Morning Rest

This resting medition is useful when you are just waking up. When you wake up with a lot of thoughts it might be useful to first include more of you. In this 20 minute rest Lisa will invited you to do so.

Transcript

Good morning. I had a request for a rest to wake up to. So I'm going to do one in live time. My voice might be a little thick or scratchy. So I apologize for that. I don't know about you, But when I wake up, My thoughts are pretty loud. My attention is pretty much pretty high in my body up in my head. And it kind of feels like I am ahead. To a certain extent, My attention is so high and so exclusive that I don't feel very much like a whole person. So I take lots of time in the morning. First of all, I connect to my breath because I find that it's it wakes up other parts of my body. And I might experiment with different kinds of breath. I might breathe into my chest and exhale through my belly. So that will be filling up my chest cavity. With inhalation. And then filling up my belly area with the exhalation. If you're not used to breathing like this, This can take some practice for it to feel smooth and comfortable. I take my time with this and I let the breaths be full and as fluid as possible, Although that can take some time. And I really give extra attention to the exhalation, The exhalation that's filling up the lower belly down into the pelvic floor. If this breathing is awkward or uncomfortable, You can switch to breathing in and filling up your belly. Like it's a balloon and then exhaling, Releasing that balloon. The breath will also, Of course, Come into the chest and will take up space in the chest, But the preoccupation is in the belly with this one. Preoccupation is kind of in the belly with both of them, Although with the first one, We're consciously filling up the chest. I kind of like that one because it consciously engages that upper part of my chest. It doesn't leave it out, But it still keeps the focus or more attention on the lower belly, Pelvic floor area. So that's what I want to go back to doing. But either way, Having that attention lower helps to bring attention lower and what we are bringing attention to will start to wake up. So we're doing this without expectation. We're doing this just experiencing it, Feeling it, Watching, Noticing, Not trying to get anywhere, Not trying to make something happen. We're just watching what is happening as we practice, Including breath. Usually for me, This will start to bring my attention or my legs will start to be included in my attention, I should say. If that doesn't happen, You can consciously do that. You can just on purpose bring your attention down to your legs. And I'm laying on my side, So I just feel the weight of my legs. I feel the weight of my top leg resting on my lower leg. I feel the weight of my lower leg pressing into the mattress. I feel the weight of my hip, My lower hip, Which happens to be my left hip, Pressing into the mattress. I feel gravity. I'm feeling gravity, So the heaviness of my body is allowed to be heavy. The muscles in my legs are pretty soft. I might just check to see. I might on purpose tense the thighs or the buttocks or something else and then release them and then that will show me that they're soft and allowed to be heavier, Take up space. If you're on your back, You're just doing this in your own way, Feeling the weight of the legs from the hip area all the way down to the foot area. You can start with the feet if you want. You can start with the upper legs if you want. Just really noticing the weight of all the areas of your legs. And make sure you include the feet. Now, Because I've already been and trained my breath to be lower, As I'm doing this, My breath continues to continue to feel the low, The occupation in the lower areas with breath. And you can start to play with this just for fun. You can even imagine breathing into your feet or breathing into your lower legs. Or breathing out. So breathing in and out of your lower legs like they're an extension from that lower belly, You're just kind of superimposing that onto the lower legs or feet. I spent some time here and in this moment my feet have really warmed up. I can feel the heat of my feet, The heat of my legs, The weight of my legs. They feel included now in the rest of my body. Like my whole body is more here. I'm not just ahead anymore. So this is waking up the lower chakras. This is waking up the lower part of the body. And this lower part of the body is really important for being a human. So it's great to include it. It also disrupts that pattern of spiraling thoughts. It may require some effort to keep the lower body in your attention because our thoughts are often used to grabbing our attention. So as you use the breath as a focal point and you use gravity as a focal point and you use the weight of your body on the mattress as a focal point, The energy starts to, You start to feel that relationship being built. If your thoughts start to grab your attention, Just notice that maybe there's certain content that's arising, Things of your day or things of yesterday or things of the future. Just notice that. Let yourself know that you will attend to the thoughts that have importance. But for now, You're just waking up the body or you're connecting with building that relationship with the rest of you. So we're not ignoring the thoughts or denying them. We're acknowledging them, Letting them know we'll attend to them after the rest of us is included. If you haven't already, You might be including your hands, Your arms. If you're on your back, You can have your hands on your belly to help your attention stay connected to the belly with the breath. You might notice or you're going to have your hands at your side and you might notice your hands waking up as well. So really, As much time as you have to spend on the lower part of your body, That's what you're going to invite yourself to connect with, Because this is the relationship that we have the least conscious inclusion of usually. We're just letting ourselves discover what it's like to include what we normally don't include. For me, This usually regulates my brain, Regulates my nervous system. Sometimes I will fall back to sleep if I do this in the middle of the night, I'll fall back to sleep. If I'm needing to get up, Then once I feel my lower body start to be occupied and that relationship is more present, Then I will all get up. I won't go back to my thoughts. I won't go back to my thoughts. Even if those thoughts are important, I'll take them with me out of bed and to my next engagement. I don't find that ruminating in thoughts when I'm in bed is useful for me, Unless there's something that unless the rest of my body is kind of been woken up. And there's something that I want to feel into. I want to kind of honor that on our time to do that. If it's rumination or spinning of thoughts, I don't do that. I'm not I'm not I'm not saying that if it's more of an inclusion of thoughts, A conscious inclusion of thoughts, Just like I consciously included my legs. I'll go ahead and include that and feel the rest of my body with what I'm contemplating. The bulk of my attention, Or I would say at least some of my attention is going to remain in that lower belly pelvic floor leg area. I'm not going to leave that behind if at all possible for the rest of my day, Actually. And when I notice I've disconnected from that area. I'm going in the flag, The flag flying will be more like, Oh, I feel like a head, A walking head or a body as a head. I'm going to take a moment and pause and re connect, Reorient my attention down lower again and build that relationship. And once that relationship has been rebuilt or reconnected with that, I'm going to include the rest of me. This keeps my nervous system regulated. It keeps my brain regulated. It builds a neuroplasticity to including all of me. Including all of who we are is really important for regulation, Important for knowing how to be here and present here. Important for having a way of living that isn't thought based or where thoughts are the only option for attention to go. When we do this, Our neuroplasticity develops other places for attention to include and be with. You can flip your positioning at any point and just notice what you notice when you do that. I'm flipping onto my back and that's really different. It's a different my back. I feel my back in a different way. My lower back in a different way. But my legs are still here. The weight of my legs are still here. The weight of my the heat of my legs is still here. My lower belly. From this position, I can invite my back to feel the weight. My spine is more included in a different kind of way, Of course. And you can have different positionings as you experiment with different kinds of breath. So you might have more fluidity, Fluidity of breath on your back might have it on your side. Or it really is very individual. So as you're learning to include the lower part of your body, Choose the more comfortable position. To make it easier on yourself. Usually the last thing I do is literally open my eyes. My eyes have been pretty closed this whole time. That's me. You might have your eyes open the whole time. But then I open my eyes and I continue with what I've been doing. My attention doesn't leave where it had been. Although, I mean, A little attention is now obviously including the outside world. So now I'm breathing and I'm breathing with the outside world. I'm breathing with what I'm seeing. Now I am actually looking into the trees, But you might not have windows open or blinds open, I mean. So you might just be looking in your room. Personally, I don't have blinds, So I do wake up to trees, Seeing trees in my visual line. And so then I just include, I continue my practice, Breathing with the lower areas, The legs, While I'm watching the trees, Including the trees. When my attention is including the trees, Including the legs, Including the breath, Including this moment, The mattress, My thoughts are not very busy. So this is kind of like a meditation for me. Just noticing the here and now, The most simple, The simplest of here and now. Again, If it's not time for me to get up, I may fall back to sleep doing this. I also start to notice the sounds more. Sounds outside my window. If I am up for the day, If I'm not going to fall back to sleep, And my mind starts to get restless, I just redirect it back to what's simple now in my present moment. And I might do this until my alarm goes off, Or I might do this until it just feels like it's time to get up. If my thoughts are quiet, I'll usually base this on time, My alarm, Or just inspiration. If my thoughts are noisy and not settling, I'll get up sooner or change positioning. I might move to a chair or get my chai, My morning chai, And sit with my morning chai and then return to this practice. I often do that. That's my next step. Just getting a warm beverage, Using the bathroom, Feeding my cats, Getting my warm beverage, And resuming, Sitting, Taking in my present moment in that location. And then I start to check in with myself of my day and connect to my day more consciously in that way. So I hope this is useful. Let me know what you're noticing with this.

Reviews

Very unique - I love having this guidance on how to wake up consciously, despite noisy thoughts

Thank you. I feel whole after this practice and ready for my day. 🙏🏼