Hello,
My name is Courtney Brookings and this meditation is designated for all remote learning students and educators.
For this particular meditation,
You are not required to get up and go sit anywhere differently than you are.
I want you to find comfort and solace in where you're presently learning.
If it is at a chair or a desk on a bed,
I ask that you allow yourself to not be on any other device and just be present in this particular moment.
Go ahead and allow your hips to seep more deeply into the place in which you're seated.
And let's go ahead and take a series of three deep breaths,
Breathing in through your nose and allow the belly to expand as you breathe out.
Go ahead again,
Fill the lungs up with air,
Breathing in through your nose and then push it out through your mouth and expand.
One last time,
Go ahead and breathe in deeply through your nose and then press it out through your mouth.
Let's go ahead and bring awareness to our body.
First we'll start from the bottom of our body and work our ways up so your feet,
If they are planted on the ground and you are sitting in a chair or if they are resting on a bed,
I want you to bring awareness to them by simply wiggling your toes up and down.
Providing some love,
Some warmth and some movement to your feet.
Using each toe one at a time if you will,
Starting with your big toe and then working your way around one toe to the next until you reach your smallest toe.
Go ahead and create more movement in the feet by adding arches into your feet or raising your feet off the ground or curving the feet if you are in the bed and relaxing them.
Go ahead and begin to circle those ankles to the right and then when you are ready rotate them to the left.
Now let's start to work with our calf muscles.
You're simply bringing awareness to them.
Maybe squeezing the right leg and then releasing.
Go ahead and squeeze your left calf and then release.
Squeeze it one more time,
The right calf and release and then the left calf and then release.
Go ahead and raise one leg up at a time.
So if you are in the chair you are going to come onto the tips of your toes and push the leg up and then lower it and then you do the same to the left.
If your legs are flat on the bed you can allow the knee to push into an arch and raise the thigh off the bed and then do the same with the left.
Let's go ahead and bring awareness to our hips if we are laying down or sitting.
You can simply push our weight onto one hip so we can start with the right and come to center and the left and come to center.
You can lean back and come to center and allow your head to go forward towards your knees and come to center.
Bringing awareness to the belly,
Pushing it out and then pulling it back in.
Go ahead and push the belly out and then pull it back in.
Bringing awareness now to the chest,
You can go ahead and put your hand on your chest if you like and take some deep breaths in and blow out.
Here you simply are just noticing the rise and the fall of the chest.
Take a deep breath in and notice your chest expands and then exhale and notice that your chest contracts.
Bringing awareness now to the shoulders,
Go ahead and roll the shoulders back,
Releasing any tension that might be there from you sitting in your bed or in your chair.
Bringing the shoulders up towards the ears and then back around.
Making circles with the shoulders and then working them in the opposite direction.
Exhale up towards the ears and towards the front of the body.
Big circles and then lowering them down.
Bringing your hands up to the side of you and wiggling each finger,
The thumb,
The index finger,
The middle finger,
The ring finger,
The pinky finger.
And then rotating your hands into a circle,
Your wrist into a circle and then moving them in the opposite direction and then taking the full arm and rotating it forward and then taking them and rotating it backwards.
Then resting those hands on your lap and bringing awareness now to your neck.
Dropping your right ear to your right shoulder and then up again.
And your left ear to your left shoulder and then bringing it back to center.
And then allowing your gaze to drop into your lap,
Letting your neck fully straighten,
Looking at the floor and then bringing your head back to an upright position and extending the neck behind the shoulders,
Straightening it as much as possible.
And then bring it back up and then a full rotation over from the right ear to the right shoulder around in front of you,
Left ear to left shoulder,
Head behind you creating full circles with the neck.
And then creating the opposite rotation,
Left ear to left shoulder and rotating the neck in circles.
Let's go ahead and bring some awareness to our faces.
Squeezing our face really tightly in our fist,
Scrunching up that nose,
Pulling that mouth very tightly,
Squeezing a lot of tension into the forehead.
You can add some additional tension by squeezing your fist and then release.
Let's go again,
Really scrunch up that face,
Create a lot of tension,
Look angry,
Look mad,
Bring a lot of tension into the face and then release.
And now finally bringing awareness to the full body through breathing.
So again,
Deep inhale and exhale out and take a deep inhale and exhale out.
And this last time we're going to inhale,
We'll offer ourself the affirmation of I am centered and I release stress from the body.
Good.
I hope you all are more focused and your body feels a lot calmer and you are ready to go back and focus on your learning and teaching.
And if your day is over,
I hope that this quick guided meditation offered a way for you to deescalate your body.
Play this meditation as many times as you need to in order to recenter yourself or to distress the body after a full day of remote learning and teaching.
