Exploring Relaxation

A brief talk on what relaxation looks like. Sometimes we need to be reminded - what does it feel like to feel fully relaxed? Followed by a guided meditation exploring what it means to relax' with the thinking mind. This can be done lying down or sitting.

Transcript

So welcome to this relaxation and perhaps you're doing this before you go to bed or maybe you're in bed or maybe you're setting yourself up in the morning just before you start your day. So welcome and this is a deep relaxation and the opposite of deep relaxation you could say is tension and stress and very good teacher of mine would say that one of the manifestations of karma is in the physical sort of tension that manifests in our body. What that means is it's a consequence of the karmic tendencies of our mind so all that agitation all that you know aversion towards our situations we don't like all the attachments and kind of desire as to where we want to be where we're not so that all brings kind of a real sense of uneasiness and deep unsatisfaction and of course life also our bodies are frail and the environment can be troubling for us so this physical tension is constantly manifesting so the opposite of tension is relaxation so that's when the energy is flowing a little bit better it's kind of like a stream within us and we feel lighter we feel more peaceful it might be different for everyone but there's a sense of ease maybe even a sense of joy sense of freedom that there's possibility to feel more than just tension and it just clears up the channels you know clears the obstructions of life so when we relax we're settling into relaxation so let's find a place and you can sit sit upright or you can lie down and if you're lying down you can place just a small blanket underneath the back of the head you can place a cushion or maybe two pillows underneath the backs of the knees you can make yourself warm and just set up the environment so that it's a place where you can settle and feel safe to relax and just find a place now as you settle into this posture that you can go a little deeper into settling and softening and dropping and letting go a little bit more and of course relaxation there's many layers to letting go so know that it's going to take a little bit of just a little bit of time to drop the layers a little bit so what adjustments can you make now to let your body ease into this relaxation a little bit more so possibly you might soften in around your abdomen so you might take a few breaths in and out into the abdomen you might soften into the diaphragm as you breathe in and out and down into the diaphragm into the lower rib cage maybe even horizontally breathing here feeling the ribs expand out to the sides and the ribs just contracting and moving in as you exhale and just letting your mind just get interested by the breathing and how the body breathes actually in this moment you might soften a little bit more into the shoulder joints and deep inside the shoulder joints you might just kind of imagine that there's creating a little bit of space there you take a deep breath in and then exhale muscularly the shoulders are starting to soften a little bit more so we go deeper inside we might move towards our face behind the eyes so the eyeballs kind of connecting into the eye sockets and just behind the eyes starting to soften and of course the jaw then deep into the jaw line the jaw is dropping and those very small muscles around the back of the neck a place that really can be a pillar of tension for us sometimes just allowing that area to soften sense of ease coming in and perhaps so just a small gap between your lips or the mouth clothes whichever feels comfortable for you and the hands resting and a sense of softening moving into the lower torso again and down into your pelvis the deep settling into the pelvis and the sit bones making contact with your cushion or the ground and you might even notice that there's a tension maybe in the fingertips and just see if you can just loosen there a little bit and soften or in the hands or maybe even in the upper arms you down into your legs let the bones in the legs drop and get heavy the groins releasing and just exploring for you now where is it that you feel pockets of tension layers of tension maybe even and just see if you can explore the area with your breath a little bit more and perhaps even muscularity or softening on the exhale and of course there's on top of this there's the layer of mental pressure too so just exploring now that kind of build up of mental pressure from your day or maybe it's your week maybe it's the month and of course maybe it's been a long time going through many many difficulties or obstacles or challenges so the mental pressure is you know so vast the pressure to think the pressure to perform the pressure to solve problems can you soften here a little bit into your thoughts and just allow a little bit of space and free yourself and come back to your breath and notice the soothing quality of your breath soothing quality of your inhale soothing quality of your exhale no agenda no expectation sense of spaciousness in the body as it breeds in and out just notice that the body breathes by itself you observing settling into that space of stillness quietness relaxation perhaps even peacefulness really centered on the breathing and that centered focus is soft it comes from a place of caring for yourself and as we breathe in and out we're breathing within the field of this relaxation and what we're doing is we're setting up or opening a door to more deeper healing within us so we're kind of breathing into a new inner environment of healing place that's just on pause and it's allowing yourself to rest some space away from your situation your concerns and the mind of course will come in that part of your mind the agitated mind will drop in every now and again and bring you some self-doubt or urgency in the energy to come back and think about more things but can you center yourself back into your breathing just let the thinking mind just quite an even a small bit in the background bring your attention to the heart center the chest allow this area to expand and just feel the warming sense of your heart the sense of returning back to the heart the heart that knows that you deserve more than just to be in that thinking mind you deserve a sense of quietness and peacefulness you you you you settling maybe that deeper layer is slowly dropped into this relaxation a little bit more just checking making some small adjustments again if you need to bringing the top of the forehead slightly down and in to release the neck a little bit more and just reflecting on that even though part of our minds that feels agitated because our situations or our concerns all of that is very valid but to live our lives in a constant state of tension is obviously not good for ourselves but also leaves an impression for others that it's okay to do that as we slowly come to the end of this relaxation just reflect on the fact that there's a part of you that can access more than just the thinking mind you are more than that part of you that's constantly working out your situation or your concern there's a part of you that's spacious still and quiet just know that there's a bridge to going deeper into the depths of yourself a place that rests in your heart and then bring a sense of that deep care for yourself in this moment and then of course just stream that energy out to others also in this moment those also going through tension and obstacles and difficult situations bring a sense of compassion for those also