When your mind is filled with thoughts,
When you're feeling stressed,
When you notice a kind of tension in yourself,
Shake it off.
This is a way to get back into your body,
To give your mind a little bit of relief from whatever it's feeling focused or kind of contracted and obsessed around.
If you're feeling like your emotions are also a little bit stuck,
Like you can't get out of feeling a certain way,
Way.
What you can do is get back into your body,
Because your body is always here in the present moment.
So shake it off,
Literally.
We're going to start with the fingers,
Just a gentle wiggle.
Stretching through the hands.
We're going to let that wiggle,
That little movement,
Move up through the wrists.
Soft,
Right?
We're going to let it go down to the elbows,
Up to the shoulders.
You can even make a sound.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Let it move up through the neck,
Through the head.
Feel your face relax.
Let your cheeks and your eyelids and forehead relax.
Shake it off.
And what you're doing is you are allowing these tight contractions in the smallest muscles to soften and to relax.
That helps to let your body feel more safe,
To feel more released.
It helps to stimulate this awareness of being in this moment because this is what your body is feeling right now.
It's a way of kind of,
If you're feeling a little bit numb,
It's a really gentle way to awaken the sensations of being alive and right here from the inside out.
If you've ever watched a nature show and you've seen like a pursuit and there's an animal and it's chasing another animal and the animal that is being chased is scared.
It's running for its life.
And it successfully manages to evade the creature that was chasing it.
And when it feels safe.
It shakes its body.
It's like a way of discharging the accumulated stress of that moment and resettling back.
And feeling at ease.
It's like a way of letting go,
Of transitioning from,
I was just in a fight for my life,
But now I can relax.
I can let that go.
I am safe.
And it doesn't talk itself into it,
It simply shakes its body.
Now,
This doesn't have to be a very long action.
It can simply be five seconds,
Starting with the fingers,
Five,
To the wrists,
Four,
Elbows and shoulders,
Three,
Soft throat,
Soft jaw,
Two,
Three,
And then one.
And notice what it feels like.
Notice what's changed.
Come back into your body with so much love,
So much sweetness,
And soften through a little shake to help create some space from that stress and the contraction and the anxiety.
So I like to do this one at the beginning of the day as a way of kind of waking up.
I also like to do it at the end of the day as I'm winding down,
Getting ready for bed.
Mind is still a little bit worried or it's still a little preoccupied or I'm thinking about something,
You know,
From the past or I'm a little bit too much into the future,
Bring your body back.
Give yourself a little bit of a shake.
