Loving Your Inner Child

This meditation focuses first on awareness of our inner Sun and essential radiance. This solar energy is the creative principle and the essence of our childlike, innocent nature. Using this awareness, we'll travel towards our infant and child selves to acknowledge and integrate them, as well as help them heal and come into balance.

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 these meditations 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.

Hello and thanks for listening.

This is Renee and this is a somatic meditation on connecting with and healing your inner child.

Somatic meditation is a form of meditation that is not formulaic.

You can do it in any position anywhere at any time.

I know that life is busy and so I encourage you to use this meditation while you're riding on the bus,

While you're taking a walk,

While you're falling asleep,

While you're cooking your dinner,

And definitely while you take time out from all of your other activities and create a practice that is right for you.

To begin the meditation,

Please find a way to be comfortable.

If you're out somewhere,

Then you might imagine a field around you that is a private space in the midst of all the goings-on around you.

When I meditate out in the world,

I kind of imagine a bubble or a membrane around me.

In this space,

There is a field of energy and whatever I'm working on cultivating through my inner awareness starts to expand into the space around me and support me from the outside in.

It's also a place where anyone else can enter and be affected.

If you're practicing somewhere in private or at home,

You can lie down,

You can sit up,

You can move around,

However your body needs to be the most supported.

That's the best way for it to be.

So then we'll begin just by bringing attention into the breath.

You don't need to do anything special with your breathing.

Just notice it.

Whenever anything is noticed,

Its behavior changes.

So as you bring attention to your breath,

You will notice how your breath responds.

You might feel how you've been breathing in a habituated way so far.

Maybe you need a deeper breath.

Maybe you notice that your breath slows up or slows down or speeds up.

See if you can simply feel the quality of your breath and notice as your inhale meets your body.

Where does it begin?

Can you feel the touch of breath along your lips or your nose and how your breath moves into your lungs?

How it moves into your body?

Though your inhale will literally expand your lungs,

The movement of oxygen from your inhale into your blood can travel to every single cell in your body.

And the movement of breath,

The movement of tissues and organs and the way that breath can ripple out into sensation can also travel anywhere in your body.

If there are places that you'd like to give some acknowledgement to or say hello to with your breath,

Then invite your breath to those places.

If it's been a busy day or a busy time for you,

You might invite your breath all the way down into your feet and into the surfaces of your body that are in contact with the earth and with the ground.

With your exhales,

You can invite your sense of gravity to release towards the ground,

To release towards the earth.

A more energizing imagination for your breath would be to feel the way that your breath expands into space and moves into the space above and around you.

And as you exhale to feel your inner radiance,

The idea of yourself also expanding from your center out into the space around you.

You might choose to feel both.

One or a few inhales letting your awareness move towards earth,

Towards your relationship to gravity,

And with your exhale softening and trusting that relationship,

Letting yourself yield.

And then for one or a few breaths,

Feeling the expansive inhale and the movement of your breath that spreads your skin,

That opens your chest,

That maybe moves up and out from your head.

And as you exhale,

Feel the movement of your exhale traveling out into space you can imagine the vitality and the radiance of your being extending out 360 degrees around you.

So now let's continue with this imagining with these sensations and add in another layer of image.

I'd like you to visualize the sun and you can visualize the sun maybe kind of like in a science diagram or like that life episode that you watched one time and kind of see the sun from outer space.

You can imagine this amazing star right the center of our solar system the star that we call our sun and its brilliance.

So this is a ball of gases that are in constant combustion and all of this heat and this fire are expressing outwards and expressing outwards in 360 degrees all the way around.

And the sun has wind it's called solar wind and that wind that the sun creates actually is also a container and the edge of the wind is the edge of our solar system.

And you might imagine how fire creates wind and wind stokes fire.

And if you can place the image of the sun right at the center of your chest you know just around where the organ of your heart is.

And as you inhale you can inhale right into this place.

And then as you exhale you can imagine the the wind of the sun or the force of this radiance being carried out all the way to the edge of your field and so that invitation I made if you're out in public if you're kind of imagining yourself contained in an aura or a membrane and even if you're in private or at home you can feel your heat your inner heat and your radiance spreading all the way out and creating a field around you.

So as you inhale you inhale directly into the heart of the sun and the heart of the sun is in your heart.

And then as you exhale you can imagine the radiance of that warmth and that heat and how it moves out and how it moves out.

And then as you inhale you can imagine the radiance of that warmth and that heat and how it moves out with a lot of power into the field around you.

You might even imagine that the space around you is starting to glow and it's starting to warm up and emanate light.

And thinking about the sun and this kind of solar quality,

Some of the words that I associate to this feeling are strength,

Courage,

Pride,

Passion,

Exuberance,

Expression,

And creativity.

So if you can breathe right into the center of your own heart and imagine just like the sun that your heart has a radiance that your heart has an expression that the very center of your being is a creative center.

And from that place you're emanating and radiating out into the space around you and all expression that you create through your mood,

Through your gestures,

Through your thoughts,

Through your actions,

All of that is emanating out into the field around you and you are creating the field around you.

And you're creating the field around you from the pure light of your own being,

The pure radiance.

The sun also has a magnetic field and so just as it has this energy that kind of creates a container around it,

Creates the container of our solar system,

It has a magnetic field that keeps planets and asteroids and bodies in orbit around it.

It pulls towards itself.

So our earth is one of the things that is transiting,

That's traveling around the sun and we circle around the sun once every year.

Of course there are lots of other things circling around the sun and even things we don't know about,

Planets and asteroids and dwarf planets that haven't maybe been discovered yet,

Still in a process of discovery what's in our own galactic neighborhood.

And just as the sun has this magnetic power,

So do you.

And so you can imagine that the sun and so you can imagine that right at the center of your being,

At your solar center,

Your heart center,

Is an anchor point and you are drawing towards yourself and you are keeping in orbit people and experiences and sensations.

And just like our solar system giving birth to itself through chaos,

Planets and asteroids and everything that's out there,

There are ideas about the origin but the origin is unknown.

So similar to this,

You keep in your orbit all kinds of people and experiences that you really didn't choose,

You don't know how you got there,

But somehow they're part of your orbit,

Somehow you are connected.

So let's just stay with that for a little bit.

Let's breathe in to the very center and imagine that as you breathe out your essence radiates into the space around you.

And then as you breathe in you're also collecting in.

You are holding and attracting the manifestations of your life.

And as you breathe out you're giving to them and you're being compelled also with them.

You can imagine in this kind of space view that you have how whatever is orbiting around the sun casts a shadow.

So for example this meditation is being put out in honor of the partial solar eclipse,

August 11th 2018,

And a new moon.

So what we have at a new moon and at a solar eclipse is from our vantage point on Earth the moon which is orbiting around our Earth comes into alignment with the sun from our point of view and eclipses it,

Casts a shadow and we kind of lose sight of that light in some partial way for a moment.

So as the sun is radiating out its radiance is hitting or casting upon the face of bodies,

Planets,

And then there's a shadow that's created and that shadow also extends out.

And some things get warm and some things get cool.

And so you can imagine this in your own life and in your own body.

And you inhale and feel your inner radiance.

And as you exhale imagine how your unique essential expression radiates out into your world,

Into your life,

And illuminates and warms and maybe sometimes burns other people and things and experiences and influences them and is part of creating them.

And then you can also imagine the shadow,

The part that you don't see,

Whatever is on the other side of your experiences.

So we have this kind of inner light,

The inner expression,

The essence that is being generated and spread out into the world around you.

And then there's the unknown beyond that.

There's the mystery of the world around you.

And there's the mystery as to how you ripple out through your experiences,

How your impact spreads,

Whether it does or not,

What's on the other side of everything,

And how your unique contribution,

Your essence,

Will combine with whatever the essence is of what you're in relationship with,

In orbit.

And then new things will happen.

Things will change and occur and be created.

So the sun is a symbol of the essential self and the essential self is a child of the universe.

So when I'm thinking about connecting to and healing with the inner child,

What I'm really thinking about is connecting to and healing with the creative essence that is the kind of center of each of us as human beings,

As beings that have been formed in somewhat the way I'm talking about light and heat and magnetism and attraction coming together and producing something.

Bodies being influenced by one another,

Being pulled into each other's orbits,

And then creation that happens.

You as a human being were created in just this way.

And whatever the story is around your conception,

The truth is that bodies came together,

Planned or unplanned,

And some kind of alchemy occurred and you as an idea and as a manifestation of cells and materials and molecules that are binding together were formed.

Whatever your story is,

Whatever the conception story is,

Think past the individuals and think about the world and try and feel the energy.

The people whose genetics made you,

Whether or not you call them mom and dad,

You can imagine them too as suns,

As light,

As stars.

You can imagine their radiance,

Their eminence and energy moving out and around and into.

You can imagine how they have magnetism,

How they pull experiences towards themselves,

How they pull experiences towards themselves,

And how their essence and their light is part of a creative act,

A birthing,

Not just of you but of anything that they were creating in their lives or have created or will.

Feel deeply into the center of your own being and the essence that exudes from you and from that center.

That essence is beyond words,

It's beyond description,

It's a feeling,

Maybe it's an image,

It's a recognition of your own power and the sensation of your own vitality.

Can you imagine that essence expressing through you when you were an infant?

Before you were formed by ideas and by language and by customs,

When you were a being who only needed care,

Sustenance,

Warmth.

Infants get to know themselves through mirroring,

Through the reflection of their environments.

So the way that most of us make faces at babies or coo at them,

Make sounds,

Kind of respond to their gestures and their movements enforces and reinforces their ability to communicate,

To understand and to express themselves.

The essence of you,

Your deepest radiance,

Met other bodies,

Met other beings and the way that your light was reflected back to you is now part of how you understand your own expression.

So as you feel into that and as you imagine your birth stories and your earliest experiences with them,

Whether or not they're known to you,

You might have a feeling.

What I'd like to invite you to do is to meet yourself there in that memory.

So you as an adult now,

As a radiant being,

Can gaze upon and regard your infant self and as you do,

You can imagine the pure potential of your infant self,

This being that has not yet been shaped by ideas and by language and by circumstance that is pure in a lot of ways.

And can you reflect back to yourself that pure essence?

Can you see your innate goodness,

Your brilliance,

Your warmth?

Can you feel and respond to your own magnetism,

Affirming attraction and companionship and family?

So you and your adult self can gaze upon and hold your infant self and in your body now as you listen,

Wherever you are,

You can feel your own center,

Your solar center,

It's just kind of right where your heart is,

Maybe slightly below.

You can breathe into that place,

You can feel your own radiance,

Your own essence,

Moving out into the world around you.

You can feel your own power of attraction and magnetism and the way that you hold experiences and people and contexts.

And from that place,

Look upon your infant self and see and sense into your own center as a tiny one.

And the power of expression that infants have,

What a power of expression,

Such little bodies and such big sounds a lot of times.

And from this place,

Just appreciating,

Just seeing and sensing and appreciating and reflecting back,

Reflecting back warmth,

Reflecting back generosity,

Reflecting back that you see yourself and that you are at the center of your own attention.

So you give your infant self the power of your own magnetism,

Your own attentiveness,

Your own attraction.

And then I want to invite you to let this idea move through your different ages.

And when you were a toddler,

When you were a five,

Six,

Seven year old,

When you were a ten year old,

When you're a preteen or a teenager,

As children and young people and as adults,

We're just trying to figure it out.

We're expressing ourselves,

We're expressing our own emotions,

We're experiencing the power of our expression in context with our environment and relationships and all that we are in orbit with.

And in our expression,

Often,

Well,

All of us have had experiences where we feel insecure or the expression is not appropriate.

Where maybe we blast or burn through something,

Where we don't see something,

Where there's been a shadow that's cast,

Our own light kind of blinds us to other experiences.

We've all had experiences with other people who are radiating their own light and we might feel in the shadow of that or burnt or charred by their light.

So can you find the ages of yourself that are in a question around expression,

That are seeking to express themselves in ways that are vital,

That are courageous and proud,

That are warm,

And that are also magnetic and attracting what you really want to be attracting,

What you really want to hold in your orbit.

And as children and young people,

We're very impressionable and we're responding to the world through reflection,

Through mirroring and mimicking and we learn what's normal and what's good from our early environments and early families.

And as young and fragile beings,

We learn how to be so that we belong.

And oftentimes the belonging is incongruent with our own essence and the ways that we really feel that we want or need to radiate.

So if any of those words bring up memories or times for you,

Different ages and experiences that you've had where you feel like you're in a different world,

You're in a different world,

The feed your shock to passion.

If you have a or you are MargaretAA or any of these other letters and Routes and experiences that you've had where you feel that your own light wasn't seen,

Wasn't allowed,

Maybe grew too strong in certain ways in order to fit in with the kind of light that was around you or something like this,

As you're with yourself,

Breathe right into the center of your own being and feel the pure light of your own radiance,

Your pure expression.

This expression that has no words that can ever contain it.

The expression that has been continuous since you were born.

That kind of most immediate expression of babies and humans,

Which is simply the need for love and the desire to give love to see and be seen.

And let that move out of you.

And towards yourself,

Towards the being that you were when whatever it was influenced your light.

And then in whatever way makes sense for you,

Encourage yourself to radiate.

You find the center of your own body when you were that age,

You can feel into it.

You can imagine touching it.

You can imagine yourself there as that age or yourself there with that age.

And connecting to the sensation of your own essence and your own expression.

Feeling the sensation of where the expression was manipulated,

Where it got really small,

Maybe where it got too aggressive.

Anything in between.

And then remind yourself of your own pure expression,

Of your own essence.

And in whatever way makes sense to you,

Invite yourself to radiate,

To fill your own space,

To trust your own light.

To express it all the way out,

To be safe and held and contained within it.

So you can do this meditation for a long time and you can do it again and again.

And you can do it with different parts of your being,

Any part of your being that for whatever reason isn't able to express itself honestly.

And children,

Of course,

You know,

We want a child-like remembering but maybe not childish.

And there should be probably an appreciation for the ways that you learned to express and maybe refine your brilliance,

Your eminence.

But in that appreciation,

Right at the heart of it,

Should be love.

So can you see yourself,

Can you show up for yourself with the recognition that the pure eminence,

That the essence of your being is all good?

It's 100% positive,

Loving.

The desire to love and to be loved,

To experience a life that has comfort and a sense of safety and belonging,

To have what you need.

And that,

Of course,

All of us have grown up in contexts of significant challenge and we learn to express ourselves in ways that will help us get whatever it is that we think we need.

So how can you find the parts of your being who are expressing or not expressing,

Who need support,

Who need acknowledgement,

Who need attention,

And just go be there with them.

And from the very center of your own being,

Reflect to this very center of your own being.

You can do this meditation as well with other people and you can imagine that each person is the sun.

Each person holds the center of their own system.

And of course,

For all of us,

We've had experiences and relationships that have cast shadows.

We hold things in our orbits that are important both for the ways that we become and also for the ways that we heal and the ways that we learn.

And if there are relationships in your life that are in need of healing,

You might imagine that your sun,

Your center,

Your star,

Can regard the pure expression,

The pure essence of another center and another sun.

We live in a mysterious and highly creative and highly creative unknown.

There's so much that we don't know.

We don't know through our sacredness,

We don't know through our science,

We don't know through our philosophies,

We don't know through our religions.

There's so much that we don't know.

But we can feel that there is constant change,

That there is constant creation.

And the energy of this creation is alchemy.

It's the meeting of elements and the response.

And whatever the essence is that infuses all of this,

That's the place to tap into.

It's within you.

It's within you at every age and before you were born and after you'll die.

And it's within all of your relationships.

Bring yourself from your own center into your own center.

Take a deep breath in and as you exhale,

Feel your radiance moving out all the way around you in every single direction.

And as you breathe in,

Feel the world pouring in to your own center.

And as you breathe out,

Feel your expression rippling out into the world.

In whatever way makes sense to you,

In whatever way feels comfortable or appropriate,

Honor yourself for this meditation and thank yourself for your practice.

And you can continue to breathe in and out.

For your practice.

And you can continue from here in whatever ways that you want.

Feeling your heart,

Feeling your center,

Recognizing the heart and center of every being that's around you,

Human,

Animal,

Plant or otherwise.

And from your own center,

Appreciating and reflecting your pure essence.

Thanks so much for practicing with me.

Wishing you all the best.

Much love and bye for now.

Reviews

I love you Renné ❤️

A very interesting meditation, I loved the solar system, sun star references to practice a kind of metta and then a tonglen meditation while working through aome aspects of the inner child. Looking forward to repeating.