Grounding Meditation For The Shadow Of These Times

What's going on in the world right now? How to find a solid anchoring in the chaos of our collective unwinding. This talk and meditation can serve as allies to your journey. May we ground into presence, into breath, and into deep contemplation around what is beyond our control yet requires our deepest awareness and connection.

Transcript

So,

I invite you to find a comfortable seat.

I invite you to let go of any distractions.

So if you are in the middle of making yourself food or if you're on a walk,

I invite you to take a moment to stop,

To settle,

To find a seat or sometimes even it feels nice to stand with our feet on the earth and to receive.

And I invite you to invite the pace of presence into your body.

To soften the forehead,

To soften the muscles that surround the jaw,

To soften the shoulders,

Soften the space across the chest,

Even the heart as it beats behind the skin and bone.

And let the breath move in and out of the nostrils.

And each exhalation allowing you to soften a little bit more into the present moment.

Softening the diaphragm,

The rib cage.

And if you find yourself sucking in the belly,

Softening the belly very sweetly,

Allowing the inhalation to fill up the belly,

To travel up the diaphragm,

To splash across the chest.

And the exhale to slowly drop the body deeper and deeper into relaxation.

And soften the hips as they ground into the earth.

And allow yourself to fully arrive.

So many times when we tune into these spaces,

When we step into a movement practice or into a meditation practice,

Our to-do lists splash across the mind,

The theater.

I encourage you with each inhalation through the nostrils and each exhalation through the nostrils that you settle more and more deeply into the present moment.

We just allow our collective body here splashed out across many countries and time zones,

Spaces to attune across the web,

Across the field.

These words that dance into our ears become timeless and soften,

Soften even a little bit more.

Where is there contraction and tension in your body that can just drip a little bit more,

Drip down into a cool pool of water?

And behind closed eyes in that dark space,

I invite you to even visualize a cool pool of water surrounding your body and you are floating free in buoyant,

Salty,

Warm water that holds you up and supports you to just relax.

Let your breath be the buoy here.

Allow the body,

The mind of the heart to feel safe,

To surrender and submit to the gravitational holding of the cool water that surrounds you.

And in these times,

It is so important to anchor in our breath.

If we get lost in the mind,

I encourage you to internally repeat in the mind,

Breathing in,

I am aware that I am breathing in.

Breathing out,

I am aware that I am breathing out.

Tuning into what you may be holding,

What you may be holding in your body,

Any contraction or tension,

Noticing where your pains,

Where your burdens live.

Internally you might ask a question.

What is it that I need to see?

What is it that I need to feel?

And without agenda or expectation,

Just noticing what comes up in the darkness.

Notice if there are any parts of you that reveal themselves,

If they have an age or if they appear in a certain landscape and still just allowing yourself to witness them as you lay back in that cool pool of water,

Holding you,

Supporting you.

And if ever anything feels uncomfortable,

Reminding yourself internally,

It is safe to see.

It is safe to feel.

I am safe to see.

I am safe to feel.

In that internal investigation as you are held by the element of water,

Are there any parts of me that wish for me to see or to feel them?

Is there anything left unsaid or unacknowledged within me?

And just observe.

Observe the body's reaction.

Observe the mind.

And if nothing reveals itself,

Just enjoy the darkness,

The emptiness,

Where darkness does not need to be frightening.

It is the place where all things are birthed from,

The womb,

The cosmos.

And so allow yourself to just incubate in that warm,

Floating world and feeling into the rhythm of the heartbeat,

Into the softness of the breath and slowing things down to the pace of presence.

Breathing in,

I am aware that I am breathing in.

Breathing out,

I am aware that I am breathing out.

And let yourself softly smile,

Loosen the jaw.

And still staying with anything,

Any parts that have come up internally,

If they ask for your attention,

And maybe you just simply sit with them,

Nothing to solve,

Nothing to heal or figure out,

Just presence,

Looking these sensations or these parts directly forward facing and feeling them in the body.

Sometimes our loneliness arises or our anger,

Our irritation,

Our excitement,

Our busyness.

And only you will know the question to ask them.

But internally,

Sitting beside each of them,

Visualizing sitting beside each of them,

And just getting curious,

What's beneath that,

You can ask them.

What's beneath that frustration or that anger or that sadness or that loneliness?

What's beneath that?

Sitting inside with all of your parts,

Like you're having tea with a friend,

Getting very curious about their experience and noticing if there's body parts they're connected to,

They live in your belly or your shoulders or your hips.

And asking them questions that come to mind organically.

You can even ask them,

What is it that you would like for me to understand about this feeling in my belly or this anger in my shoulders or this tension in my forehead?

And with curiosity and compassion,

With no agenda,

Allow a dialogue to open in the blackness and the darkness.

Still feeling as if you're floating in that cool pool of water,

Let any parts or sensations that have revealed themselves know that you will be coming back soon.

But if they have any messages for you,

Any insights to this internal world that you still are a foreigner to,

That you are learning from,

That you are voyaging in,

If there's anything they would like to tell you before you come back,

What would they like to share?

And still floating in that cool pool of water,

Whether it's an ocean or a lake or a river,

Imagine that the water very slowly,

Slowly begins to recede.

Very slowly and gently,

It begins to become less and less.

Until the earth beneath you,

The ground beneath you becomes drier and drier.

And you're held by the solidity of this earth.

And internally,

Those words,

As true as they can be,

If you can remind yourself,

I am safe here,

I am held here.

It is safe to feel.

It is safe to see.

And allowing in the vision as you are laid down on the earth,

Allow this internal you to come up to a seat wherever you may be in a river basin or an ocean floor.

Speak words to you from something that moved through me yesterday as I sat in my meditation in stillness and silence and communion with the beloved,

With life,

With presence,

With whatever we want to call God,

This higher energy that has many names for many of us.

And so still staying with soft eyes and deep in the breath,

I encourage you to let the words drip down into your being,

This floating being that's just come back to ground.

And see which words are your words.

Let them enter the body.

Notice how the body reacts,

Any parts of you that come forward,

Any tensions that arise.

And stay anchored in the breath.

I am sitting in an odd shaped chair that rocks me more than it stills me.

Floating somewhere beneath an oak table,

I stare out the window of a London flat that faces a forest sparingly full of the same wood.

I feel grateful in this moment for my breath,

For the keyboard my fingers dance across,

For the voice in me that allows itself to float outward into an ever-expanding world of form.

I am reminded that for so long I was not grateful.

In the internal occupation of my own fear and warfare,

I could not consider the world outside of me nor the people I shared it with.

I am older now,

Some would say,

An adult,

Too mature for some of the behaviors I still partake in.

My hair is gray,

My body is changing,

And my mortality is more close to me than ever.

I am still young,

Many would say,

Beautiful,

Vibrant,

Alive.

And the truth lies closer to the center.

I am both living and dying at the same time.

We all are.

Yet some of us are more aware of it.

And if we are fortunate,

We awaken much sooner,

Long before we approach the threshold between life and death.

These times are precious because they are now.

They are,

And they could not have been.

We are,

And we could not have been.

There is life in us still,

Bleeding,

Heart beating,

Thinking beings.

I look outside the window and I see life,

Ordinary life.

A quiet street with not much to see.

Yet if you stop long enough,

I am sure you can experience the entirety of the world.

Empty faces walking by,

Expressionless yet full of life.

Eyes buried in phones or somewhere deep within,

Ears consuming sounds from elsewhere,

Music or distant voices that soothe this solitude.

I think to myself,

None of this seems to have any objective point,

And how beautiful is that?

The few trees outside my window dance slowly in the rainy breeze,

While most walk by,

Never registering that they too are neighbors.

I wonder,

Has anyone ever cared to know their names,

These trees?

How long have they lived here?

And how much longer will they live here once we have all gone?

A cyclist shifts gears as he passes with his son.

Did they see me,

And where are they going?

And even when they arrive at their destination,

They will move on again to another.

Human life moves at the pace of more,

More.

These times are precious because they are a part of an unfinished progression,

One life experiencing itself through the many,

Never quite complete.

I cannot imagine anyone on their deathbed without an unfinished to-do list,

Without desire for more moments.

A time will come when I have had enough.

Enough sunsets and sunrises,

Enough matcha lattes and first kisses,

Enough hugs from loved ones,

Enough healing,

Clearing,

Growing,

Enough disagreements and unfinished projects.

There will come a time when we have no more words to offer this world,

No more love to give,

No more consideration,

Care,

Or joy.

I can imagine that in that moment when our last breaths feel counted,

There will not be a drop of hatred left in us,

Even for our enemies.

I imagine the death process,

If we are aware of its presence,

Will clear us of trivial projections and conditioned fears.

I imagine it will feel like the most beautiful moments of our lives,

Sharp,

Vibrant,

Undisturbed,

And true.

When we face something as big as death,

Maybe we can begin to finally face something as big as life.

I pray for us in these times to face our deaths now,

To face with humility our limited nature.

For to be bound to a human body is to be bound to time,

And time is no friend to the optimization we thrive on.

The same bodies that are vital now,

Enjoying the small sliver of sun that plays on my bare chest,

Is the same body that will release me someday to some place I do not know.

The me I have come to know,

To care for,

To love when others have not,

The me I have grown alongside,

One day I will have to let her go.

She will be the hardest breakup of my life,

For we have become so close.

And this is true of each of us.

There is nothing more painful,

I feel,

Than a love left unloved,

A relationship where we never stepped in fully,

Never committed.

The loss of that relationship and that realization that we never allowed ourselves to love within it,

Or receive the love of it,

And that we cannot go back and begin again.

I imagine the worst feeling is to approach death and to know that I must leave myself behind while knowing that I never truly arrive.

To depart life without ever having entered it.

These times are precious because they are all that we have.

So enter relationship with yourself fully.

Enter your body,

Your heart,

And your path fully.

Write your story,

Sing your song,

Speak your words aloud to the world.

Enter so fully that when you must leave,

You know deep within your heart,

That you showed up,

That you lived.

These moments are precious because they are temporal.

So make a choice,

Any choice,

But make it and then choose it over and over again.

And love what you have in this life because we all have enough.

We just forget in our desirous conditioning,

There is nowhere to go and nothing to achieve.

Right here on this empty street,

There is love,

There is life.

Go anywhere and you will be where you have always been.

Become anyone and you will be what you have always been.

Love anything or anyone and you will be loving what you have always loved,

Which is simply love,

Presence.

These times are precious because the veil is being lifted and we are allowing ourselves to see what we did not see before.

That life is not about the variety,

The experiences,

Or the places.

It is about the quality of presence we bring to our breath,

To our body,

To one another.

It feels to me that the most precious thing we can do is to learn to love another and ourselves truly.

Without projections,

Without expectations,

Without the desire to consume,

Change,

Or blame,

Or to keep.

Because in the end,

We keep nothing,

Not even ourselves.

There is no time to waste.

The only thing we know is that a time will come when we will no longer be.

And if that isn't enough to wake us up,

Then what is?

So take a deep breath in,

Sigh out of relief.

We are here now.

So feeling into your body the radiance that animates you,

The breath that penetrates you,

The life force that chooses you.

Place your hands somewhere on the body that desires deep connection and love,

Tenderness,

And presence.

And less slow than we usually come out of meditation,

I invite you to blink your eyes open and come back into the moment,

Into this time,

Into this world,

Reminding yourself,

I am alive.

I am still alive.

All the chaos,

All the wildness,

The heartbreak,

The shattering,

The ecstasy,

The joy,

All of it temporal and equivalent,

Nothing good or bad,

Wrong or right.

But acclimating to the moment of now.

Reviews

You have a way, a beautiful way of coming right into my heart, helping me to soften and commune with my body. Thank you ✨🤍

Tears flowed, my heart expanded and I hugged my inner child. Kissing my face all over. Squeezing my cheeks together. Thank you for this powerful, and grounding meditation. I love your work very much Our Echo.