Control & Surrender - A Meditation On Finding Balance

This meditation focuses on expanding energy from your center outwards and balancing the need to control with the need to surrender. This practice invites you to relax and breathe into your abdomen to allow for pause and centering.

Transcript

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 right now,

Wherever you are,

Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath in.

And as you exhale,

Consciously relax your entire body.

Just feel the way that you can deliver your body into gravity.

Bring your attention to whatever contact you have with the earth.

And feel the solidity of that support.

Even if you're high,

High up in a skyscraper,

Can you feel the sturdiness of the floor?

And remember how the floor is held by the walls and support beams,

Which have a foundation,

And that foundation is held in the earth.

Can you feel the density and the weight of your bones?

The earth matter of your body?

The parts of us that are left long after everything else has dissolved.

Our bones are the places where there's a lot of storage,

So the minerals and the calcium and these elements that we need in our lives stored in our bones.

And when our bones are buried and they take a while to decompose,

These minerals are given back to the earth.

The minerals that form substance,

That form weight,

That form matter.

Take another deep breath in and as you feel your inhale,

Notice the quality of breath.

And feel how you're also made of lighter stuff.

Your breath,

All the space that you're in,

All the energy that you're in,

Your breath,

All the space in your cells,

Your feelings,

Your thoughts.

These things that we don't feel so much in terms of their gravitational weight,

But nonetheless have weight to them.

They have substance to them,

Albeit substance that is somehow sometimes a little trickier to figure out both how to grab onto and how to let go of.

And then imagine a very generous summary of all of the things,

All of the experiences,

All of the all of the experiences,

All of the collisions,

All of the plantings and harvestings and production that has created your body.

And in order to be inclusive,

You're going to have to go back to before the earth even existed.

And remember that the elements that create the materials of our bodies came from stars.

That in some kind of huge and mysterious explosion,

The emptiness of space was seeded with stuff.

And when that stuff met up with other stuff,

When it started to combine,

A new possibility arose.

And one of those possibilities was human life,

Which of course started a long time ago in the single-celled beings.

And our evolution into our bipedal,

Opposable-thumb,

Thought-oriented creatures has both been very quick in the scheme of everything,

But also has taken a really long time.

And the moment that is right now is neither here nor there.

It is.

And it's a moment that we're still arriving.

So the ways that we combine elements in ourselves,

In our bodies,

What we eat,

What kind of air we take in,

What kind of water we drink,

Our environment,

Physically and otherwise,

All of that combines to create experiences.

And those experiences arise and give way to more experiences,

More possible combinations and synthesis.

And in this moment of evolution,

Personally,

You,

Me,

Were here trying to figure it out.

What am I here for?

How can I be happy?

But also in this moment,

Collectively,

There are lots of movements that are happening,

Lots of movements of peoples across the face of the earth,

Movements of elements of the earth,

Shifting,

Acting upon one another,

Getting hotter,

Getting colder,

Getting denser,

Getting more liquid.

So as you start to attune to whatever is now to your breath,

To your space,

Can you attune with an awareness that this moment is unlike any other?

That it will never be repeated and that there is no way to know,

There is no way to define in any simple articulation what it is and therefore you don't even need to try.

So can you relax your brain and remember that you are a child of creation.

It is not your job,

It's not up to you to make everything work.

And there is not actually very much that you're in control over.

In fact,

You could say that there is probably really only one way to do it.

And what that is,

Is your attitude.

Right?

And everything else we can kind of deduce that something,

Somewhere,

You know,

We're left to chance.

But in the way that we frame things to ourselves,

In the way that we perceive,

There is choice.

And of course there are all the conditions that precede choice.

The ways that we have been socialized are innate problems.

And so,

You know,

We're not just trying to be a part of the world,

We're trying to precede choice.

The ways that we have been socialized are innate personality.

The conditions that arise around us.

So sometimes you'll hear in a yoga class or at the end of a chant,

Shanti shanti shanti.

And shanti is a Sanskrit word,

It means peace.

And you might choose to say it three times.

And in this repetition,

You wish peace to the three causes of suffering.

So the first cause is forces beyond our control.

Weather,

Global phenomena,

A comet hitting the earth,

Things like this.

Absolutely no way you can control it.

The second cause is other people.

So we feel suffering,

Quote unquote,

Caused by other people that we're in relationship with all the time.

You suffer for your lovers,

You suffer for your friends,

You suffer for your family,

You suffer with them.

And there is the suffering that we all contribute to that is the mass impact of our individual habits.

So it might not be such a big problem that I always buy disposable packaging.

Just one person,

Just one trash bag,

Buy a bag of food,

Just one trash bag.

But you take a whole city or a whole country and everyone's disposable packaging and suddenly you've got a problem.

And this problem is going to create suffering,

Not just for us,

But also for everything else that we share space with.

So the second cause of suffering is other people.

And then the third cause of suffering is ourself.

We cause ourselves to suffer through basically what is improper perception.

And this looks like attachment,

It looks like definition.

We see something and we say that's mine or that is this,

You are that.

We draw lines around things and separate them from their context.

And then we start to believe a myth.

We believe that we are separate.

We believe that it's your fault.

We believe that this moment is permanent and therefore we must make a choice.

So if you bring your hand to the place that's above your belly button but below your ribs,

You'll feel basically the top of the visceral organs.

So right below your ribs there's this thing called the diaphragm and it's a sheet of muscle.

It's the thing that starts your breath.

It also separates your lungs and heart,

So your upper thoracic viscera,

From your abdominal viscera.

And below your diaphragm on the left you have your stomach and you can actually feel your stomach.

So if you press in gently underneath your left ribs,

You might feel it.

And if you have recently had some food or drink you might feel it stronger.

And then if you travel from that space just below your left ribs towards the midline,

So just about an inch or two above your navel,

You'll be touching what's kind of the top-ish of your small intestine.

And the small intestine is,

It fills this space around your navel.

So it's behind your belly button,

It's above it,

It's to the sides and it's below.

And then if you're going to the middle of your belly button,

It's below.

And the small intestine is our guts.

When you think of guts,

It's a small intestine.

It's like the length of a football field or whatever when it's all unfolded.

So this area of our body is often a place where many of us have habitual or and or feelings of not having a lot of support and or distress.

So it's a place in our body which can very easily become upset.

Some of us with strong Virgo placements suffer from indigestion.

It's a place where we can get really locked and rigid,

Trying to support ourselves to be upright.

And it's also a place where we lose support.

So of course on the other side of this you have your lumbar curve.

It's the curve in the back that most people find less supportive over time,

Potentially,

That this part of the back can start to sway forwards and can feel limp or kind of wonky in our trunks.

All right,

So this next little bit of what we're going to do would be really great if you could lie down on your back.

But it's also fine to do sitting or standing.

But if you can lie down,

It's easier to breathe in this way.

But we're just going to go through a very simple three-part breath.

And if it's reasonable to ask you to place one hand over your belly button and then to bring your other hand behind you.

So if you're lying on your back,

Just slide your other hand below the curve of your lower back.

All right,

So in the three-part breath,

We'll just start with about a third of our ability to inhale.

So just take a kind of shorter breath and then pause.

And then take another third of air in and pause.

And then take your final third and then take a long exhale out.

Okay,

So we'll just repeat this a number of times.

So the basic breathing pattern is that you breathe in three parts.

And each part is about a third of your capacity to inhale.

And you take a brief pause,

No longer than what is comfortable for you.

And then at the end of those three parts,

You take one long exhale.

Okay,

So as you breathe,

Bring your attention to the space between your hands or bring your attention to the space between the front and the back of your body around your midsection,

Around your belly button.

And the very simple invitation is to feel the volume of your breath and feel the way that your breath can spread out to the front,

Into the sides,

Into the back.

And as you breathe,

You might consider that first third of breath filling the volume of space that is just in front of your spine.

And then the second part of your breath filling the volume of space that is a little broader,

Kind of wrapping around your spine.

And then the third part of your breath filling the space that moves out into your skin.

And how I imagine this is as an expanding and condensing orb.

And the center of the orb is my navel center.

So that would be about an inch and a half or two inches behind your belly button.

Right in front of your spine.

And that the orb expands with every inhale and it expands in kind of a global volume.

It expands in a perfect sphere.

And you can think of this breath as increasing vitality of warming breath so that it brings warmth and nourishment into all of the tissues.

And what I want you to start to feel into is the the subtle,

Or maybe for some of us not so subtle,

Tension that arises with breathing.

And I want you to feel that the tension that is in your body is increasing.

And if you feel like you're trying to make yourself breathe,

If there's tension in it,

What can you relax?

How can you work a little bit less and allow the breath to grow within you?

This inhale expanding,

Warming feeling just grows.

It just starts to emanate in the space that is really central in your body.

And then now on your exhales,

I want you to imagine that all the the little places of tension that you might feel just get exhaled and fully released.

So with every part of the inhale,

There's a growing,

There's an expanding,

There's just a feeling of hello when you find those tense places.

There it is,

Relax.

And then again,

And feeling those three parts and then as you exhale,

Letting it go.

So almost tidal,

That there is this ebb and flow.

And with every inhale,

Those hard edges of restriction just get a little softer.

And with every exhale,

They release their adhesions just a little bit more.

Now of course,

This part of the body has a relationship to all other parts of the body.

So you can continue this breath and this feeling to now spread out.

And so that third part of the inhale can now spread out into your whole body.

Maybe you feel the orb encompassing all of you.

And then the exhale can release tension throughout the whole body.

Because we're working with the digestive system,

We want to keep relaxing the top and the bottom of the digestive system as well.

So feel that your lips and your gums and your jaw and your tongue are relaxing.

Feel that your pelvic floor is relaxed,

That there is release in the pelvis.

Not too much constriction or holding around the anal sphincter.

So the touch of your breath can just grow and spread,

Moving into all of your cells,

Into all parts of your being.

And as you exhale,

There is quiet.

Let's take about five more breaths like that.

I'll just breathe with you.

So