Hello and welcome.
The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,
A somatic movement educator,
Energy worker,
And astrologer.
This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.
If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,
Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.
Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,
And sometimes guided visualizations.
You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.
If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,
Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.
These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.
We hope you enjoy.
So this meditation is for clearing your mind.
It's a great meditation to do at any time.
This part of our body and this part of our consciousness is where we often identify.
It's where our thoughts live.
When you say I or my,
Mine,
Me,
A lot of times the feeling of I,
Mine,
Me rests somewhere around this part of your body.
We think about ourselves in terms of our thoughts,
Our thought constructs.
We tell ourselves stories of our own existence.
Sometimes the stories we tell are pretty turbulent,
And when we get into those spaces,
You might call it a bad mood,
Where negative thoughts pervade.
Those can be difficult places to leave,
And just like how the entire ecosystem of the earth works,
And kind of the ecology of air and water,
The wind moves the waves and the waves move the wind.
So clouds gather,
They direct force through air,
They condense,
They move heat patterns around,
And this in turn affects the currents,
And the currents move heat through water,
They affect how land receives heat,
And then what happens.
So we can think of our thoughts and our emotions in this way too,
And elementally in yoga and in astrology,
The thought or thinking element is the air element,
And through air,
Things like words,
Ideas,
And thoughts travel.
We communicate through the medium of air,
For the most part.
In yoga and in astrology,
Water is the element that governs feelings,
Emotions.
Of course we communicate through feelings as well,
But this type of communication is something that we intuit,
Or kind of take in into our bodies in a pretty non-linear,
Non-verbal way.
We get a vibe about something,
But often our emotions and our thoughts work on each other.
In fact,
Most of the time they do,
And you can notice this in your everyday life,
Where you might have a thought about something,
And that thought immediately turns into an emotion,
And of course the emotion takes up space in your body.
It creates a physical sensation,
And generally that physical sensation will then perpetuate the thought.
This happens with happiness,
Sadness,
Anger,
Jealousy,
All the emotions,
All the associated thoughts.
And when you start to watch it,
It's actually really interesting just how the mind and the body and the feelings kind of all work on each other and work together.
So the meditation that we're about to do is a clarifying meditation,
And it works in the realm of thoughts.
And yeah,
That's all I need to say for now.
So I would suggest that you do this meditation in some kind of stillness.
You don't necessarily need to be sitting in a classic meditation posture,
But it's better for this meditation that you're still in your body,
And we're going to give a lot of attention and kind of direct our awareness into our thinking and our other levels of perception other than movement.
So wherever you are right now,
Just take a moment to get comfortable.
Make any adjustments that you need to make.
And then begin by closing your eyes and just taking a couple of centering breaths.
So the breathing that we might call upon when we first start a meditation practice is something like,
Ugh,
I've arrived.
So you might breathe in deeply and let that inhale fill your belly and fill your chest and fill your lungs.
And then as you exhale,
Just sigh out.
And in the sighing out,
You can just feel yourself settle just a little bit more.
You can take a couple of breaths like that,
And in these breaths,
Greet yourself.
Many teachers will say that the hardest part of a meditation practice is showing up to meditate.
If you can just show up,
You've done 95% of the work already.
So greet yourself and thank yourself for arriving.
And with every inhale,
Extend salutation into your body.
And with every exhale,
Just allow yourself to arrive a little bit more by letting go of what's been in your day so far and what hasn't yet come.
So the planning and the ruminating or remembering,
All the tasks.
Know that in about 30 minutes you'll be able to come back to them.
Maybe some will change your need around them,
But the things that you need to attend to will still be there at the end of this meditation.
So in the meantime,
Just marking this time for yourself,
Consciously setting other things aside.
And then take the next few moments to stretch out your face.
And you can open your mouth as wide as you can get.
You can stick out your tongue.
You can move your lower jaw around.
Scrunch up your face.
Squeeze your eyes.
Open them really wide.
Lift your eyebrows.
You might blow out your lips.
You might make sounds.
Use your hands to massage your face.
Just relaxing the muscles of your jaw around your cheekbones.
Using your fingers to rub up around your eye sockets,
Over your forehead and eyebrows.
You'll be tugging on your ears a little bit.
And even rubbing up underneath the bottom lip of your skull.
I'm just going to get the face and the head as relaxed as possible.
So when you've massaged and rubbed your face and you feel like you can let go of any expression,
Then release your hands again.
And once again,
Allow the eyes to close and feel your breath.
And then we'll soften the eyeballs.
And you can feel your eyes moving back away from your eyelids.
And in this movement,
We're cueing the nervous system that we're entering into a different space.
We're not going to be in a space where we're looking,
Trying to focus on anything.
And you can do kind of the same thing with your ears.
And it's almost as if you relax energetically in your ears.
And it's the difference between feeling as if you're trying to hear something or trying to listen,
And just allowing whatever sounds there are to be delivered into your ears.
But there is nothing to try and hear.
And feel the passage of breath through your nostrils and into your sinuses and just enjoy the feeling of your breath.
And so then bring your attention into the dome of your skull.
And you're welcome to use your hands to feel the shape of your skull if you'd like.
And I want you to imagine this dome shape and the way that your brain rests within it.
And you might feel internally the expansiveness of the dome of your skull.
Just how much space there is up there.
And the kind of infinite space that your awareness can spread out and up and into when you feel past the bones of your cranium.
So now in this space,
I'd like you to imagine the sky.
And the sky that you're imagining right now is just a clear sky.
Kind of a light blue,
Maybe early spring morning sky.
No clouds,
Just pure sky.
The sun is somewhere where you can't see it,
But it's light.
The moon is somewhere where you can't see it.
Beyond the blue there are stars.
But right here,
Right now,
Just pure light blue sky.
And then notice in your body what it feels like to use this imagination to feel the dome of your skull and to fill it with the sky.
So notice any sensations,
Any emotional qualities.
And now imagine a kind of small,
Fairly gentle-looking cloud.
So maybe a more wispy cloud.
And it's just floating lazily through one part of the sky.
And with that cloud there,
Notice does your attention stay with the sky or does it move to the cloud?
And in this you might just practice going back and forth and the cloud will continue to be there.
It's not going to go away.
It might move or change shapes a little bit.
But noticing that the cloud is there,
Can you still focus on just the sky?
Or does your attention get pulled into the cloud?
Neither is better,
Neither is right.
Just notice.
Now let's imagine that cloud dispersing.
So it's a wispy cloud that's getting wispier and it turns into those streams or ribbons of cloud and then it dissolves and dissipates all together.
You're just back to clear,
Light blue sky.
And notice again that sensation.
Ask yourself,
Do you feel anything differently when you imagined that kind of small,
Gentle cloud?
Did it have a different feeling than just imagining the clear sky?
And how would you describe that feeling to yourself?
Did it have a location?
Did it have a weight?
Did it have a texture or quality?
When you imagined the cloud,
Did all of your attention go to the cloud or did much of it remain in the sky?
And when I asked you to imagine the sky and to see all the sky,
Even with the cloud there,
How was that?
Doing your own research,
Noticing what the results were.
So now let's imagine another gentle,
Wispy cloud and see it.
Notice how it's taking shape.
Maybe it's the same kind of cloud in the same place or maybe it's changed.
Now put your attention on the cloud.
And as you put your attention on the cloud,
Imagine that the cloud is growing thicker.
Now as it grows thicker,
Notice if it also grows bigger.
Notice if the color changes.
Notice if its shape changes.
And then check in with your body and notice if there are any different sensations now than there were just a minute ago when it was just clear sky.
And I want you to notice really the kind of subtle quality of sensation that happens when there's a focus on something.
And it might not be something that you can describe,
But it is something that I'm sure you can feel.
This difference between focusing on the cloud and focusing on the clear blue sky.
Now let's imagine that cloud continuing to grow and like a storm is about to come,
The cloud is accumulating mass,
It's getting darker and the weight of the cloud is becoming more palpable.
It's like it's moving down and there's some kind of content inside it that's got its own pressure that's starting to push towards the earth.
Imagine that cloud now filling the sky,
Pulling all kinds of other clouds in towards it.
And the clouds,
They're rolling and churning together.
How does your body feel now?
What is the sensation in your body when you see these big,
Dark,
Heavy clouds?
It might be excitement.
It might be something else.
Just notice,
Is it different than with the clear sky?
That's the only observation.
Just is it different?
What is different maybe,
But how?
Where?
What does it feel like?
And then go ahead and imagine whatever the eventual outcome of these clouds are.
It might rain,
It might hail,
Snow,
Lightning.
Maybe they form a rainbow?
Maybe there's a break in the clouds and the sun comes through and you see the way that light is reflected down through the clouds.
How does your body feel?
What's the inner sensation just hearing those words,
Imagining those colors and shapes and sounds,
Feeling them?
So now,
Start to let the clouds roll away.
They might roll fast,
They might roll slow,
They might roll in one direction or in many.
They might dissolve.
And as the clouds move on,
There's the sky again,
Just clear and blue,
Full of light.
And then notice the sensation in your body when you come back to that sky.
Is there a different feeling in your eyes or your belly or your chest?
Do you breathe differently?
Do you feel your own weight differently?
So now for the next five minutes or so,
And that could feel like a really long time to some of us,
But it's not very long.
We'll just sit and I'm going to stop talking and what I'm inviting you to do is just sit and feel the dome of your skull and imagine the sky.
And thoughts will come in during this five minutes.
The point is not to not have thoughts.
They'll surely come in and you'll hear things and you'll remember things and you'll have sensations and you'll have thoughts.
And every time you have a thought,
The invitation is to see the thought as a cloud.
And like,
Ah,
There's a thought.
It's taking form somewhere in my brain.
It's moving.
It's changing.
You might watch the thought turn from one thing to another thing.
And when you're done with the thought,
And that doesn't mean that you ride it out to completion,
But after you've noticed it's a thought,
The invitation is to just come back and see the sky.
Not to make the cloud go away or the thought go away,
But just to come back to that empty space,
The clear light space behind the clouds,
Behind the thoughts.
So when you have a thought,
It's typical to associate in your mind.
One thought comes up and then it jumps to the next and jumps to the next and jumps to the next and jumps to the next.
And of course,
Thoughts bring up emotions and emotions do things in our bodies and then our bodies react and create more thoughts.
So what we're going to practice right now is not going on that ride.
And instead,
When a thought comes in,
To imagine the thought just like a cloud doesn't mean that you need to push it away,
But you just kind of see it taking up some space.
You might notice your feeling and response to it and then notice all the space around it,
All the space behind it.
Alright,
So we'll sit together just for five minutes and feel our thoughts like clouds passing in the clear sky of our minds.
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