Opening Your Heart

Welcome to day two of the Embrace,

Empower and Evolve meditation series.

I'm Lou Redmond.

And today,

You're going to be coming from our Embrace and moving into some love.

Go ahead and find your comfortable meditation space,

Your place of peace,

Wherever you go to,

Whatever posture you feel most comfortable with.

Start tapping into that breath,

That life-giving energy.

Breathing into your body.

Grounding down to your chair.

Starting to make your nostrils and your breath a little more audible.

Finding that peace,

Finding that Embrace,

That grounding that we cultivated on the first day.

Notice that there's something that's hanging on in your body,

If you feel maybe a little tight in the shoulders.

Something in the neck is bothering you.

As you breathe,

Breathe out any tension,

Anything that's hindering you from being fully relaxed,

Fully present,

Fully grounded in this moment.

And remember with every inhale we expand a little higher,

Chest opens.

And with an exhale,

We are grounding,

We are rooting,

And we have embraced.

I invite you now to go in your mind's eye to a place,

A situation,

Something that gives you a feeling of love.

Maybe it's when you're with a significant other.

Maybe it's when you're doing your favorite hobby.

Maybe it's a lake or a mountain,

Some place in nature that you go to and you can feel a deep love.

Or any other time in your life if you feel like you've been lacking that love,

Any time in your life where love has been evident,

Whatever's coming up for you.

So in your mind's eye,

Paint a picture of that space,

See yourself with that person doing that activity.

Notice what you see,

Notice what is coming up,

Surroundings,

Who's there with you,

How do the plants or trees look.

Go ahead and notice how it sounds.

You can hear anything.

Maybe someone talking to you,

Maybe it was something someone said one time that made you feel loved.

What do you hear?

Are there birds outside?

Maybe the wind,

Maybe your family.

What does it smell like?

Someone cooking dinner.

You smell the fresh air.

Maybe you like the paint and you feel love when you paint so you smell those,

How the paint smells when you open.

Whatever's coming to you,

Not judging,

Just noticing your environment.

And as you breathe,

Notice what you feel.

See if you can start to cultivate this love,

Cultivate this loving feeling that you have in this moment.

I believe the greatest emotion we are here to feel is love.

And a lot of people say there's really only two emotions that we act on,

Love or fear.

And everything else is just a byproduct or a factor of either love or fear.

If something is making you feel excited,

That's towards your love.

If something makes you feel stressed,

That's towards the fear.

And as you breathe,

As you start cultivating this feeling of love,

I want you to imagine in your space that there is this bright white light that is now emanating first from your heart.

There's just this ball of light right outside of your chest.

And as you breathe,

The light moves from outside your chest and is now placed in the center.

The center of your chest,

The center of your being.

And as you breathe,

You notice the light start coming out from your chest and expanding out into your room,

Out into this place that you've pictured in your mind's eye.

Out into this loving scene and your light is just getting brighter.

It's getting larger,

Expanding from all angles below your feet into the ground above your head behind you.

You're just filling this room up with light.

As you breathe,

You can breathe in more of that love,

The love that you breathe from your room is starting to give love into this light.

You start feeling even a deeper sense of love,

Sense of excitement,

Sense of peace.

These are all emotions guiding towards our love.

Notice what this light looks like now.

It's touching every part of your picture,

Every person in the room.

And what this light represents is your love.

At the core of who you are,

You are only love.

You are loved.

While this scene may give you a sense of love from doing something outside of yourself,

Come back now away from this scene.

And come back to your breath,

But keep this light,

Keep the light that's radiating all around you.

As you breathe,

Understand that it was you who created this love.

You have this deep love inside that emanates,

That enlivens other people in your life.

Sometimes we think that we need to go outside of ourselves to love,

To feel love.

But how can we need to go outside to feel what we actually are?

With each breath,

Give yourself some of that love,

Your own love.

Start to cultivate this self-love.

Coming back to how we've embraced our journey.

And as you breathe,

Breathe in more love for you,

Breathe in more love for where you are.

Fully loving ourselves.

And then repeat either out loud or silently in your head.

At my core,

I am love.

At my core,

I am love.

You are fully capable of feeling this love from the inside.

That's where it starts.

It starts in us.

It starts in you.

The more we can generate our self-love,

Our own understanding of who we are and the love that we feel,

It's then that we can go out and spread our love,

Shine that light to the ones that we love.

Sometimes we do may need a little love from the outside,

But it's coming back into meditation.

It's coming back to your breath that reminds us,

That can bring back us to who we are.

And we learn to cultivate more of that self-love,

Embracing and loving not only where we are,

But who we are.

Because you are perfect in this moment.

You are loved and you are love.

Whenever you feel complete,

There's no rush.

Stay in this moment.

Stay in this love for as long as you like.

And whenever it feels ready,

Come back to your body.

Come back to this space and open your eyes.

We'll see you next time with love.

Namaste.