Meeting In The Middle - A Centering Meditation

This guided meditation brings attention to the ways in which we get easily distracted and pulled into imbalance. The focus is on creating energetic attunement by learning how to recognize feelings of "centeredness" and creating a strong capacity for psychic/mental discernment.

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. Hi everyone, This is Renee and I'm excited to guide a meditation today on working with two-mindedness, Being of two minds of something, Indecision, Complications that have to do with either or, Binary thinking, And kind of a little bit of a split personality syndrome that many of us feel where we have a public persona and a private persona and they sometimes don't align, They don't match up. All right, So go ahead and find a comfortable place to be. This is a meditation where we'll be exploring the two sides of our bodies as well, The right and the left sides and the front and the back. So it would be a great meditation to move around if you're so inclined. If you're someone who likes to have something to listen to while they experiment with free movement or do a little bit of yoga or take a walk, This would be one of the better meditations to do that in. And of course it's also great if you want to sit or lie down or be in any other comfortable shape. Okay, So I usually begin in the same way and that way is just dropping whatever else is going on around and making the decision to arrive. And the decisiveness has a gesture and that gesture is closing the eyes. And when you close the eyes, You're giving yourself the opportunity to bring your attention and your vision inwards. And for most of us, Our eyeballs are the most dominant of our sense organs. We're a very visually focused species and culture and we tend to absorb the world through our eyes. And the more that we spend time on screens and with devices, Our eyes are really constantly kind of moving. They're tracking when we're looking at a screen and they're reaching forwards because it's hard to see those things often. And this is the same for if you do any kind of repetitive tasks that require you to focus your eyes often. So with that focusing of the eyes, There's a stimulation that comes into the frontal lobe of the brain and it pulls us into the doing mind. And the doing mind could also be maybe associated to the sympathetic nervous system. It's the part of our brain, The part of our beings that like to plan and analyze and make sense of things and think concretely. It's the part of our brains that are good at making decisions based in reality. So when we close our eyes, We're actually allowing ourselves to go a little bit into the back seat, You might say, Kind of come offline a little bit. And in this gesture, We can increase the feeling of taking the back seat by consciously relaxing the front part of our brain. And so if you let your eyes out of the way, You can see the space between the back of your forehead and the front of your brain. I want you just to feel that space expanding. Now keep that space open and expanded and just notice your breath. Notice what it feels like to inhale. Notice the migration of breath from the outer edges of your nostrils into your nose and up your sinuses. And you might even be able to feel your breath pass through your forehead, Your sinuses that run through your forehead bones. And you can think of your breath like an irrigation system for your mind. And in the wisdom of yoga, Which has been passed to us from our Indian yoga, We can think of it as a meditation. And we can think of it as a meditation. And in the wisdom of yoga, Which has been passed to us from our Indian friends and teachers, This great tradition, There's a lot of wisdom that was written into some pretty amazing texts. And in one of the texts called the Yoga Sutra, The first line, Or I should say the second part says that yoga is a stilling of the thought forms. And later in the text, They was written by potentially a mysterious person or a collection of many people, Otherwise known as the sage Patanjali, Who I'll refer to as a plural. So they say that breath is energy and that your thoughts are linked to your breath. And so we notice that when we bring attention into the breath, The thoughts get quieter. And when our thoughts become loud and disorganized, So does our breath. And this really simple observation can have a profound effect in our lives. Not only could this inspire more tranquility and peacefulness in our day-to-day existence, But it's also good for our bodies. Your brain and your bones are the top consumers for oxygen in your entire body. And when your brain is working a lot, Then your bones don't get the oxygen. So relaxing your brain is good for your bones. It's good for your immunity, It's good for your relationships. So as you feel your breath and you let your breath kind of wash over the front of your brain, I want you to feel how this movement of breath can spread into the left and into the right hemispheres of your brain. And you might imagine the pathways in your brain and feel how the breath kind of swims through them. I just realized I told you to move around and then you've had your eyes closed for the last five minutes. So maybe you've already opened your eyes, But if you need to open your eyes for your own safety and well-being, Let your eyes open but keep this state. And you might even, Even if you're not moving, Just experiment with opening your eyes. And then you might notice that just because your eyes are open doesn't mean that they need to reach forwards or grab onto anything. In fact, The eyes can continue to rest back in much the same way that they did when your eyelids were closed. And with the eyes open but resting back, You might notice that there's more awareness in the peripheral vision. And an expanded kind of sense of sight that allows whatever you're seeing to be delivered to your eyes, That there's no need to go out and grab it. So whether your eyes are open or closed, You're letting the movement of your breath swim into your brain and move through the area of your brain. And I want you to imagine your breath moving through all these channels like tiny fingers, Like little hands massaging your brain. And it's amazing how easy it is to spread your sensory awareness into parts of your body that you can't touch, Like your brain. All of these things are going to be in your brain. And you're going to see that your brain is now moving through an area of your body, Which is the spots of your brain. And if you're looking to spread your sensory awareness into parts of your body that you can't touch, Like your brain. All you need to do is imagine it. All you need to do is try and actually feel this part of your body through your inner felt sense, Direct your attention there. Up and back behind the parietal bones if you're familiar with what they are. And again in the space between your brain and your skull. And can you feel now that this movement of your breath and attention is releasing any adhesions that the brain tissues might have against the skull and your skull now can relax and it can soften. You feel the subtle movement of your skull bones becoming just a little bit more easeful. And you feel your brain floating in the fluid that encases it easy and relaxed. So when we get into places of dualism and this might manifest in being of two minds of something where you think well it's either this or that and it's about choice-making. This might manifest in polarization and conflict when we think I am one way and you are the other and they are opposed, They are different. This might manifest in any kind of binary where we're seeing opposites. This might manifest in being flaky, In kind of having a projection of how we imagine ourselves and not really paying attention to what we know about ourselves. So we end up committing to things that we don't actually want to do and putting ourselves into situations where we cannot satisfy the idea that we had put forward. And this also can manifest in a big difference between the ways that we project ourselves out into the world and how we actually feel inside. And for many this is a extremely painful, Although sometimes quite unconscious experience, Where we feel unknown, Unseen, And unloved in part because we never let ourselves be known or seen or loved. And there's just a constant striving to present one face to the world while our true face is hidden. And the true face sometimes isn't even known by us but there can often be a feeling of just not being real about something. So this is the idea that we're going to be working with through the more tangible, Even though you're trying to feel your brain, But through this more tangible exercise of feeling your brain, Feeling our brains. And you might know that the left side of your brain is associated to the right side of your body. So it's kind of this magic trick of your body creation that the left side of your brain controls and is manifested into the right side of your body. And this side of your brain and body is associated again with the doing mind. And you might think of this as the, Oh I don't know, Like the, In some ways it's it's more of what we think masculinity is today. Like this assertive, Moving outwards, Decision-making, Logical brain. Now the other side of your brain, The right side of your brain, You might have been familiar with the book Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain, I think is what it's called, Is associated with the left side of your body. And the right side of the brain and the left side of the body are representative of the more intuitive half of your nature in the part of you that is not linear, That is circular and cyclical and maybe chaotic, That is empathic and psychic but doesn't always make sense. This is the artistic side, The creative side. So can you feel now how these two sides of your brain exist in the left and the right sides of your skull and your forehead? And then can you feel how the two sides of your body exist? And you can feel this almost like mirror image. So if you were to draw a line through the center of your body, You know, For the most part we see things kind of looking somewhat the same on the right and the left sides. But then I want you to feel into your non-dominant side. So if you are a right-handed person, Feel into your left hand. If you're a left-handed person, Feel into your right hand. By the way, I've never read any study and just because I've never read it doesn't mean it's not out there but I don't know of any correlation of left-handed people or right-handed people being more adept at left brain or right brain things. Although I'm sure that study is out there saying that that's actually true. Just wanted to tell you. All right, So can you feel this relationship? And in that relationship can you feel how in order to make the relationship from right brain to left body or from left brain to right body you have to cross your midline. And the midline is where the right and the left sides meet. And I just want you now to let your attention linger in that space of meeting and feel how the two sides move towards each other. And then spread and stream away from each other. And feel how they move towards each other. And notice on the moving towards each other what happens to your sensation in your spine. What happens to your relationship to earth and heaven. And then let the right and left side spread and slide away from each other. And as they spread and slide away from each other notice what happens to your front and your back body. Notice how you feel the space out to the sides. So you might have seen these illustrations that divide the body into planes. So there's the front part of the body, The front plane and the back plane. And you could imagine also now along with the left and the right side meeting at the midline, You can imagine like the lateral line where your body is separated between front and back. And then you can feel how the front of your body and the back of your body spread and fill out and move away from each other. And notice the sensations that move through your body as you just imagine this. And then feel how the front and the back of your body can draw in towards one another. All the way from your base to your crown, Through your limbs, Through every finger. Now if you were to try both of these at the same time, The right and the left sides moving towards one another, The front and the back sides moving towards one another, All at the same time. And let that movement hug around their central meeting point and feel the way that central meeting point then roots strongly all the way down into the earth and ascends with vitality all the way up into the sky. And when you feel that center, Notice how you perceive your own strength and balance. And then relax. And now imagine that the front and the back parts of your body and the right and the left parts of your body are all moving away from each other and spreading and sliding and filling out and moving out into the space around you. And at a certain point you might feel like your awareness has spread as far as it will go. And when it has reached that point I want you just kind of to imagine that boundary line where it reaches moving down and up until it meets itself on the other side so it forms kind of like an egg or yeah like a spherical shape around you and you're just floating inside but your sense of yourself has moved all the way out into some kind of periphery around you like a bubble or a balloon. Now see if in this space you can gently recall the moving in towards center feeling as well. And I want you to do both so don't be super forceful it's a little bit more of a subtle feeling because your attention needs to travel into many places. So feel how your energy can move out and form a bubble kind of capsule shape around you and then feel also the simultaneous moving in towards your own center so that within this aura around you you're also collected into your own center of being. And this is a very interesting practice to do when moving. Really I think brings some profound information into the body in asana and yoga postures. Very fun if you're running or walking. Okay so I'm going to talk for a little bit and I just want you to kind of reside in this space. And at any point feel free to tune me out and just kind of come back to this meditation of spatial awareness. So we're sensing into this kind of protective encapsulating boundary that's probably at least a number of feet away from your physical body and then at the same time we're sensing the gathering in from all sides into the central core. And this is all happening at the same time. And your eyes are relaxed and you can feel that this movement is still moving through your tissues. So the right and the left sides of the body are still simultaneously kind of spreading and sliding away from one another and gathering in towards your own center. How do you do that at the same time? It's kind of a little trick of your imagination. And the front and the back sides of your body are still gathering in towards one another meeting at the lateral line and then also spreading out and expanding. And it might feel like waves or pulsations or you might be able to focus on one sensation for a second and then the other and that's all great. So sometimes being of two minds can be not a bad thing. It allows us to see other perspectives. And so the benefit of having two minds about something is that we can be curious. We can reach out, We can connect, We can ask questions, We can inform our own viewpoints by adopting someone else's for a while. This isn't a bad idea, Especially anytime, Because people are always different and many people often think that they're right. They know that they're right. And so not to say that anyone is wrong, But if a lot of people think that they're right and what they think is all different, Then we have a problem. So it's a good idea to get curious about other people's ideas and to talk to them about it and to learn their languages and to understand their gestures and to feel how we can appreciate in ourselves what they are communicating. And it's a good idea to work on our articulation skills and become friendly and open so that when we communicate to others we can show ourselves. And there doesn't need to be a pretense or an idea of what the other person might think about us that keeps us from actually being honest or authentic. And one of the reasons that many of us hide ourselves is because we're scared of what someone else thinks or we have an idea of what they think and we don't trust that. We don't trust that they all care for us or who they are or who we are. And this might be true in some cases and may have been true in past cases, But it's one of the biggest gifts we can give to one another to treat each other as if the other person had our best intention in mind. It's such a gift. So in this we adopt a curiosity that's similar to that of children. Believing in someone's goodness and then trying to get to know them because you see something good in there. One of the ways that we can do this is by being able to sense our own discernment and discrimination in centeredness. So if you feel back into that capsule that you created around you, You can imagine that that space is protective. That any energy that tries to pass through that space that doesn't have your best intent at its heart, That you'll know it and that you will be shielded from it, That it won't even see you. And that's what we wish for is that the energy that wishes us harm can't even find us. And it's not that we're shutting it out or defending ourselves, It's just that there's nothing interesting here for that. And it's like a reflective bubble. So anything that is looking with mal-intent will only see its reflection and it'll turn away and go somewhere else. In the meantime, Anything or anyone that's passing by that can help us know ourselves more deeply and that can help us learn what it means to love, That those beings or people or experiences are invited in. And when we encounter whoever we've invited in, It's a good thing if we can feel our own center within those encounters. Because encounters can be a lot of different things and in many ways they can bring us into completely new experiences of ourselves. But there's also the tendency sometimes to forget who we are. And this isn't necessarily always a bad thing but it's often a good thing to have a sense of centeredness so we know what our intentions are. And this is really helpful when learning to trust other people is that you also trust your own intent. If you don't trust your own intent, You won't trust anyone else's. And that's a fact. So feel your own centeredness. Feel your own steady alignment. And in that sensation, Know what you stand for. And if it fills you with a sense of well-being, Then you know that you can trust your own intention. If it fills you with a sense of fear or hostility when you think of what you stand for, Then you might want to question it for a while. Because what you have inside you'll definitely find outside. And this is one of the lessons of two minds is that they seem to be at odds but they further perpetuate each other's dysfunction. Okay and now I want you to come back into this awareness of left and right sides. And I want you just to feel them in relationship in response to one another. And notice if one side feels more dominant than the other. And this could shift actually throughout the day if you practice this meditation at different times of day. And it could even shift as you're paying attention to it. But I just want you to notice how energy and attention moves between right and left, Between the logical thinking sides and the intuitive creative sides. And the practice for you in the next couple of weeks is to just keep feeling these different sides and expressing your appreciation for both of them. And we all need creativity and we all need logic. We all need intuition and we all need to be accurate. So thank yourself when you notice one or the other behaviors coming through. Just acknowledge it. Say like, Oh yeah that was a creative moment. Oh god I mean such a good decision there. Good job. Reward the efficacy of these two sides. Feel your front and your back. And at your back can you imagine your past and all the people that you've come from in any kinds of lineages. And at your front feel your future. There's a lot of unknown. Just a lot of space. And then in the back I want you to feel your shadow. I'm gonna say the shadow. And at the front I want you to imagine light pouring upon you. And can you expand your attention into your shadow and at the same time meet and greet that light. And it's a very good thing for all of us to remember that we have a shadow. For all of us to remember that no matter how much light we see there's always something that's blocked from our view. That no picture is ever complete. And a great gift of being of two minds is that one mind can go into the unknown while the other mind can travel into the known. And maybe we can bring that information that they each have together. And then we'll prepare to finish up this meditation by using your hands. And I'm not gonna do this because I'm wearing a microphone but use your hands and just rub your whole body down. Rub your skin. I really like to slap. Like just slap your legs and slap your arms. You can even slap your own face and it just wakes the skin up and livens the nervous system. Kind of brings you back into your container. Just say hello body thanks for being here. And then bring your hands together and in the meeting of your hands you're bringing two sides together and you feel the space between and you bow to that space. And that's the gesture of completion we find all around the world of honoring, Recognizing, Greeting, And saying goodbye. So it's our punctuation mark. I hope you've enjoyed this meditation. I'm finding it very helpful to do and I always love to hear your feedback and your thoughts and what these meditations inspire in you and any requests that you have. So please feel free to reach out. Alright, Much love to all of you and be well.