaths into more like sighing breaths while you do this thumping of the fingertips along the collarbone.

We're doing this just to really anchor our awareness into the body,

Into the present moment and just signal to the body that it can relax,

It can return and that you are safe in this moment,

You are inhabiting your body and you are safe in this moment.

And after you've been across the collarbone with the tips of your fingers,

Return your hand across your heart again,

Your left hand still softly cradling the belly and the right hand across the heart.

From that position I'd like you to slowly ease your chin down towards your chest,

Just take your time,

Slowly easing your chin down towards your chest,

Gently stretching the back of the neck,

Breathing into the stretch,

Allow your shoulders to be very heavy,

Allow your shoulders to drop away from your ears,

Breathing into the stretch at the back of the neck and just observe if there's any tension there,

If you've been feeling quite anxious,

Sometimes the back of the neck can get very tense,

So just spend some time allowing a bit of gentle stretching into the back of the neck,

Carrying on your breath while you do so.

And then slowly lift your head,

Take your time,

Lift your head back to neutral until your head is back in its natural position.

And now release your hands from your heart and your belly and relax them on your thighs however is comfortable.

And just rock slightly into your hips again,

Lifting the heart a little again,

Straightening the spine,

Shoulders down away from the ears,

Chin tucked slightly in,

And do three big long breaths into this slightly exaggerated straightened spine position.

And now just return to a natural position in the body and relax your spine and just sit however you sit in your sitting energy here.

I hope you're feeling a little more grounded and centered now.

I'm just going to say three affirmations to end the practice and you might repeat them out loud or just in your mind and try to take the meaning into your day.

I am safe in this moment.

I am safe in my body.

My body is my home and I can return to deep awareness in my body at any time.

So as you go forward into your day,

Into your week,

Remember that phrase that I learned from a beloved healer.

Be where your feet are.

Be where your feet are.

To help you return to the present moment,

To awareness of the self,

To the knowledge that you're safe in the moment,

Whatever is happening out in the wider world,

You are safe in the moment,

In your body,

In your being.

May you be well.

May you be peaceful.

May you find strength in knowing you are not alone but are a treasured being in the expanse of the human family.

Thanks so much for taking some time to meditate with me today.