Welcome to this moment that you're giving yourself to be with yourself deliberately with intention.
In an effort,
I imagine,
To feel more anchored,
Connected,
Aware,
And settled.
And so,
You can feel appreciation for yourself in this moment,
For being attuned enough to arrive here right now.
And so,
To get yourself into the moment with a little bit more awareness and intention,
You can just feel your feet flat on the floor.
Let your body melt into the chair or the sofa or whatever it is you're sitting on.
Give yourself a chance to really relax into it.
Can still hold yourself in the body with a posture that is dignified and alert enough.
And this is a real chance to remind your nervous system that it can and should relax.
And so,
Just notice,
Are you holding tension anywhere,
Anywhere in the body where there's tightness?
Just notice.
Maybe you're holding tension in your forehead or in your jaw,
Or maybe there's some tension in your shoulders or in your neck or in your hands.
Just do a bit of a scan through and down the body.
Bring awareness to the chest and the abdomen area.
Is there anything that feels tight or tense or crunchy?
Bring your attention down to the pelvic area,
To the thighs.
Notice the knees,
The shins,
The ankles,
The feet,
The toes.
Somewhere where you noticed a feeling of tightness,
See if you can release that.
Sometimes the awareness of it is enough for it to shift when you are reminded of the experience you connect to the power you have to change it.
So if you can,
Give yourself a chance to just release and let go of any tightness or tension that is living in the body unnecessarily.
Notice how that feels to let go of tension that you've been carrying without reason other than perhaps habit.
Maybe now is a nice time if it feels right for you to take a nice,
Slow,
Deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Take another nice,
Slow,
Deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Maybe this next breath,
I'd like you to experiment with taking a nice,
Slow,
Deep breath in through the nose and when you release the breath out through the mouth,
Make some sound.
And I want you to make sound,
So much sound,
That someone who overheard you might think you were really weird or might be wondering what the heck you were doing.
So in through the nose,
Nice,
Slow,
Deep breath and out through the mouth of the sound,
Almost like a sigh or even stronger than a sigh.
The request here of yourself is to release tension emotionally,
Emotional tension,
Tension in the body,
Psychic tension that you've been carrying,
To release it through the mouth audibly.
That's the request.
And so maybe for you it is just a nice,
Deep sigh.
Maybe it's stronger than that.
Maybe it's a more robust sound that you can really free yourself to express.
So just experiment a few more times with what you're feeling.
You can let go of in this way and stretch yourself.
Stretch yourself here.
So a nice,
Slow,
Deep breath in through the nose,
Audibly out through the mouth,
In through the nose,
Audibly out through the mouth.
One more time in through the nose and audibly out through the mouth.
Now you can check in again with your body,
Noticing how it feels.
If there's any lingering tightness or tension or if it feels like it may have softened a bit,
Just notice the different quality that the body may be carrying in this moment after some awareness and release through breath and sound and intention and attention.
You've given yourself a wonderful gift of time and space to be rested,
To be still,
To be calm,
To be really intentional in that place in yourself and in the body.
That practice is an embodiment of an assertion of how valuable you are to yourself.
You may feel that strongly,
A strong sense of self-value.
You may not even know that that's possible for you or you're on the path to coming to know that more profoundly.
Wherever you are on the spectrum of loving yourself,
Knowing your worth,
Of being the first one to honor that,
Wherever you are on the path,
Appreciate that in this moment you are loving yourself.
And how does that feel?
It might feel scary.
It might feel new.
It might feel beautiful.
It might feel right.
It might feel wrong.
It might feel uncomfortable or exciting or freeing.
It might feel divine.
There's no right or wrong.
There's no good or bad.
There's just noticing what it feels like to acknowledge that you are worth the time to be with yourself respectfully.
You are worth the time to feel soothed,
To learn how.
You are worth the practice of connecting to your own breath.
In this place,
There's more space for your heart to speak and for you to hear it.
And you can cultivate trust over time the more you commit to your practice,
The more you believe that you are valuable to make this request of yourself to practice and to find your value to yourself.
How valuable am I to myself?
And along the way,
You give yourself the chance to connect deeper in a more aware way to your other values.
Maybe you really value family.
You really value friendship or service or community or justice.
And maybe this practice of slowing down enough to notice,
Release and breathe into tension so that you can hear your heart.
Maybe that's the portal that you're finding you can enter to live a life based in full embodied integrity.
Notice how that feels.
So you've done something in these past few moments leading you into this very moment.
You've done something.
You've done something big in yourself,
For yourself,
And by extension,
For every other experienced person,
Encounter,
Vision,
Mission that is born hereafter.
You've honored not only your own value,
But also the value of every other being who gets to experience the version of you that values you enough to let your heart guide the way with and through integrity and allegiance to those values that you've slowed down enough to really hear.
And so I bow to your practice and I celebrate your effort.
Round out the meditation today.
Just bring your attention back to the body.
And rest your focus on the breath or maybe on the sounds in the environment.
I'd like to ask you if it feels okay for you.
Bring your hand to your heart.
Maybe bring both hands to your heart,
One over the other.
And offer yourself a gentle,
Tender,
Loving expression of gratitude for being here with yourself in this way.
Feel into the luminosity of that.
Let that gratitude radiate your being.
Maybe throughout your heart center and let the feeling of the gratitude permeate the entirety of your being.
Let it seep out.
Let it shine through.
Let it color the rest of your day,
The rest of your interactions.
Let it fuel and energize your life.
Take a few slow,
Deep breaths here in this place,
Hands on heart.
Thank you for letting me guide you today.
Thank you.
You You
