Giving The Gift Of Gratitude To Our Body

Our bodies respond to our mind when we experience life, how often do we remember to love our body and offer it gratitude for taking care of us, for wanting to protect us, for being so attentive to our mind and spirit? In this guided meditation we will offer gratitude to our body for supporting us, for offering care to us. We will give it permission to relax and just be.

Transcript

I'm Nora Speakman.

Thank you for joining me today.

I want you to get into a comfortable space.

Whether you're sitting or you're lying down,

Whatever you choose.

This is a time for you.

It's a time to replenish,

To renew and refresh.

To remember the alignment of mind,

Body and spirit.

So as you get comfortable,

We're gonna take some breaths together so that we can get into that space of really opening up our body,

Opening up our mind and heart.

And I like to do my breaths with an inhale of seven seconds,

Holding for four,

Releasing for seven.

So let's do that together.

We're gonna inhale,

And hold and just have the longest release or exhale that you can.

And again,

Inhale,

Hold and release.

And as you move through your breath work,

I want you to consider we're taking in life,

We're breathing in new and we're releasing the old.

We're letting go of fear.

We're letting go of anxiety.

In that extended release,

We're renewing our spirit,

Renewing our mind,

Bringing new life into our body.

And this guided meditation today is going to be about sending peace throughout our being.

Sending peace and getting in alignment.

Being peace so that we can unbind ourselves from the things and the situations that bind us up inside.

Learning to just set ourselves free.

And as we're in this time together,

If you have thoughts that come,

Just let them come.

Be aware of them.

See if there's anything those thoughts have to teach you and then just let them go.

You might even just take a moment to put your hand on your heart.

Let it know that you're aware of it.

That you feel when it races.

You know when it's calm.

And just thank your heart for beating.

Thank your heart for the rhythm that it brings.

Thank your heart for pumping blood to the rest of your body.

Next,

I want you to be aware of your,

Just your diaphragm area where we're taking in these deep breaths.

Notice how it opens up and it rises like waves on the ocean.

And as we let go,

It lets go.

And thank your diaphragm with gratitude for helping you to take those breaths.

We're gonna move down and be thankful for our legs and our hips and just this whole lower body area.

We can tighten up our lower back when we feel anxiety,

When we can get moved from a place of peace.

We just want to have gratitude for our lower body.

So I just want you to be aware of it.

Give it permission to relax and loosen up.

When our muscles tighten,

They're trying to hold us.

They're trying to cradle because our bodies get out of alignment.

Our spirits get moved.

Our mind may be running and our body is simply responding.

So we're starting with just some gratitude for our body for taking care of us.

We're gonna move down to our feet.

Our feet carry us from place to place.

Maybe we run on our feet,

We walk.

When we're anxious,

It's helpful.

Our feet take us to the next destination,

Where we need to go.

So we want to be thankful for our feet.

We want to allow our feet to relax,

To just be in this moment with us.

I want you to notice your hands and your arms,

Your shoulders.

I want you to just be thankful for the way that our hands and our arms and our shoulders allow us to do things throughout our day,

To pick up,

To notice,

To hold,

To even talk with our hands for some of us.

Let's have gratitude for that.

And finally,

Our neck and our head.

Our neck can totally tighten up.

Our ears come and meet our shoulders when we're stressed.

And I just want us to be thankful for that neck that supports our head and connects us to the rest of our body.

Thank it for the function that it plays.

Thank it for being concerned for us when we do get anxious.

Give it permission to just let go.

And I want us to talk about how our mind,

Our body,

And our spirit work in concert with one another like a beautiful symphony,

So that we can practice noticing when our mind has made sort of a judgment about what we're hearing or what we're seeing.

When it happens,

It sends the signal,

To our spirit,

And to our body,

And they respond in kind.

We have to be in alignment in order for things to shift.

Our mind can't tell us we are not fearful,

And yet our body recognizes and knows when we're sort of sending a double message out.

So we experience peace.

We experience calm.

We teach our body that we are grateful for it,

But it doesn't have to respond by tightening up right now.

We're giving it permission to relax.

We're telling our mind it doesn't have to send the signal to our cells and to our nervous system to get heightened.

We are okay.

And when we do our breath work and breathing,

I want you to perhaps think of scanning your entire body just as we did.

The way that we can shift being anxiolytic a little bit is to always begin with a posture of gratitude,

And when we're grateful,

It's hard for anxiety to sort of share that same real estate with gratitude.

We allow our body to not be arrested by anxiety or fear.

We give it permission to be calm,

To be at peace,

To rest.

We give our mind permission to not go into the loop that creates the anxiety.

I wonder sometimes if you could consider as we are just in this space of relaxation and quiet and calm,

When things come to steal our peace,

When we hear situations on the television or even with loved ones that move us,

They really want to move us from a place of joy.

I wonder if we could consider that sometimes our first reaction is to worry or to get heightened.

But I want you to consider when you have allowed yourself to worry or get heightened,

Has that really changed the situation?

It can feel like a form of action and it feels like at least you're doing something.

But when we worry,

When we allow our emotions to run away,

We get moved from that place of being able to move through with clarity.

So I just want you to remember,

That's how our brain works.

Our brain works off of memory.

I want you to remember what it feels like to breathe,

To hold,

And to release.

And descend to that like waves that come in on the ocean.

To send that feeling of calm to every part of our body.

That in the moment,

And it's perfectly okay to tell someone or to turn off the television or to just say,

I need a timeout for a moment.

It's perfectly okay.

Whether you're doing a walking meditation in that moment or you're simply going to sit and breathe,

With every breath we send it,

With gratitude to every part of our body.

We open up every cell,

We open up every muscle.

We think our limbs,

We think our hands and feet.

We remind our spirit that we are grateful.

We acknowledge that things may be hard right now.

We may be facing some challenges.

We may be uncomfortable,

But we're okay.

We're okay.

So as we move to close our meditation time together,

I want you to consider all the things that you are grateful for.

I want you to think of your loved ones who surround you,

Maybe in community.

I want you to consider maybe doing a walk of gratitude today as you're able.

Just experience and when you're out walking,

I want you to feel every part of your body.

I want you to think about gratitude as happiness that's doubled by wonder.

Think of gratitude as a shield from negativity.

Think of gratitude as the place that creates the most amazing feeling in us that can resolve anything.

It can strengthen us and yes,

It can calm us into a place of quiet joy.

So as you are ready,

I just want you to take a few more deep breaths with me as we get ready to move throughout our day,

Being aware of our entire body,

Of our mind and our spirit,

Our oneness with every cell,

With every muscle,

With every nerve,

With everything about us and we go out and we connect with the world and oneness and love and with gratitude as our companion.

And I thank you so much for your time today and I hope to meditate with you again very soon.

Reviews

I enjoyed the reminder of just how much our body does for use every day. Showing gratitude for even the minor things our body can do.

Very nice! Thank you!

This was a beautiful meditation I will return too. Thank you!