Hi,
And welcome to today's mindfulness meditation practice with me,
Mindfully Laura.
In today's practice we're going to be cultivating confidence.
Specifically during this time when many of us are now interacting virtually,
It can be really powerful to spend just 10 minutes doing a practice like this to help us to cultivate more confidence and physically take up more space.
Quite often when we are feeling a lack of confidence we find ourselves shrinking or maybe adopting closed body language.
So today as we practice together I invite you to find a position to sit or to lay down or to stand where you feel that your body is open,
Perhaps your arms lay just beside you on the chair or on your legs.
And just inviting us to ensure that our torso area is open,
We're not crossing our arms or crossing our legs,
Taking a seated or standing or laying down position that really allows you to take up space.
And when you feel ready you can go ahead and close the eyes or lower your gaze or allow your gaze to rest somewhere near the floor.
We'll start by taking three nice deep breaths together,
Breathing in through the nose,
Open mouth exhale,
Perhaps inviting some noise,
Breathing in through the nose,
Open mouth audible exhale.
Final time like this,
Breathing in through the nose,
Open mouth audible exhale.
Allowing the breath to return to normal.
And seeing if we can direct that breath into the places where your body is in contact with the floor or with the chair.
Using your awareness to imagine sending the breath to those places.
Maybe that's the sit bones,
Maybe that's the lower back,
Maybe that's the feet on the floor,
Whatever it looks like for you,
Just sending that breath all the way down to those places that are in contact with the earth in some way.
Allowing the breath to sink into these places.
Feeling yourself rooted to the earth,
Solid,
Grounded,
Present.
And then gently bringing your awareness to the left side of your body,
Imagining now on an inhale that you're sending that breath to the left hand side of your body.
The left side of the face,
The left shoulder,
The left leg,
Arm.
Sending the breath to that whole side of your body and imagining that breath to expand that side.
Reaching out beyond your physical body.
Feeling that energy,
That life force circulating all the way through the left side of your body and out beyond your body.
And then allow the breath to return to normal and your awareness to come back to centre.
And now we switch to the right side of the body,
So energetically sending that breath to the right hand side of the body.
Being sure not to miss out any part of the body.
Really noticing what it feels like to energetically send the breath,
Expanding that side of your awareness and then imagining the breath is able to travel beyond the right hand side of the body,
Even further out to the right.
Perhaps imagining the body to take up more space.
And then bring the awareness back to centre.
We move to the front side of the body,
Down the front of the face,
The neck,
The torso,
The arms and the legs.
Allow your breath to move into these parts.
Imagining that you're sending breath only to the front side of the body.
Noticing if it feels like the front of the body is growing,
Expanding,
As you send your breath beyond the front of the body.
Imagining that we're taking up more space.
And then back to centre.
This time sending the awareness of the breath into the back body.
Back of the head,
The back,
Back to the arms and the legs.
Imagining those parts of the body to be filling up with this air that we breathe.
The breath expands beyond the body,
Back behind us.
Imagining we are growing in space.
And finally coming back to centre.
And now imagining the breath going into the top of the body,
So through the crown of the head,
The tops of the shoulders.
Just imagining the breath filling up these places.
Imagine that energy extending out through the crown of the head and through the shoulders.
Imagine your energy of the physical body growing and expanding.
Now I invite us to bring our awareness to the surface of the body as a whole.
And imagine that your body is emitting a ray of light like sunlight.
This ray of light is a 360 degree ray of light beaming and radiating out of your body from all the places that we sent the breath.
And as you breathe in,
Imagining that radiant light to grow stronger and more powerful as your light,
Your life force,
Your radiance emits into the world around you.
With every inhale,
Imagining that light growing stronger.
And with every exhale,
Imagining the light to go deeper into yourselves at the same time.
Continuing to visualise this light emitting from inside of us.
And then when you're ready,
Gently fluttering open the eyes,
Wiggling the fingers and the toes.
And just seeing if you can,
With your eyes open,
Continue to imagine that light radiating from your body.
Thank you so much for practicing with me today.
