This following centering practice supports you in finding your balance and aligning yourself with your values and goals on an embodied and cellular level.
I invite you to practice standing up,
But if that's not available or nourishing for you right now,
Feel free to do this seated or even laying down.
You can do this practice closing your eyes or finding yourself a focus point,
Slightly dazing your sight to support going inwards.
Slowly bring your attention towards your feet.
Feel the sole of your feet planted on the ground.
Standing up,
Seated or laying down,
Align your feet in a way that they are straight,
Parallel and hip width apart.
You can even bring up your toes from the ground,
Spread them out as wide as you can as they are lifted and then put them back down again on the ground.
Observe what has changed for you.
Can you feel a little bit more grounded?
If you're laying down,
You can do the same process.
Just imagine that there is a floor underneath your feet,
So you can flex your feet and spread your toes out wide,
Just as if you were standing upright.
Now play a little bit,
Rock back and forth,
Move from side to side.
There's really no wrong way to do this.
Get yourself out of balance and find yourself back into balance.
Where and when do you get out of balance?
How far can you go with moving away from your center?
And how difficult is it to bring yourself back into balance?
What can you notice?
How present can you stay while doing this?
Now after pendulating forth and back,
Swaying from side to side,
Slowly,
Slowly bring yourself back into center and finding that sweet spot where you feel like you're going to be able to weight is evenly distributed on your soles.
Now we slowly move upwards along our legs.
Find yourself with a little micro bend in your knees.
Your thighs are engaged.
Now observe the position of your hip.
What do you notice in your belly?
And what do you notice in your lower back?
Perhaps you want to move your hips back and forth a couple times to get a better understanding for where they are in space.
And while you move your hips,
Observe from where you initiate your movement.
Which muscles are you using to do it?
Are your butt cheeks clenched?
Another option is to use your hands and physically touch your hips.
So it's a little bit easier to locate them in space.
In a moment,
We are going to tilt the hips forward,
But we try to do it from our lower abdomen.
So we don't bring the hips forward through squeezing the bum,
Through our front muscles.
Now we move further up along the spine,
Which is straight,
And long.
With each inhalation and with each exhalation,
Feel how it travels along the spine,
Elongating your whole body.
Now bring the shoulders up with an inhalation.
And slowly,
Mindfully sending them back and down with the exhalation.
Imagine drawing your shoulder blades together and downwards.
Take and give another deep breath.
And then move further upwards.
Elongating the neck through bringing your chin a little bit towards your throat.
Let your breath flow and expand your awareness to your whole body as one entity.
What can you notice?
Observe without judgment.
Direct your attention towards the length of your body.
From the bottom of your feet,
Connecting into the ground.
Maybe even feeling roots going down deep,
Deep into the earth.
And then all the way up along your body towards the crown of your head.
And from there,
Perhaps imagining a thread that is attached to your skull and extending into the space above you.
Just be aware of the length,
The connection to the above and below,
The groundedness and infinite potential above you,
All being part of you.
When you feel like you savored it enough and you really locked in the sensations of your length,
We slowly move on to feel the width of our body.
First,
Find the broadest part of your body and feel the expansion to your left and right.
Tap into your front plane and how your width expands like wings,
Like a big hug so wide you could hug the whole world.
Feel free to maybe even bring your arms out to the side if you'd like.
Take a deep breath into the width and exhale.
Settling into the sensation.
Now we feel the depth of our body from front to back.
Feel all the generations of your lineage behind you,
Having paved the way for you.
Feel all the space in front of you,
The depth of your future ahead of you.
Perhaps you want to use your hands again,
Putting one on your belly and one on your lower back so you can feel the actual depth of your body.
Bring to mind how much more depth within you exists.
How in that little body of yours is so much more than just organs,
Blood vessels,
Bones,
Muscles.
It also holds dreams,
Visions,
Memories,
Painful and nourishing ones,
Emotions,
Ambivalences,
Secrets and values.
There is a whole universe inside of you,
A unique depth that is ungraspable.
Give yourself another moment for recognizing all of you.
You are all that.
And let that feeling of deep gratitude emerge.
Gratitude for yourself.
Gratitude for your experiences and your complexities.
For your center,
Your core.
And for giving yourself time to bring yourself back into balance.
Slowly,
Slowly,
Without losing touch to your center,
Staying physically and mentally connected to the ground,
Open your eyes and with awareness,
Bring your attention outwards again while still holding interceptive awareness.
Thank you for practicing with me today.
As this is an embodied practice,
It's most effective when it's repeated.
It's like a muscle memory that gets locked into your cells.
So feel free to come back as many times as you want.
I wish you a centered rest of the day.
Bye and see you next time.
