Peace be with you.
Welcome to no time,
That's fine,
Quick tips to refresh.
And in this track,
What I'm hopeful to do is share with you,
You know,
One of the things that we say in life is,
I don't have time to take care of myself.
And this is especially true for high achievers,
And almost anybody in today's world.
But what I want to do over the course of the next several minutes is just share with you quick ways for you to reset the body,
Barely even leaving the comfort of your chair.
And in so doing,
Begin to uproot and supplant the pernicious myths in our mind that we don't have the time to take care of ourselves.
So let's begin with a relatively easy exercise.
We're just going to shrug our shoulders.
And because this is an audio track,
Maybe even close the eyes and allow the imagination to go a little wilder here.
So I want you to inhale,
Shoulders up to the ears,
Exhale back and down.
And maybe even do them together or do them one in the other.
But we spend hours hunched over phones and computers,
Which literally compresses our lungs and closes our throat.
So this gentle expression of the shoulders up and back opens the chest and creates space in the chest and the throat after hours of compression and closure.
So another two or three of these.
A deep inhale through the nose.
Exhale out nose or mouth.
And pause here.
And notice how that simple movement of moving the shoulders up to the ears back and down.
Notice the impact it has on the body.
Notice the impact it has energetically.
And that didn't really take long,
Did it?
It took less than a minute.
So let's take that to the next level.
Not level as in better than,
But the next step.
Now I want you to place palms together with a clap.
Create friction in the palms.
And just focus the mind on the sound of the hands.
The heat being generated by the hands.
And the overall feeling in the hands.
Deep full inhale through the nose.
Exhale out nose or mouth.
Deep into the nose.
Exhale out nose or mouth.
And now just massage the hands.
So maybe the palm of one hand rubs the wrist top and bottom.
And then you alternate that.
Or maybe the left hand grabs the right thumb and massages that.
Then the pointer finger.
Then the middle finger.
Left hand grabs left ring finger.
I mean right ring finger.
Left hand grabs right pinky.
Then returning the favor,
Right hand grabs left thumb.
Gentle massage here.
Right hand grabs left pointer.
Right hand grabs left middle.
Right hand grabs left ring.
Right hand grabs left pinky.
Now releasing right hand of grabbing the left.
And feel the hands.
Feel the shoulders.
You didn't leave your chair.
And notice the peace in shoulder and hands in less than five minutes.
Now let's take that another step,
Shall we?
So focus in the mind on how the shoulders feel and how the hands feel.
Clap hands together.
Create friction in the palms again.
Inhale through the nose.
Exhale out the lips.
Then place hands on the jaw and allow the goodness that the hands potentially feel to be transferred to the jaw,
A place where a lot of stress hides for a myriad of reasons.
Then maybe you go to and behind the ear with the fingers.
Then releasing hands from the face,
Taking chin to chest.
Right ear goes to right shoulder.
Exhale,
Come to center.
Inhale,
Left ear goes to left shoulder.
Exhale,
Come to center.
Inhale,
Right ear goes to right shoulder.
Exhale,
Come to center.
Inhale,
Left ear comes to left shoulder.
Exhale,
Center.
Now if it's within your range of motion,
Inhale,
Right ear,
Right shoulder.
Exhale back.
Inhale,
Left ear,
Left shoulder.
Exhale,
Center.
Exhale.
Inhale,
Left ear,
Left shoulder.
Exhale,
Head back.
Inhale,
Right ear,
Right shoulder.
Exhale,
Head center.
Shrug the shoulders a bit as we did in the first exercise.
Bring palms together.
Create friction in the palms.
Inhale through the nose.
Exhale out the lips.
Take hands back to the face,
Part of the throat and the neck.
So redoing what we just did just to see if anything that has come up is it able to be softened and released.
Five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
One.
Release hands from the neck and throat.
Pausing here,
Allowing the mind to feel into how the hands feel and the shoulders feel.
Now the neck and the throat.
You haven't left your chair and it has barely been eight minutes or so.
Two more things,
Quick tips to refresh.
The next one,
We're going to build upon what we've done with the hands and take that to the eyes.
So if you wear glasses,
The invitation is to remove glasses.
Otherwise,
Palms come together,
Friction in the palms,
Focusing on the sound of the hands,
The heat in the hands,
The goodness in the shoulders and the chest and the neck and the throat.
And we're going to take this directly to the eyes and the forehead.
Inhale through the nose.
Exhale playfully and whimsically.
Now take hands to the eyes.
And gentle pressure on eyebrow ridge and cheekbone ridge and maybe the temples,
Maybe the entire forehead.
Maybe begin to massage the sides and the back of the head.
Or my personal favorite,
Taking the fingers to the crown of the head and scratching as an opportunity to release tension in the top of the head,
But also allow this sound,
Which is similar to the palms coming together,
To visit the ears.
This can be a very soothing sound for five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
And one.
Place one hand on heart,
Place one hand on abdomen.
Doesn't matter which one,
We'll switch in a moment.
And feel how the eyes and the head feel.
Feel the stress that's been softened or released in the eyes,
The head,
The jaw,
Behind the ears,
The throat,
The neck,
The shoulders,
The hands,
And begin to feel the cumulative impact of our work together in a relatively short period of time.
Switch the palms.
And this time I'd like you to focus on the gentle rise of the chest and belly on the inhale,
The gentle falling chest and belly on exhale.
Maybe even the gentle whisper on the inhale,
Gentle exhale,
Whisper.
Releasing palms from the body,
Opening eyes if they have closed,
And again,
Using the mind to bear witness to how the body now feels.
The mind,
When the mind is busy or overstressed or overstimulated,
The attention span is short.
And so we're on to the next thing.
And noticing how in a very short period of time we've created space,
So now's the time to remind the mind,
Like,
Hey mind,
Remember when you said we don't have time for that?
Like we can just rub our hands real quick,
You know,
Or we can just shrug our shoulders real quick.
The last thing that I want to offer in this practice as a quick way to refresh the body and mind is sound.
So I have a few sound bowls in my personal collection.
And what I like to do with sound is just offer it as an opportunity to focus the mind on something other than my thoughts.
We live in a world that has so much noise,
So many words,
And it's almost incessant,
Either conversations or we're on our phones and words can exhaust the mind.
So what I want to do now is play one of my sound bowls three or four times with a little bit of space in between each note.
And I want you to focus the mind,
Especially given how you feel physically and somatically and energetically,
Focus the mind on this sound.
Deep,
Full inhale through the nose.
Exhale out nose or mouth.
Deep,
Full inhale.
Full exhale out nose or mouth.
Exhale out nose or mouth.
Deep,
Full inhale.
Pausing here and feeling into the impact of sound.
Feeling how the body has responded to sound.
Feeling how the body and the mind and the hands and the shoulders and the neck and the throat and the eyes and the forehead.
Notice the space that you feel in all these things,
All these areas.
And we're coming up on 15 minutes.
So I hope that this practice has given you different perspectives and the next time you're like,
I don't have time.
That's fine.
You have more time than you think to achieve a level of peace you didn't know.
Thank you.
Peace be with you.
