Meditation And Breathwork To Release Anxiety

This grounding meditation and pranayama practice ground into the present by connecting to all of your senses, finding calm through Sama Vritti and the three-part breath, and dropping into deep meditation by a thought labeling exercise.

Hope you feel a sense of inner balance and calm!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to SEMAYOGA.

My name is Leila and today I'll be guiding you through a pranayama and meditation practice that's going to help you settle your nervous system,

Calm down and ground into the present moment.

We'll start seated up on a block or you can use anything to elevate your hips.

Make sure that your shoulders feel over your hips,

Ears are over the shoulders and your spine is really tall.

Find a slight engagement through your belly button so the muscles of your core are kind of hug the spinal column and lift it up and see if you can remain elevated through your sternum and knit your ribs.

From here we'll begin by engaging our senses to bring us into the present moment.

So start to look around wherever you are in the room and just become aware,

Become really present with your surroundings.

See if you can really notice all the colors,

All the objects and try to see what the farthest thing in distance away from you that you can find in your vision is and then try to find the closest thing.

And once you feel like you're complete,

You can close down your eyes and take a moment to see what's present within.

Take a deep breath in feeling grateful for your sense of sight and a deep breath out.

And shift your awareness into your nostrils and see if there's any smell that you can notice that's around you.

Be really present with this sense and try to tune into the most subtle smell.

Take a deep breath in gratitude for your sense of smell,

Inhale and exhale.

Next move your awareness towards your ears and start to scan your surroundings,

Allowing yourself to take in any sounds that might be around you.

Try to not label what the sounds are but just allow them to come into your field and see what the farthest sound you can move your awareness into is.

What is the closest sound you can hear?

Take a deep breath in feeling deeply grateful for your ability to hear,

Inhale,

Exhale.

And shift your awareness to your mouth,

Inside your mouth,

Your palate.

Notice if there's anything that you can taste.

Take a few swallows here.

In Chinese medicine,

The act of swallowing represents bringing the prana,

Bringing the life force down.

So do that and try to tune into the most subtle taste you can.

Take a deep breath in gratitude for your ability to taste,

Inhale and exhale.

And bring your palms onto opposite shoulder and just allow yourself to feel your own touch.

Notice the sensation of your own skin,

Notice the heat,

The texture.

And then really slowly give yourself a nice little hug,

Touching your arms and then move your hands down your belly,

Touch your thighs,

Touch your knees and find your way back to stillness.

Now see if you can feel into the sensation of the air around you touching your skin.

Feeling the clothes that you're wearing wrap around your body,

The texture of the material of your clothing.

If you can sense into the air blowing in and out through your nose,

The subtle sensation of touch that the air pathway creates.

And then move your awareness towards your sits bones.

See if you can feel your sits bones touching the earth or the props under you.

Tune into that support.

Take a deep breath in gratitude for all the physical sensations,

The physical touch that you're able to feel.

And breathe it out.

From here we'll move into our Samavritti Pranayama,

Equal Ratio Breathing.

From this present grounded place,

Inhale through your nose for four counts.

Hold the breath in for four counts.

Exhale out your nose for four counts.

Hold the breath out for four counts.

Inhale through the nose for five counts.

Hold the breath in for five counts.

Exhale for five.

Hold the breath out for five.

Last one,

We'll inhale for six.

Hold the breath in for six.

Exhale for six.

And hold the breath out for six.

Take a deep breath in through both of your nostrils,

Inhale.

Feel the breath flowing evenly.

And open your mouth,

Let it go.

We'll move into a really slow variation of our three part breath.

So you can bring one hand onto your belly,

The other one onto your heart.

We'll breathe in slowly into the belly,

Then into the chest and out the mouth.

But for today's practice,

Make sure that you're not breathing only into the front side of your body,

But your inhales and your exhales are also coming into the sides and the back.

So your breath is very three dimensional.

Take a deep breath into your belly,

Three dimensionally.

Another breath up into your chest,

Slow.

Then make an O shape with your lips like you're blowing out a candle,

Blow out all of your air.

Make sure that your exhale is longer than both of those inhales.

Inhale into the belly,

Feel the sides and back fill up.

One more breath into the chest,

The shoulder blades,

The rib cage.

Make an O shape with your lips,

Blow out all of your air.

Three more,

Inhale into the belly,

Inhale into the chest,

Let it all go.

As you breathe out,

The shoulders relax,

The tailbone presses onto the ground or onto the block and you blow out all of the air.

Inhale into the belly.

The breath moves all the way up to the rib cage,

The back of the shoulders.

Exhale out your mouth.

Last one here,

Breathe into the belly,

Sides and back.

Take another breath up into your heart.

This time hold it at the top.

See if you can sip in a bit more air in through your nose,

A bit more in through your mouth.

Become really full and now relax your whole body around the sensation of fullness.

Press the tongue on the roof of the mouth,

Gaze up to the third eye gateway and keep holding the breath in.

And we need to exhale slow,

Exhale out your mouth,

The slowest exhale,

Longest exhale of class.

And you hold the breath at the bottom where the lungs are fully empty and feel the stillness that comes with being without breath.

Knowing that everything you need is within you.

Try to hold the breath out a little longer than you want to.

But when you need to inhale,

Of course,

Inhale through your nose and exhale out your mouth.

We'll end our practice with three hums and we'll drop into a meditation.

So hums are really good for turning on and stimulating our vagus nerve,

Which brings our nervous system into balance,

Brings us into that rest and digest state.

We'll do that.

Inhale.

Try to hum so strong that you feel this vibration in your head,

In your brain.

Two more.

One more.

Allowing those vibrations to sink into the physical and subtle bodies.

And we'll drop into a meditation and awareness exercise called thought labeling.

So as you find your seated meditation,

Start to take the seat of the observer.

So you're watching yourself from the third person and you're observing everything that's happening in your internal world,

In your mind.

And our practice today is to attach a label to anything that comes up in your head space.

So when a thought comes up,

Maybe if you are thinking about something in your body,

You just label it as sensation.

If you start thinking about what you're going to cook later,

You label it as future thought.

Or if you're worried about something,

You label it as worry,

Or past events,

Or idea.

Whatever that might be,

You might come up with your own labels.

But the idea is you're just noticing what's coming up,

Becoming aware,

Labeling it,

And then without getting into the actual spiral of that thought,

You're letting it go.

Try to remain in this meditative state for as long as you can,

Becoming aware of everything that's happening within.

Thank you so much for practicing with us today,

And we will see you next time.