Hi,
My name is Orit Krug,
Board certified dance movement therapist and trauma and relationship expert.
Today,
I would love to guide you through a movement-based meditation to help you go from snapping and criticizing to being more understanding and compassionate in your relationship.
This is for you if you're experiencing a huge mind-body disconnect where you know in your mind you want to be more patient and kind and loving,
But your body continues to feel that frustration,
That agitation,
And reacts to even the littlest things.
Most of the time we try to change these behaviors through the mind,
But your body is the vehicle for which you behave and interact and act with the world.
So we're actually going to take this to the body today in hopes of a much more efficient and effective shift.
To start,
We'll take two deep breaths,
Breathing in and breathing out.
Again,
Breathing in and breathing out.
As you tune into this place that you've been many times before,
This frustrated,
Snappy place,
I want you to visualize how the emotions move through your body and even how your body moves through these emotions when you're in this agitated space.
You may see that there's this abrupt,
Choppy,
Snappy energy moving through you and that even the way you move is more snappy.
The way you take breaths,
Right?
So just visualize how this moves through you right now.
You could almost see it like fireworks taking off in your body.
Maybe it's more like firecrackers.
Maybe it's little explosions that start to develop in your body and then the yelling or the flipping out that comes across in your relationships is the one big explosion as a result.
In order to be more compassionate and understanding,
We need to shift this abrupt forcefulness into softened fluidity and create more space in the body for these emotions to flow without snapping because of them.
So anything that you're feeling right now,
Anything that you've visualized,
I'm going to ask you to visualize that gradually and organically softening,
Slowing down,
Becoming more fluid in your body.
Maybe that fire just starts to slow down,
Still warm,
But now there's flow.
It's almost like that warmth is more slowly spreading through your body.
And instead of just visualizing this right now,
I want you to invite movement into this.
How could you invite more softness,
More fluidity,
More expansiveness right now in your body?
You may start out with a really slow,
Small,
Gentle sway.
You might start to gently,
Slowly wiggle your fingers.
You might notice your breath expanding a little bit more,
Giving more space for these emotions to move through you because we must acknowledge those emotions,
Not push them away,
But make more room for them.
Keep inviting movement into this and see what happens.
Maybe you just do the same movement over and over again and that's totally okay.
Maybe it expands.
Maybe instead of just feeling more space inside of you,
You start to expand your body into the space,
Maybe above you,
To the side of you,
And feeling this fluidity almost like you're in the water and you're allowing fluid wave emotion to just move you organically.
How would it feel then when you get frustrated to let that flow through you?
How would it feel if you almost visualized this frustration coming up in your body and instead of it hijacking your behavior,
You can see it and sense it and move it out through the space in a much more gentle way.
Whatever movements come to you right now as I'm speaking this,
Go with your instincts.
There's no right or wrong way to do this.
This is about feeling and shifting in your body from the abruptness to the fluidity and the gentleness and whatever way that looks for you today is right for you.
Keep this movement going for another 30 seconds or so and whatever you're doing,
However you're moving,
Start bringing this experience to a gradual ending,
Making your movements smaller,
Slower,
A little bit at a time so that you keep this gentle fluidity even throughout the closure of this meditation,
Finding a satisfying close instead of just abruptly stopping this movement.
We're going to take a deep breath together,
Breathing in and breathing out.
Next time you feel the impulse to snap or criticize,
Try to tune in to a more fluid,
Expansive and gentle space in your body instead and see how that might change everything.
If you need more practice before you're able to do this in your real life relationships,
Come back to this meditation as many times as you need and until next time,
You deserve to be able to let healthy,
Lasting love in.
