Anchoring

This 27-minute rest may be particularly useful for people who have a hard time connecting to their breath. Lisa will guide you through your body and experience with the breath. It will give you an opportunity to reconnect with your being. This recording was done in a group setting.

Transcript

Okay, Yeah, So just settling in if you haven't already, Kind of finding your spot that we'll be in for the next bit of time. And of course you can move during this time in any way that feels right for you so you don't have to find the perfect spot, Anything like that. And just kind of listening to yourself while we're doing the rest at any point if you want to move your body or even get up, You can, Full permission if anytime you want to have eyes open or closed, You can. So just kind of really paying attention to what feels right for you and letting go of the shoulds and supposed tos as that comes to you. Yeah, So let's see. Let's kind of just start with, Yeah, We'll just start with the head today. Sometimes it's nice to feel the space behind the head and there isn't anything behind my head right now and there isn't for maybe many of us, But there still is a space back there behind the head. It might be, For some of us it might be ethereal or just space. But we can kind of feel maybe the lack of contact if our heads aren't connected to any solid object. It might just feel kind of a space back there. And for those that are connecting to something solid, You'll feel the surface of that. So it might be hard. It might be soft. I'm just kind of noticing the space behind there. And we'll keep noticing the space kind of behind the body for a little bit, Lowering down a little bit then into the neck. And again, For those of you that are leaning up against something or resting upon something, You'll feel connection here also in the way that you do. And then those of us who don't have anything solid behind us, We'll just feel that space. You might feel kind of the hair covering our necks or maybe a breeze or whatever you feel. Maybe clothing. Then lower into the body, To the back of the shoulder blades and the middle of the back. And that space of the back is a wide territory and what it feels is going to be relational in relationship to what is behind you literally. So again, If you're laying flat on your back or up against something, You'll feel different things as the surface behind you presses into your body or your body presses into the surface behind you. And if you're sitting with nothing behind you, You'll feel that. You'll feel the different spaces throughout the back region. So there's no right or wrong here. There's just context of your positioning and what the back of your body is connecting with, Whether it's clothing or something more visceral, More and more substantial. Just kind of noticing that and letting your attention slowly go down the body until you find something for all of us. If we're sitting or laying down, Eventually we will find something pretty solid under the sit bones. If someone's listening to this standing, You won't obviously feel that, But those of us who are sitting or lying down will now notice the visceralness or the hardness or the more overt contact under the body. So just taking a moment to feel that chair or the cushion or the mattress, Whatever you're upon under the sit bones. Again, So much depends on context. So if you're sitting upright, You'll really feel the weight of the body on the sit bones. You'll feel the weight that your body has in this field of gravity, Of earth. You'll feel that weight pressing into the chair or the cushion or whatnot. You'll feel that in some kind of way, Maybe under the thighs. Feel the upper weight that's collecting, So to speak, Or even anchoring into the sit bones or the thighs. So from a seated position, You'll feel kind of more contact or overt contact with the lower part of the body, Starting with the sit bones and down to the floor. If you're laying horizontal, Your weight will be more evenly distributed, So you won't. . . You'll notice this differently. So again, This is based on context. No matter how you're positioned, Most of us will notice that the lower part of the body is fairly still and the upper part of the body is moving with breath. So again, When you're seated, You can more easily feel the visceralness of the stillness or the solidity of that lower part of the body. So whether the legs are tucked under you or you're seated in a chair and your legs are going down and your feet are touching the floor, You'll kind of feel that lower part is kind of anchored there with a little less movement as the body is moving through breath. So if it feels right for you, You might notice those two opposite stillness and movement. Whether you're laying down or sitting upright, You'll notice the legs are fairly still. And then above the waist is moving. And that's just to notice that there's nothing to do about that, Nothing to fix about that, Nothing to even understand about that. So notice the and experience, The stillness and the movement or the more solid anchoring and the movement up top. We'll throw in the arms and the hands here, The arms and the hands tend to after a while also be fairly still. And we can also feel their heaviness because they're just literally hanging out or resting upon what they're connected with. And like the legs, There's nothing really for the arms or the hands or the feet to be doing. So they will feel a little bit more weighted. The muscles are kind of soft there. And again, The arms that are still and fairly solid or weighted will be right near the movement of the upper body. So again, Noticing your context. In my context, I'm sitting upright, My feet are on the floor, My hands are on my lap. And I can feel the lower part of the body pretty still and my hands on my legs and there it's all pretty still kind of anchored. And then the upper body which is very nearby is rising and falling. And I'm just noticing that factually. In your own context, You'll notice your own factual happenings. So neither is not better than the other. They're just different. You might have thoughts come in or images come in or movement. That's the other form of movement. So the mind is often in movement and that's okay. That's its job. We can't really stop that from happening. We can just notice when attention is tuning into all that movement and whether it's thought movement of analysis or evaluation or just things coming in and out of attention or images. Just noticing that and bringing attention back down to this moment of sitting as that feels simple for you. So simple for you might be noticing the movement of the breath. Simple for you might be just observing thoughts or noticing images. Simple for you might be noticing the kind of the more anchoredness of the hands and arms and legs and feet. Simple for you might be noticing sound or some other sense receptive aspect that's here. So it's okay to anchor into anything that we're experiencing that brings us to simplicity. And that can really change moment by moment. Sometimes certain sounds are very lulling to me. I like to turn my attention to the soothing, What feels like soothing to me, Sound of a fan. And other times that isn't so soothing or sound isn't useful for me in that way. And I might turn attention to just the movement of breath in one area of my body. And that seems to kind of slow everything down for me. And then other moments I might go all the way to my feet and just feel the floor under my feet or the legs on top of my feet if I'm sitting cross-legged. So there is no right way to anchor or even necessarily a consistent way. It's just kind of in a moment. What is simple and easy that you can connect with that feels right for you? We will return a little bit more to the legs just to check this area out. Sometimes we, Even though for a lot of us or maybe most of us we depend on our legs in different ways, We often don't really notice this territory. And it can be useful to notice this territory particularly when we might be feeling charged emotions in some places because for many people the legs or the feet or the arms and legs are fairly neutral. And sometimes we don't even, We've never really noticed or been introduced so to speak to this neutral territory. We are just habitually drawn to what's uncomfortable or just to not be in our bodies at all. And that's really understandable. So when we learn that we might find some neutrality and we could include that, That can just be practically useful. So just to notice in this moment that the arms and legs or hands and feet, They may be somewhat neutral for you. And again, They may not be. So this is very individual. There isn't a supposed to or should. There is just your experience. If the hands and legs or feet or legs are neutral, Then let yourself connect with them. And if not, Then just stay with what feels right for you. We will connect a little bit more with the legs and the feet a little bit here. Just kind of checking out this space. Again, You'll feel the weight of the upper body is going to be collecting upon the lower body due to the field of gravity if you're sitting upright. And if you're horizontal, You'll just kind of feel the legs there, However you're positioned. And they'll have a weight no matter how you're positioned. How that weight is experienced will depend on the context or how you're positioned. So just feeling the weight of your legs however you are. And then feeling the engagement of the legs, Again, However your context reveals that. So for me, My knees are pretty much at a 90-degree angle. My thighs and then my knees and then the lower part of my legs, It's kind of like a 90-degree angle. So I'm feeling kind of pretty even engagement between the knee and the sit bones and the knee and the foot. If my heels were propped up on something, I'd be feeling it different. I feel different, Probably mostly engagement on my heels. So again, If you're sitting cross-legged, You'll feel your engagement of your legs in that way. And if you're laying horizontal, You'll feel probably a little more pressure on the heels or again, Depending on how your legs are positioned. So there isn't something you're supposed to be feeling here. It's just whatever is in your context. And just be curious about that, To be curious of your experience exactly as it's here. Sometimes, People aren't comfortable connecting to how they feel the breath in the area where breath takes the most occupancy in the chest or the belly. And so we can even, You know, Imagination is amazing. We can imagine breathing into the legs or we can imagine that the feet have a mouth and can breathe, You know, Breathing through the feet, So to speak. We can use imagination to play. So just letting yourself do that. What would it be like to be breathing from the lower part of your body? And there is no right way to do this. There's just kind of a way that you want to play with doing with it. Now we know that breath is making its way through the legs because breath oxygenates all the blood cells in our body and that blood is being carried through our body. So in some way, We know scientifically that breath does make its way literally through our body. So we can use that to help us with our imagination to know that there is a vitality and a life force due to breath being in our bodies. So if that's fun for you to add in, To just play with, To experiment here with breathing into the legs and also breathe into the pelvic floor if that's right, A little bit higher than the legs, You can, The pelvic floor actually does have a mechanism of engagement with breath. So you might feel that if that feels right for you, But you can also do it more from the feet or anywhere in between. And when you're listening to this later, You might want to pause this here at any point to or particularly here to really kind of play with this, To breathe more here. For now, We're going to continue to kind of imagine a little bit. We know that when we see a tree, We see the top part and we don't see the whole under the under part of the tree, The root system. So we can kind of imagine that we are our trees and there's the visible and then there's the invisible. And we can imagine that there's invisible and it runs down from our legs through our feet and down into the earth. And if we want to play with that for fun, We can. And if that feels right for you, Just to imagine that your legs are kind of like the root system, Kind of anchoring, Of course, A root system is really important to a tree. It anchors the tree without a strong root system, A tree will just fall over. So root system is really important to a tree and a root system is pretty important to a human being as well. So we can anchor through our imagined root system of our legs and down through our feet and even imagining that root system that goes beyond our form into the space around us or down under us. If you'd like to use the breath here, You can. You can do this in any way that feels right for you. You can imagine kind of exhaling down and out through the legs, Down through the feet and then breathing in up through the earth's energies up through the feet and legs. Or you can reverse the two, Reverse those. So however it feels right for you. Maybe you only want to release down into the earth and start back up top and just only releasing down. Maybe you only want to be drawing up from the earth and you want to be releasing out your mouth. So there's really no way you should be doing this. It's just fun for you or to experiment for you in the ways that's and discover the way that's easiest for you or lends itself to a spaciousness that you would like to know more. You may start to even forget there is an upper part of the body. Maybe it's just a cyclical movement between earth and legs. Again, You can pause the recording here if you'd like to spend more time on this. For now I just invite you to be very conscious with whatever energy you might have been, Might be waking up to a little bit that's maybe new for you or any curiosity that you have here. Just really breathing that up, Breathing it and even breathing it up through the spine, Through the back or through the front and even letting the arms raise over you over up top if you want to stretch up. You might even find like your own arms become like branches like in a tree and you just kind of if you want to you can let the arms kind of stretch and be branches and if you don't want to then you don't need to do that. You can keep them just as they are or you might even just visualize that and let the arms be where they are. And then lastly just connecting again to the object that you're sitting upon, Bringing more attention into more of you at this point to feel the support behind you however you do and the support under you based on your context. And just again letting the nervous system really receive the support that the body is receiving based on your context. Even if you're standing you're still receiving or experiencing support and we can consciously acknowledge that too, Let the nervous system really take that in with conscious recognition that there is support here in a practical way and practical is really important for the nervous system so we just kind of just let the bones and the muscles and the skin acknowledge that real contact with what you're sitting upon or laying upon. And lastly just kind of letting the eyes gently start to open while you're maintaining this connection to your breath and to your sitting or laying body. And you may want to stretch here if you haven't already. Let the legs move if they want to or the arms or the fingers or the ankles, The back, Whatever. Just again with the eyes open or closed if you prefer letting your attention notice the body as it's more engaged and still sitting and breathing as you do that. And then as you feel ready to come back to the screen.