Should I Stay Or Go? A Meditation For Uncertain Times

You've turned this question over so many times, and still, you don't know if its best for you to stay in your relationship, to continue to put the work in or to go. This body-based meditation gently guides you out of the loop and into the deeper intelligence that lives below thought, helping you access the clarity you're body has been holding all along.

This meditation is for the moment you're caught between staying and going, and thinking harder isn't getting you closer to the answer. Through breath, sensation, and gentle inquiry, you'll begin to feel your way toward what's true for you.

Transcript

You are giving yourself this time. Exhaling out any tension you can sense in the body. Releasing any tension in the mind. Letting go of anything that's come before this time. This time you've set aside for yourself. Settling into a position that supports your body. Whatever your body would appreciate most at this moment. Maybe pillows around a supported seating position. Or maybe you want to lie down and use those pillows under your knees. Maybe you want to pull up that blanket and feel cozy and tucked in underneath it. Take a moment to tend to whatever feels best for you right now without overthinking it. Just settling in. You don't have to get it exactly right because your body already knows something about how to hold difficult things. Doesn't it? Just as a tree knows how to hold snow on its branches even when the weight seems impossible. It just goes on holding it there. Taking a moment to notice your breath without changing it. Simply becoming aware of the rhythm that's already there that's been breathing you all along, Even when you weren't paying attention. And as you settle here, You might notice that there's something difficult present. Perhaps it's been with you for a while now. Like an old friend you didn't exactly invite but who keeps showing up anyway. It might be a familiar emotion. Something like sadness, Anger, Grief or worry. And maybe in this moment it's a sensation in your body. An ache or a tightness or a restlessness that somehow won't settle. You don't need to name it right away. This is the time for you to explore how that difficulty is living within you. Maybe the unanswered questions or the circular thoughts or the conversations you keep rehearsing in your mind. We can explore what's living in your body right now. Is it a heaviness or a tightness that's been sitting there for longer than you can even track back to when it began? A kind of ache that wakes you up at 3 in the morning and won't let you settle. Whatever you find, Just let it be there. You don't need to fix it or explain it or even make sense of it right now. We're just acknowledging it. That feeling in your chest, It's likely been trying to tell you something. It's been wanting to get your attention and today we're finally going to listen. Breathing in slowly, Just slowing everything down so that it doesn't feel so intense, So that you're able to release what's ready to let go. Allowing yourself to explore the question that has likely felt circular for some time. Should I stay or should I go? Notice what your body does when you hold that question. Does something tighten? Does your breath shorten? Does something inside of you feel a sense of relief? Whatever is here, It's welcome. There's no judgment. It's just a space for you to explore and get honest with what's true for you. The question, Should I stay or should I go, Is often so circular because it's almost never just about this relationship. Underneath it lives something older, Something that has shaped every significant relationship you've ever been in. When you really allow yourself to get honest, Are the questions that live underneath trying to find out if this relationship can be saved or if it's better off that you go? Is that quieter question, If I leave, Will I end up living the rest of my life alone? And maybe if I stay, Will I lose myself completely? Are there times when you're second-guessing if you're asking too much and is wanting more selfish? What if after I leave, I feel like it was the wrong decisions? Sometimes we can doubt our inner knowing and wonder if I leave after a time, Will I feel like that was the wrong decision? I know that these are not new questions and it can be so confusing when depending on the day you ask them, You get different answers. Here's what I want to explore with you. The relationships we choose and the ones we stay in, Even the ones we grieve, The ones we wished could have turned out differently, They are not random. Every relationship we enter carries the fingerprint of what we first learned about love, About safety, About closeness, Even about how we would repair and what we have to do or become to receive connection from the people who are supposed to give it freely. I call this our family imprint and it's been running quietly in the background of your love life for as long as you've been loving people. Let's just take a breath. Releasing out anything that might be connected to what I've shared. Getting ready to go back in time, Gently, Safely, Supported, Back to the home you grew up in. You don't need to go anywhere painful, Just let yourself stand for a moment, Either on the porch or in the doorway of the house you grew up in. Notice the feeling of it. Is there a sense of warmth or maybe you feel this is unpredictable. Maybe you notice it's full of noise and tension or there's a lot of quiet, A sense of distance. Again, We're not here to judge, We're only here to notice and I want you to explore your body memory of what did love look like in that home. Not what people say about love, But what was shown to you. How it felt. Did the people who loved you stay present? Could they sit with you in your tears after a bad day or did they pull away when things got hard? When you shared something that felt upsetting, Did they ask you what did you do wrong instead of hearing your side of things? Did love feel like something you could count on or did it arrive and then disappear without much warning? Did you come home from school or a friend's house not sure what you'd be walking into? Allowing yourself to be as slow as you need to be. Letting yourself feel supported by wherever it is you might be lying. Letting the answers come without any judgment. We're not here to blame anyone. We're only here to understand why you need what you do. In your loving connections, Whatever you witnessed in your home, It's set up like a blueprint. Your earliest definition of what love feels like. A sense of who you're supposed to be in order to feel loved and safe. A sense of who you need to be in order to keep love going. Here's the part that can change everything. When you truly let it in, We don't only seek what feels good in love. We're looking for what feels familiar. Even if familiar and good are not the same thing. Does anything about your current relationship feel familiar in this way? Maybe the distance that's regularly between the two of you? Or the way silence sits in the room after a particularly hard conversation? Maybe the way you reach out and the way they pull back? Allowing yourself to just notice. Making some alignments wherever you may have felt these echoes before. We're not here to blame your partner or your parent. We only want to understand these familiar feelings. Giving yourself clarity around the specific ache of feeling unseen or your needs going unmet or a sense of feeling alone inside a relationship that was supposed to feel like home. Letting something come in if it wants to. A memory, A moment, A sensation. A feeling from long ago that you perhaps haven't even thought about in years. We don't need to analyze it. Just letting it be present. Letting yourself trace the blueprint that was written within you before you were even old enough to question what you were learning. This is the part of you that has been quietly choosing in love way in the background ever since. Allowing yourself to really focus on your body. Maybe placing a hand on your heart and another on your belly and getting into the rhythm of your breathing to be sure your body feels supported. Let's explore a few more questions as you pay special attention at what happens in your body as we explore each question. Trust the first sensation that arises, Letting the thoughts fall away and pay much more attention to the sensations. When I imagine staying in this relationship and genuinely doing the work to understand the pattern we seem to get stuck in, Does something in me open and feel relieved or relaxed? Or do I feel more tension and tightness, Like I'd rather turn away from that idea? And so again, Letting this quiet time you're giving yourself give you information without judgment, Without rushing ahead to what that means or what you'll need to do next. Really staying here with your body to notice and listen. If I let myself imagine leaving, What I feel most is grief and maybe even a mix of both at once. Allowing yourself to really sit with that. Don't move into the mind. Don't allow confusion to take things over. Just staying with the image, Letting your imagination speak to you. Because both grief and relief can live together inside the same heart. That's why this cycle of should I stay or should I go has been with you. Taking a breath. Taking as many deep breaths as you'd like to feel supported. Letting your back body feel supported where you now rest. And if you're to get really honest with yourself, Am I staying because I genuinely believe something here can shift or because leaving feels more terrifying than the pain I'm already in? There is absolutely no wrong answer. We want to be with your fear, Almost like sitting with a scared child, To ask what is it you're most afraid of. It's so important to know when fear is the one making the decision. So we want to give it its seat at the table. Not that it gets to make the final decision but that we listen to what it might have to say. Taking another breath. Deep, Steady, And strong. Am I leaving this relationship because it's genuinely not healthy for me? Or is it bringing up my fears around real intimacy and how it's asking me to grow? The truth is, Sometimes we leave not because it's wrong or even unhealthy, But because love is asking too much. It's getting too close, Too real, Too much like the love we always wanted but never quite believed we were allowed to have. Exploring this slowly with your next breath. We want to sit side by side with the truth of your experience. Explore this slowly so that you can uncover what is deeply true for you. With your next breath, Let's explore the quietest, Wisest, Most grounded part of you. If that part was all ready to know. Taking another deep breath and really feeling settled in your body. To ask the quietest and wisest, Most grounded part of you, What is the right next best step? Giving a smile to the frightened part. Letting the fear know with a nod, I've listened and I've heard. Not the friend who thinks you should do this or that. The part of you that's been observing. That inner knowing who's been waiting for you to listen. Let that part speak. There's no need to rush it. Giving yourself all the space and time to listen. That whatever has come up for you belongs to you in the privacy of this practice. You don't have to explain it to a sibling, To a friend, Not even to your partner. This is you making sense of what's right for you. And that matters so much right now. The clarity you're searching for isn't hiding underneath the right decision. It lives in understanding what you're actually responding to when you quiet all the other parts that have been clamoring for your attention. Sometimes life can feel so full, So busy, Jammed in with other's expectations, That it can be really hard to know what you're responding to. And this quiet, This inner exploration is meant to clear away all of that noise so that you can listen to yourself, To your heart, To your inner knowing. It's not easy, But getting that clarity allows you to make this life-changing choice. Only you know if the relationship may need to end. Or it may not. But the pattern, The very one that brought you here with this big question, The one that's shown up in love before, That lives in your body as a definition of what love feels like, Of what it looks like, That pattern deserves your attention, No matter what you decide. Because if you leave without acknowledging that pattern, It will be quietly waiting for you in the next relationship. And if you stay, Maybe blaming your partner and putting all of what's wrong out there, It will keep running things for both of you, And neither of you will be choosing it consciously. The most loving thing you can do for yourself, For your partner, For anyone who might come after, Is to get genuinely curious about your love blueprint, And choose consciously what patterns need your loving attention, And intentionally what you want to carry forward. You don't have to have all the answers today. You just have to be willing to keep looking honestly at what's really here. Taking a slow breath in. Long, Steady, And slow. And releasing that breath when you're ready. And one more time. A slow, Steady breath in. And just releasing any of that confusion, The busyness of the mind, The mind that wants to run off with blame, Coming back into that loop of what needs to be done, And why, By when. Letting all of that fall away. Bringing the full focus to your body, To your back body, Feeling supported right here, Right now. Bringing that sense of support back with you into the here and now. As you gently move your fingers and your toes, Maybe even rolling your shoulders softly, Waking up the body, And when you're ready, Returning back into the here and now. And I know you came into this time together with an important question, And you may not be leaving with a clean answer. But allowing what has shifted, Allowing that clarity to continue speaking to you in how you're holding that question, That is where trusting yourself begins. Good for you for taking this time for yourself.