Hello and welcome to Body Melt.
This is a body-based somatic meditation.
You will be taken through various energy meridians in your body as well as some acupressure points and some self massage techniques along with some breath work and relaxation.
So you might want to grab a little bit of water,
Maybe start some incense,
Light a candle.
Just grab anything that's going to create an environment for you where you can really relax,
Release,
Reset.
We will start in a seated position and then there will be an opportunity to recline for the remainder of the meditation.
You will likely feel activated at the end of this 30 minute practice but also centered and relaxed.
So again,
Starting seated,
Situating any last things,
And then letting your awareness move away from your surroundings and more towards your sensations.
You can keep your eyes open but allow them to soften.
Allow the eye muscles to relax and the eyeballs to relax back into the head.
You're starting to activate your extra sensory.
And just noticing the rhythm,
The cadence of your breath.
Just noticing it as it is.
And as you tune into your body,
Notice any areas that might have a little extra sensation.
It could be warmth,
Maybe a tingling,
Maybe a little achiness or pulsation.
Just allow your awareness,
Your nervous system to track these feelings.
Now moving your attention to your feet,
Your root,
Your connection to gravity.
And you can even open your eyes if they're closed,
Directing your vision to your feet.
And just noticing what you see,
The color,
The texture,
And allowing a sense of curiosity to come through,
Releasing any judgment or any preconceived notions about your feet and just addressing them as if for the first time.
Go ahead and bring your hands down to your feet.
You can bring your feet together so the soles of your feet are touching and your knees are wide.
So the soles of your feet are together and you're creating this beautiful closed circuit for your nervous system,
Your energy meridians here in your feet.
And then allow your hands to come down to the soles of your feet and start pressing into the soles of the feet,
The arches.
Just starting to activate a little circulation and a little extra sensation.
Deep thumb presses.
And once you get to the heels,
Kind of press into the heels and circle those thumbs around the ankle bones.
And then go ahead and work your hands back towards the toes.
We'll pull on each toe.
In Chinese medicine,
Each toe actually connects to a different sensory organ,
So the seeing,
Hearing,
Feeling,
Taste,
Smelling organs,
Especially right there at the tip of the toes.
So just press into each of those,
Activating all of your senses.
And then we're going to arrive for a few moments at an acupressure point called liver three.
It's in between the big toe and the first little toe.
There's a groove there on the top of the foot,
Right in between the tarsals,
The foot bones.
So you're going to press in there with the index and middle finger and the thumb on the bottom of the foot.
So you're activating this liver point.
So interesting that this acupressure point is at the bottom of the foot.
It's one of the more yin points in the body,
Meaning when you press on it,
It creates a relaxing restorative effect on the body as opposed to yang,
Which is more of an activating.
So liver is the largest detoxifying organ in your body apart from the skin.
Exposing all liquids,
All fluids that come through your body.
Detoxifying,
Protecting.
And by stimulating this organ,
We're just giving it a little extra juice,
A little extra energy.
Another thing about Chinese medicine is each organ correlates with an emotion and liver connects with the feelings of anger,
Aggression,
Frustration.
All of those,
Shall we say,
Negative frequencies.
And that's the liver's job is to hold that frequency and also detoxify,
Clarify.
So just allowing yourself to befriend this incredible organ for a moment.
And then we'll go ahead and start to walk our hands up our feet,
Up the shins,
Nice deep squeezes on both sides of that lower leg bone,
The tibula,
The fibula.
And coming all the way up to the knees,
Go ahead and circle your hands around the knees.
You can adjust your legs,
Your feet,
The cross of your legs if you want.
Circle those fingers around the knees,
Just imagining buoyant jellyfish like kneecaps.
And then drawing that fluid up the legs,
Around the knees,
Just infusing that activated chi or energy from the feet all the way up to the knees.
And then moving up the thighs,
Nice big squeezes as you connect with the largest muscles in your body,
The quads,
Which cover the largest bone in your body,
The femur,
The leg bone.
Squeezing all the way up over the hips,
Maybe pressing your thumbs right there along the hip bones.
And so now this is a really good time to adjust into a reclining position if you like,
Or you can remain seated.
We will keep moving up the body,
Finishing up at the head.
So now your hands are here at your core,
Your center,
And you can start to circle your hands around your abdomen.
Really circle from right to left.
This is the direction of digestion,
Digestive flow.
As it moves food and nourishment through your organs,
It goes up the ascending colon first through the transverse and then finally down the descending colon.
Nice deep,
Low belly breaths,
Breathing into the pelvic bowl.
Beautiful.
And then allow your hands to come up to the low ribs.
Really just feel your rib cage expand and contract here with the breath.
As you take these deep belly breaths,
Just feeling any movement,
Any gurgling,
Bubbling that's happening in your belly,
In your gut,
The seed of your intuition.
And continue with this diaphragmatic belly breath.
And moving your hands and fingertips up the center line of your body,
So the sternum.
This may be sensitive,
So you're just moving your fingertips up your sternum,
Just gentle up and down movements or presses.
And then your hands are going to rest right below your collarbones on either side of your chest.
Deep breaths.
Go ahead and release your right hand down to your knee or to the floor beneath you and then move that right hand over to the,
Sorry,
The left hand over to the right side of your chest.
And start to press in with the fingertips,
Finding those spaces in between the ribs.
These are the inner costals and they assist with breathing.
Really knit your ribs together.
Just finding any sensitive areas.
And then moving out towards the shoulder of the deltoid,
Giving that shoulder cap a nice squeeze on all sides and then moving on down the bicep,
The tricep.
And here we have another acupressure point.
So if you place three fingers up from the crease of your elbow on the inside of the bicep,
Inside of the arm,
You have the H3,
So it's a point along the heart meridian.
Go ahead and press in there.
Some intentional circles,
Pulsations,
And just say hello to your heart.
And then moving on down over the elbow,
Pressing into the forearm.
This is likely going to be a very tense place.
It's a very compact area for your muscles and tendons.
And we all do so much work with our hands.
Our hands truly being an extension of our heart.
And as you move down toward the wrist,
There's another acupressure point.
This is lung three,
So three fingers up from the thumb side of the wrist crease.
There'll be a little indentation on the bone there,
Kind of the knife edge side of the bone.
And then activating your lungs.
Your lungs govern the emotion of grief,
Sadness,
Just allowing some opening for that emotion to move through.
And then massaging your hands,
Pressing through the palm and then each finger bone.
Press and squeeze each joint.
See if you can get any pops or little cracks,
Releasing any air pockets from those joints.
And then a deep squeeze between the thumb and index finger.
This is large intestine four.
And large intestine is the last organ that your food passes through before exiting the body.
Nice deep breaths here as you digest and assimilate the energy movement that you've already created.
And then go ahead and release,
Shake out both hands,
Resting the left hand now on the left knee,
Right hand to left upper chest.
Pressing,
Connecting in with the ribs and the spaces in between the ribs.
Moving up through the chest.
Nice deep full body breaths.
Moving on over to the shoulder,
Squeezing the shoulder cap and all the way down the arm.
Taking a moment to stimulate heart three there on the left side.
And as we know the heart is one of the most powerful organs in our body.
Gently pumping fresh blood all throughout the body at all moments of the day or night.
And governing the emotion of love,
The most powerful energy on this planet.
Moving on down through the forearm.
See if you can find that groove between the forearm bones,
The radius and the ulna.
You might even feel some referral sensations here like a little release in the jaw or a little zing in your neck.
So just notice what's going on in your body.
Stimulating lung point here on the left side before releasing each finger.
Gently pressing,
Squeezing,
Massaging your whole hand.
One of my favorite anatomy books is called Trail Guide to the Body.
So I really connect with this idea of our bodies as a landscape.
Kind of navigating the skin,
The bones,
The fascial tissue as if it was a landscape.
Using the terrain and allowing myself to be enchanted by all that I find.
Getting a last squeeze there to large intestine 4 in between the index and thumb.
And then we'll shake out both hands.
Releasing any static,
Dense energy that we are accumulating and just breaking up any tension there in your hands.
Let's go ahead and just rest our hands on our knees.
Take a few deep breaths and sense and feel any shifts in our body thus far.
If you're laying down,
Maybe place your hands on your abdomen or the centerline of your body somewhere.
Really just arriving into the center of your body.
Allowing your awareness to be at the core of your being,
Noticing all of the sensations in your body and then outside and around your body.
And we'll finish up with our upper most part of our body.
The upper energy centers starting with the throat.
Go ahead and bring both hands to your collarbone and allow your index fingers to really connect in with that notch.
This is called a spirit point.
Both here and then along the underside of the collarbones.
So really connecting you with spirit that more etheric,
Energetic quality that we all experience both in ourselves and in the world.
Connecting along the collarbone until your hands find the place where your neck meets your shoulders.
Both hands grab onto the trapezius,
The upper shoulder there and really just start to knead and grip and squeeze the shoulders.
And then you can start to press and squeeze up the side of the neck.
Maybe just moving your head from left to right.
Just pressing in on either side of the spine there.
Focusing a little more ease,
A little more flexibility here in our shoulders and our neck.
These places in our body that carry so much of our stress load.
And then keep moving on up to just the base of the skull there.
Walking your fingertips along the occipital ridge.
Using any trigger points that are ready to be released.
Really nice.
And then go ahead and pull on the earlobes.
Moving directly down,
Out and away from the center of the head and then up.
Beautiful.
Your hands can come to your jaw muscle.
Press and squeeze in the place right underneath the cheekbones,
The zygomatic arch.
Let your jaw drop,
Tongue relax.
Maybe find another trigger point,
Just move a millimeter over.
Beautiful.
And then take both thumbs,
Place them on the inner corners of the eyebrows.
Deep presses on the ocular bones.
Stay gentle around the eye muscles as you press and move from the inner to the outer until you're finally at the temples.
You can circle around the temples,
Both directions.
And then go ahead and move your fingertips all the way up to the very top of the head.
There might be a little bump there or an indentation.
This is our final acupressure point.
It is called Governor Vessel 20 or the meeting of the hundred points.
To find it exactly,
You can trace the tips of the earlobes all the way up the sides of the head to the center of the head there.
And just circle one direction and then the other.
And nice deep full body breaths.
This is an incredibly balancing and centering acupressure point.
Can bring some clarity of thought,
Relieve tension headaches,
As it is connecting a number of meridians up here.
And also,
This is the crown of your head,
The seat of your connection with higher consciousness,
Higher thought.
And then feel free to just give yourself a nice,
Juicy,
Yummy scalp massage,
Moving all along the hairline.
You do have small,
Fine muscles right underneath the hair there.
So you might find some trigger points.
Just take your time and really letting your brain relax,
Letting your eyes relax,
Letting your nervous system recalibrate.
We'll finish this off with three deep breaths.
Just keep doing what you're doing there,
Massaging your head,
Your face,
Or maybe place your hands back on your center line somewhere,
Your core.
And then we'll all take three deep breaths to complete.
Really drawing your breath from the bottoms of your feet to the crown of your head.
Really feeling rooted,
Grounded,
And centered in your body,
Well connected,
Spiritually and energetically.
Thank you so much for joining me,
Wishing you a beautiful rest of your day or evening.
