Welcome.
This is an introduction to Two-Point Awareness.
It is a type of meditative or mindfulness practice that is found in many cultures around the world and is particularly helpful for when you are experiencing anxiety or deeply felt emotional triggers.
The practice can be amazingly helpful when your emotions are running the show and when you get sucked down the rabbit hole of anxiety and recurrent thoughts.
Following these simple steps can help you to climb out of that rabbit hole and shift your body and mind out of the fight-flight-freeze response pattern.
Rather than trying to make the trigger go away or pretend that it doesn't exist,
This exercise will help you develop the ability to coexist with your human emotions and not let them control you anymore.
The practice is useful when you are acutely triggered and when practiced regularly builds a deep internal resilience to all future triggers.
The Practice Find a quiet space where you can be alone,
Close the door,
Open a window,
Have a seat under a tree,
By the ocean,
Etc.
You want to be somewhere that you are comfortable and where you won't be disturbed.
You want to be able to feel a connection to the ground during this meditation.
I'll describe this as feeling the soles of your feet upon the ground,
But feel free to change it to the sides of your feet or your butt on the ground if you are sitting cross-legged.
The important part is simply to feel a connection to the ground and not that it has to be exactly the bottom of your feet.
So have a seat,
Close your eyes,
Feel your feet on the ground,
And take a few slow deep breaths and relax.
Take a second to acknowledge whatever emotion you are feeling in the moment and give yourself permission to be here for the next 5-10 minutes,
Let everything else go and just be present with yourself.
Begin to breathe smoothly in and out through your nose.
Now focus your attention on the sensation of your feet upon the ground.
Try to feel the space between where your feet end and where the ground begins.
Keep your mind focused on those physical sensations while you continue to breathe in and out through your nose.
Notice how your feet feel heavy on the ground.
Feel their weight.
Notice the firmness of the ground and how it pushes back up into your feet.
Again,
See if you can feel the space between your feet and the ground.
Now shift your attention back to your breath.
Feel the breath enter and leave your body.
Notice how your body expands as you inhale and how it contracts as you exhale.
See if you can identify where the air outside of you ends and the air inside of you begins.
Try to find the boundary between yourself and the external environment.
Keep your mind focused on the physical sensation of the breath coming and going,
Of how your body expands,
How your body contracts,
Where the air outside of you ends and the air inside of you begins.
Now see if you can feel both the ground and the air around you at the same time.
Reconnect the sensation of your feet upon the ground and simultaneously feel the breath coming and going.
See if you can hold both of them in your field of awareness.
Keep your mind focused on the physical sensation of these two things.
Now over the next few breaths,
Shift your awareness to the exhalation and gradually begin to open your eyes and come back into the normal waking world.
Take a moment to reorient yourself and take note of how you're feeling.
This practice won't have taken away whatever it was that triggered you,
But you should notice that you're feeling much more centered and calm than before the meditation.
You'll likely notice that the event or emotion you were feeling isn't as powerful or as overwhelming as it was before.
You'll also likely notice that you feel much more grounded and strong in the presence of that event or emotion.
This is the goal.
You still have your emotions,
But they aren't running the show anymore.
Take a moment to consider that this only took five to ten minutes.
You didn't analyze yourself,
You didn't numb or distract yourself from your experience,
And you didn't indulge the emotions either.
You simply came into presence with two things,
The ground and the air.
Those are the goals that are always available whenever you need them.
With practice,
You can go through this meditation quicker and quicker because your body and mind will become trained to reset themselves.
Although it won't take away being human and having emotions,
It will empower you to navigate being human in a much more grounded way.
Try this practice daily for five to ten minutes after drinking your Three Shen tea and applying your Three Shen oils.
Over the period of about twenty-eight days,
You'll start to notice how the practice gets both easier and more effective in helping you to break free from your triggers when they happen.
In the end,
One simple breath of awareness can be immensely powerful in helping us to reset,
Come back to center,
And not let our emotions run the show.
Thank you.
