Let's do heart centred meditation and heartfulness.
Begin by closing the eyes,
Either completely or just with a tiny little slit at the bottom.
And let's take a deep breath in through the nose to a count of four.
And pause for four.
Breathe out of the mouth for four.
Pause.
And repeat.
Just observing the breath flowing through the body.
Soon we will go into our heartfulness,
Heart centred meditation,
Which is wonderful for emotional healing.
But let's just spend a short while observing the flow of the breath as it gently passes through the body.
Now if you find it helpful you can ground yourself by just noticing the feeling of your feet on the floor and your sitting muscles on the chair.
Now we are going to move our awareness to the heart region.
And I am going to place a hand around my heart and that is simply going to help me to focus on that area.
Let's remind ourselves now of what we are doing.
We are sitting,
Noticing the feet on the floor,
Sitting muscles on the chair,
Holding a hand to the heart region and now bringing our awareness to that space.
And I shall be silent for a few moments to allow you to focus on your heart.
Remember it is normal if your mind wanders from time to time.
Just gently lead your mind back to your heart space.
Now begin to imagine that your breath is coming and going from your heart.
You breathe into your heart space and gradually back out from your heart space.
In a moment we are going to visualise a memory and we are going to pick one specific memory from our lives that makes us feel a positive emotion such as love,
Compassion or gratitude.
And so while you focus on your heart space,
Take your time to choose that positive memory.
And I am going to tell you that mine is when my mum arrives from England on her flight.
Now let's go ahead and bring that memory to mind.
Just name whatever your positive memory is,
So you are just labelling the memory.
And now begin to visualise that memory.
Seeing where you were.
Perhaps hearing any sounds from that place.
Perhaps there are other sensory elements such as taste or a scent.
Simply filling in the details of that memory.
Now as you visualise that memory,
Notice that you start to feel a positive emotion.
Notice that positive emotion around your heart space.
You are making space for that memory and that emotion to fill your heart.
Gradually allow that memory and that emotion to fill your whole body as we are now moving into heart fullness meditation.
And so we experience that emotion around the heart and from there it radiates around the body.
In some instances this might be quite emotional.
If it becomes too emotional,
Let go and simply observe the sensation of your feet on the floor and your sitting muscles on the chair.
And that is how you make this trauma informed.
One way anyway.
And so we are visualising a positive memory.
That memory is creating positive emotion.
We allow the positive emotion to fill our heart space and to radiate out around the body.
And allow now the emotion to seep out of your body and into the world around you.
So that emotion is beginning in the heart,
Radiating outwards around your body and seeping out of your body into the world around you.
And if you feel you lose touch with the emotion,
Go back to visualising the memory and allow that to create the emotion for you.
Just allowing the emotion to fill the world around you.
And imagine giving that emotion to someone else.
As this emotion that is generated in your heart spreads throughout your body and into the world.
Imagine giving it to a specific person or animal or to the world in general.
Notice how this emotion is a gift that you can offer to other people.
Creating the emotion in the heart,
Radiating it outwards into the world and giving it to others.
And now for a moment let's let go and return to the breath.
So we are letting go of the emotion and the visualisation and just observing the breath flowing through the body.
Now what we do next is one of the most important parts of meditation and sadly a part that people skip over.
As you are simply observing your breath,
Take a moment to notice how you feel now at the end of this meditation.
The key is to familiarise yourself with the positive feelings you are experiencing now.
And feel free to either stay as you are or to gently return to normal and slowly open your eyes.
And that is heartfulness meditation.
One of the most powerful heart centred,
So many hearts going on.
Heart centred meditations.
A lot of research,
Especially emerging research,
Shows that meditations based on heart centredness and based on emotions and based on self compassion are extremely good for healing us.
And this is a new avenue for meditation.
For the longest time meditation has been focused on mostly on things like breathing and quite rational minded meditations.
But that is developing now.
Interestingly if you look back at esoteric texts you will find that there are heart centred meditations throughout time.
Starting approximately 4000 years ago.
However for some reason we tend to be biased towards the rational minded meditations.
And tend to ignore,
Most people ignore the emotion based ones.
Terrible mistake.
Terrible mistake because emotions are the key to deeper healing.
I hope.
