From Powerless To Empowered: Build Resilience During Coronavirus

In this brief resilience lesson and guided meditation, we learn to shift from a powerless anxious state of mind to a more empowered "wise mind" that brings mind and heart together. In 10 minutes, you can arrive at a more empowered calm center – one embodied breath at at time.

Transcript

Welcome back to another resilience building session in anxious times.

In today's resilience building meditation,

We are going to focus on how to move from feeling powerless to feeling empowered.

So a lot of that shift is going to happen from taking ourselves out of anxious mind,

This spinning,

Uncertain,

Powerless place oftentimes where we're in that fight-flight-freeze stress response,

Which often includes a feeling of either flight,

A lot of energy,

A lot of powerlessness.

Freeze is kind of the ultimate sense of powerlessness in the face of a looming threat.

So we're going to shift,

We're going to practice shifting out of that anxious mind into wise mind,

Wise mind which includes the head and the heart.

And I make these gestures because it really is about bringing that sort of separated,

Spinning,

Anxious mind back into the core of our body,

Back into the experience of this present moment,

This breath.

So let's go ahead and get started.

Find your comfortable position.

It can be sitting,

It can be lying down,

You could be walking outside.

That would be another wonderful way to build resilience with some walking which gives exercise and vitamin D,

But leave that be for now.

We'll do a future walking meditation.

So let's come into our comfortable position and allow your eyes to gently close if that feels comfortable.

Again,

It's a helpful way to screen out the external world.

A lot of the visual field can be distracting from our inner world.

We want to be able to screen out the distractions and be able to tune in in a different way.

So with your eyes gently closed,

Let the space around your eyes soften.

And just bringing your awareness gently into the sensations of the breath that's happening in this moment.

You might just notice the quality of your breath in this moment,

Not with any need to judge it as being good or bad.

But often the state of the breath can be quite reflective of the state of our mind.

Again,

That mind and body connection.

When we are anxious,

We are sort of cut off from our body.

And in fact,

Our breath is often cut off.

We don't breathe as deeply or as deep in our bodies,

Drawing from that deeper chest and even belly breathing that can help to calm our nervous system.

Just noticing the state of your breath without judgment,

Just noticing,

Curious.

And then inviting yourself to arrive a little bit more in this moment,

In this body,

In this breath by just deepening the breath more deliberately.

You might let yourself exhale and feel a sense of softening and letting go,

Letting go of tension in your shoulders,

In your face,

In your heart.

So just,

It's helpful to take a few deeper breaths and then allowing the breath to return to a more natural rhythm.

Just letting the awareness,

Your awareness,

Your mind,

Which has been brought into the body through awareness of breath.

Now letting it travel outwards a little bit to ground your awareness in this present moment through sounds.

Just arriving right here through the sounds that are happening.

Including the sound of your own breath that's happening,

However it's the first light.

And every time that you notice that your mind has shifted out of the body,

Which it will be very conditioned to do,

Not only have we not really practiced paying attention in this more embodied way much in our lives,

In this deliberate way,

But also when the mind is more anxious it does split off more easily from the body.

And the reason that can happen is that when we begin to bring our awareness into our breath,

For example,

Just noticing the breath in your chest.

And just noticing if there's what feelings arise there,

What body sensations or emotions you might notice when you bring your awareness into the core of your body.

Oftentimes when our minds are agitated,

Restless,

Anxious,

Our bodies are often also agitated,

Restless,

Anxious.

But anxiety can be again this fight-flight-freeze stress response,

Which can become chronic when we are feeling anxious a lot of the time.

And when we are in the fight-flight-freeze stress response,

Our heart can beat faster,

Our breath can be shorter,

More shallow,

Or we can have a sense even of shutting down,

Of really freezing.

And that includes almost a freezing of our heart.

So some of the time when we practice bringing our awareness into our breath in this way,

Almost like we're just a seagull alighting upon the ocean wave of our breath,

Not needing to change it in this moment,

Just alighting on the wave.

And being with the breath that's happening in this moment in the chest,

Feeling the ribs expand on the inhale,

Letting go on the exhale,

Letting go.

We begin to thaw some of that freezing,

Some of that agitation,

We begin to calm when we return over and over again to this breath.

It helps us find a more calm center.

It helps to thaw the freeze response,

Which can over time lead to a feeling that we have a shell around our heart,

That we're so guarded and on edge.

When we gently arrive again and again in our breath,

We learn to come home into our bodies.

We learn to bring our mind back into the body and arrive home in ourselves.

We practice becoming empowered through this more powerful way of being present,

Mind and body.

We return to the source of our energy so we don't burn ourselves out with chronic fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Stress response.

We learn to come home into the calm center of our bodies and learn how to help it become calm.

You might even see what it feels like to ground your awareness in your hands,

The sensations in your hands right now.

Feel the aliveness that's present in your body right now,

In your palms,

In your fingertips.

Breathing in,

Exhaling,

Sending the awareness and the breath down into your feet,

Breathing all that oxygen in and then down into your feet,

Feeling the sensations in your feet.

Perhaps even the gentle pull of gravity grounding you quite literally in this moment.

Each new breath is a gift that invites us to come home,

Back home into our bodies.

The breath can really be a bridge between mind and body,

Just gently inviting the mind to ride the waves of the breath back down into this heart space.

I wonder what you notice in this moment when you bring your awareness into your heart space.

When you move from the powerlessness of anxious mind into wise mind,

Bringing head and heart together in the same place at the same time.

Together let's take one more empowered breath.

On the exhale,

Inviting even just a little more softening,

Letting go of tightness,

Tension,

So you can more fully arrive in this breath,

In this body,

Home.

When you feel ready,

Gently fluttering,

Open your eyes and keeping this heart centered awareness even as you look at something in the visual field right now,

Grounding yourself for a moment in shape,

Color,

Light and shadow.

Almost as though you're seeing with your heart space as well.

Bringing hand to heart,

Just taking a moment to thank yourself for engaging in a 10 minute activity to boost your resilience in anxious times.

I'll look forward to seeing you in our next session.

Goodbye.

Be well.

Reviews

Calming, gentle, relaxing meditation, thank you Maura🙏💞✨

Perfect, thank you. 👌🌹🙏

this was great! i love how you said in anxious times our mind splits off from our body. very true but i had never thought of it like that. explains why i have felt so detached. thank you so much ✨

Powerful, lovely, healing words. Thank you! I will definitely listen again and to more of your creations. Namaste 🙏🏼🌟💚

This was an awesome meditation 🧘🏽‍♀️. I am looking forward to hearing more of her

Great reminder of we meditate and that we are empowered.

Thank you so much!

Thank you for this meditation!! Felt anxious upon waking up this morning so this helped calm me down so I can start my day. ✌🏻

Exactly what I needed to begin my day! Thank you!

Very helpful. I would start to let go, then the word ‘anxiety’ would be used and I would snap back. Then let go, and again, the comparison to what we were trying to address would trigger me back. Then let go .... I feel I need to repeat this meditation a few times.

Beautiful meditation!! Thank you and sending blessings and gratitude 🙏