Let's begin today's practice by grounding into the body.
Let's start by noticing the contact points between your feet and the floor,
Your legs and the chair or the cushion beneath you,
The back of the chair and if it's supporting you.
See if you can observe the support between the chair or the cushion,
Your body and gravity holding you up.
See if you can allow yourself to soften a bit more into your posture.
And as you do,
Bring your awareness to the breath flowing through your body.
Where have you located it?
Can you feel the rise and fall in your belly or your chest?
Can you notice the temperature change in your nostrils?
Cool air on the inhale and warm air on the exhale.
Expanding your awareness to the quality of your breath.
Is it shallow or deep,
Rigid or smooth,
Through the nose or the mouth?
Or just noticing how the breath naturally occurs without change or interruption?
I wonder if you can expand your awareness with the same gentle compassion for your breath and share that for yourself.
Just observing as you are without the need to change or improve.
Self love can often be one of our greatest challenges to overcome because we must first accept who we are,
How we are,
As we are.
What if there was nothing to change?
What if there was no problem to fix?
What if you were a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously,
Worthy of love as you are in this moment?
See if you can relax into that concept,
Into that idea,
The way that you've relaxed into the chair or cushion beneath you.
How would it feel to be loved the way that you love?
Unconditional.
And now holding on to that concept,
That belief of wholeness and unconditional love,
I invite you to bring your awareness to the center of your chest,
Your heart center.
If it's helpful for you,
You can place both hands in the center of your chest or in prayer position or you can leave them where they are.
On your next inhale,
I want you to imagine in your mind's eye that you're breathing into this heart centered place.
And with each inhale,
Your heart expands with all of the love and the peace and forgiveness and compassion that you have the capacity to hold.
And on the exhale,
The flip side of the coin,
I want you to imagine that your body is naturally releasing what does not serve this heart center,
The burdens,
The fear,
The anger,
And the grudges that we hold on to.
On the inhale,
You receive and on the exhale,
You release.
Remembering today's intention,
I trust myself to know what's best for me and to choose accordingly.
As you breathe into this space,
Know that the body has an innate wisdom,
A wisdom far beyond our own.
Getting into this heart space is tuning into that wisdom and allowing it and trusting it to support us.
Just like our body supports us,
Just like the chair and the cushion support our body.
So for the next few moments,
I invite you to surrender to this breath cycle of inhaling and allowing,
Of exhaling and releasing,
And doing so with a trusting knowingness that you are realigning with your true self.
For the next few moments,
I'll leave you to take a few breaths in silence with a reminder that it is the nature of the mind to push and pull you in different directions.
Rather than fight that nature,
Gently come back to the breath.
It is always waiting for you in the present moment to gently begin again as many times as you need to.
Hello.
Take a moment to consider all that you've been inhaling and allowing into your heart-centered space.
From love to gratitude to patience and forgiveness.
Choose one of those words and see if you can embody them.
Feel them.
And choose to focus particularly on that feeling.
Our energy flows where our attention goes.
So wouldn't it be wonderful if we put our attention on ourselves and we allowed gratitude or peace or forgiveness to flow into our hearts so that it can overflow into the relationships in our lives.
Choose what resonates for you and breathe deeply into that word.
Even if you can't figure out right now exactly how it feels,
Just focus on the word and allow your intention to amplify.
Remember the body has wisdom.
It's the thinking mind that gets in our way.
So just picture that word and let your breathing do the rest.
In a moment,
I'm going to ring the sound bell and bring this practice to an end.
But before I do,
I invite you to express appreciation for yourself.
For carving out the time to tune in to your heart,
Your body,
And your breath today.
This is work and it is work that only you can do.
It's part of your responsibility and you've decided to show up today.
Don't take that lightly.
So take a moment to thank yourself for making you a priority because this practice is a drop in the bucket of something greater.
Your journey of self-love and self-care has expanded once more because you chose to sit with yourself.
So I invite you to follow the sound of the bell until you can't hear it anymore and it'll bring you back into the present moment.
Then of we've expect our
