Hi there and welcome to this relaxation for June.
My name is Joe Halterway and for the next 15 minutes I'm going to invite you to find a place you won't be disturbed and to lie or sit down.
I'll play the guitar for a couple of minutes while you find a place.
If it's going to take you longer you could always pause the recording and restart it.
Ok,
So when you've found a nice quiet place,
I just want you to put your attention on your breathing.
So with your attention on your breathing,
Feeling the sensation of the air coming in through the nose or the mouth,
Down into the body.
We're going to take three deep breaths in and out together with the guitar.
Ok,
So breathing in and breathing out.
Breathing in and breathing out.
And one more time,
Breathing in and breathing out.
Lovely,
Now just allow your breath to become natural,
Slowly in and out.
I'm recording these relaxations as a way of finding some balance and some calm in what can be overwhelming.
Life.
Whatever we're going through personally and then some big things happening as well to us as a global family.
Whether it's unrest or violence in the news.
Whether we have our minds on the climate or other emerging stories that have our attention.
And what these relaxations aim to do is to give us some strength and give us a chance to pause and to rest the body and the mind.
So with your body resting on the floor,
You can feel the contact points,
Whether you're sitting or lying,
You can feel your bones against the floor,
Feel the gravity.
The breathing contact points and the breath moving with the body in and out.
And also can you feel the body and the breath moving against those contact points.
Give you a sense of stability,
A sense of where you are.
And I'm going to guide us through the body from the tips of our toes up to the top of our heads.
And as I do that,
Staying with my voice and with the guitar and feeling the sensation in that part of the body as I say it.
And if you can readjust or to be comfortable in that part of the body when I get there,
Then do that.
And if there's pain in that part of the body,
Just be aware that there's pain.
We can still relax.
Even though there's tension,
By kind of relaxing,
Then we're not adding extra tension on top of that pain or tension.
Studies show that stress is a big contributor to ill health.
So the aim is to try and free ourselves from that as much as we can.
And I'll sing you a song at the end.
It'll be about 15 minutes altogether.
Okay,
So feeling the tips of your toes,
You can wiggle those a little bit if you need help getting down to that area.
And then aware of the toenails and space between the toes,
The underside of the toes and the top of the toes.
And feel the sole of the foot and the top of the foot and the bones within the foot.
Thirty-three in each foot.
All connecting and helping us to stay balanced.
The wonder of the foot resting.
Then we move up to the heel and the ankle.
And then into the leg,
We've got two bones in the lower leg.
And the calf muscle,
Tibia and fibula bones.
So resting the lower part of the leg,
Aware of the knee.
And then the thighs.
The strongest bones in the body,
The femur bones.
The quadriceps and the hamstrings.
And up to the pelvis,
Aware of the hips.
And aware of the sitting muscles,
Gluteus muscles and also the bladder.
Up to the stomach and intestines.
The wonder of the digestive tract.
So just resting that area.
A place where stress can accumulate in the body,
So just resting the stomach in particular with some nice deep breaths.
As you move up the spine,
The kidneys there.
Aware of the rib cage and the lungs,
The chest.
And then you've got the collar bone and you've got the heart on the left hand side and the liver over to the right.
So just aware of the heart.
Breath comes in,
Down into the lungs,
Oxygenated blood to the heart,
Nourishing the organs.
And then we move over the left shoulder,
So down over the shoulder towards the elbow,
Bicep muscle.
Humorous bone.
Then you've got the two bones in the lower part of the arm,
The radius,
The onus bones.
We make our way to the wrist and the palm,
Fingers and thumb.
Aware of the hands,
The wonder of our hands.
And we can find from the tips of one hand,
With our mindfulness,
We can feel the tips of our right hand.
Fingertips.
And then move on that journey back through the hand and the thumb to the wrist,
To the forearm,
Radii,
So onus bones.
You've got the elbow and then up to the humerus bone and the bicep.
Complete that journey of the arms going over the right shoulder and come back to somewhere around the middle of the neck.
Aware of the jaw,
The tongue and teeth.
Relaxing any facial expression.
The cheeks and the ears and the eyes under your eyelids,
With them closed.
Feeling the light or maybe the dark on your eyelids.
We're at the forehead and the back of the head.
So we're at the whole body,
Breathing alive.
Just from your kind attention the last ten minutes.
And I'll sing you a song about finding those who we meet as our family.
Something that I believe in times of unrest is an antidote to fear.
It's called Lay Down.
You might want to do it if you're not already.
The chorus is.
.
.
Oh when you find your brother,
Oh in the eyes of another one,
Like when our friends and others,
They cross the lines we get stuck upon.
Oh when you throw your covers,
Oh when you lay down your disguise,
Oh when the one who suffers,
Yeah they've got nowhere left to hide.
Lay down your hands,
Lay down your heart.
Oh when you see your sister,
Long lost before now,
Oh when you know you've missed her,
And you both feel this somehow,
And for the wells you wish her,
Oh for the times you've been apart,
May seem to the world a whisper,
Oh would you know that it's a start to lay down your hands,
Lay down your heart.
Oh when you feel your father,
Feel him in all his joy and pain,
And you know that you've come after to journey on the same.
Oh when you hear your mother,
Oh in the stories she told,
Oh with her love for others,
Oh in the hearts that we hold,
Lay down your hands,
Lay down your heart.
Lay down your hands,
Lay down your heart.
Okay so you might want to turn onto your side,
Take some nice deep breaths,
And I'll play the guitar for another minute and then it will fade out.
I'm best with the rest of your day or if you're going to sleep I wish you a good night's sleep.
I've got quite a few songs and relaxation on Inside Timer which you can listen to.
