Moving Meditation: Sea-Spine

This gentle movement-based breathing meditation is a feast for the fluids of your body. It helps strengthen and repair the connective tissues around your spine and produces a state of deeply grounded relaxation. Sit with me or feel free to stand, move freely or lie down as you feel inspired, and let's open the conduits of our bodies to the deep supports of gravity and space.

Voice at intro and image by Gabz 404.

Transcript

Welcome.

This guided meditation and breathing practice was offered by Renée Seals for Somatic Space.

Somatic Space is a weekly embodied astrology class where we practice attuning through our bodies with current astrological influences.

For this meditation please find yourself in a comfortable position where you can breathe easily.

I'm going to actually do a lot of my practice seated today.

My body needs to sit.

So the way that I'm working will be on my ball that I sit on.

And if you have a seat and you want to join me,

You can take a seat.

But you can also do everything that we're about to do standing up and you can adapt and modify to do it lying down.

And I just want to remind folks that everything I do is always a suggestion.

So if I'm doing something and your body doesn't want to do it or it feels inaccessible for any reason,

Let the suggestion that I'm making get small in your body and see if you can find like its energetic principle and then play with it from there.

And if you also have any kind of instinct or intuition,

If your body says that it wants to do something else instead,

Completely different than what I'm doing,

Do that.

Okay,

So we'll just start for a moment and bring our attention inwards.

If you want to close your eyes,

Close your eyes.

Let's take a couple of deep breaths.

And as we deepen our breaths,

We're inviting ourselves to consciously arrive for this choice that we've made to be here today,

At this time in this way.

Okay,

So acknowledging the choices that we've made that have brought us here.

And see if you can feel your own intention.

So tuning in with a felt sense of why you're here,

Reminding yourself about that.

And then let's take some breaths outward from the present moment and offer thanks and gratitude to all of the many,

Many beings,

All of the humans and more than humans in our lives that have made it possible for us to be here today.

And you can take that in any direction that you want.

And then we'll take a few breaths,

Remembering as we breathe that breath is continuous.

And every breath that we're taking becomes an exhale that is an inhale that is breath for the plants.

When we move through the world,

We move matter and space,

We have vibrational material impact.

And the choices that we make matter.

So breathing in with your choice to be here today.

And with the many ancestors,

Guides,

Guardians,

All of those and that which has made it possible for you to be here today.

Let's just breathe in with some care for the practice that we're in right now.

And see if we can find within us a real desire that any benefits that we might receive through this practice can translate out and into the world and into our lives in ways that honor the choices that we made to get here.

And the circumstances and relationships that helped us get here.

Anything that we do today may increase and add benefit to the wisdom and the benefits that are already here.

Okay,

So taking a full breath in with your prayer and opening invocation and as you exhale,

Let it out.

And then wherever you're seated,

Make sure that you're seated in a way that you can use your pelvis.

And I'm seated on a ball that makes it really easy for me.

But if you're seated on a chair,

Come to the front of your chair.

So leaned back into a bucket or into the chair back.

And if you are standing and stand with your legs wide.

And as we work today,

Let your knees bend.

Okay,

So I'm going to just start off with some pelvic rocking.

And as I begin with my pelvic rocks,

I'm actually going to try and let my feet begin the rocking of my pelvis.

So my feet are on the ground and I'm going to push into my feet to push my pelvis back and wag my tail back.

And I'm going to pull from my feet to bring my pelvis forward and then scoop my tail forward a little bit.

And I'm going to deepen my breath in a way that feels good and intuitive for my own body.

Sometimes this is going to feel like my breasts link with my movements.

And sometimes it might feel like they come in between.

So tune in with your own breath and let your breath and your movements start to work together.

Now if it's possible and comfortable for your hands,

Scoop one hand into the back of your pelvis.

And see if you can actually have your hand hold your whole sacrum and maybe touch your tailbone or near your tailbone.

And then scoop your other hand into the front and see if you can let the front hand hold your pubic bones.

So the back hand is holding your sacrum and your tailbone and the front hand can feel the bony container of your pelvis on the front side.

And then I want us to try and bring our imagination and our felt sense into the place,

Places that emerge kind of between the two hands.

Some people might know this as the perineum.

So the connective tissue between your sit bones.

This is a band that separates the back half of the pelvis from the front half or the part with your butthole from the part with your genitals.

We're going to try and feel that space of the perineum.

So in between the back and the front right at the pelvic floor.

And then if your felt sense has left your feet,

As you begin to focus on your perineum,

See if you can now come back with some awareness to your feet.

And notice if you can find any pathway of relationship from the soles of your feet to your perineum,

The base of your pelvis.

And then let's allow our hands to slide away where they've been.

And we're going to keep rocking the pelvis.

We're going to continue to use the feet to rock the pelvis.

We're going to continue to feel into the relationship of the feet into the pelvis.

And now let's take one hand to the base of the skull and let your hands come up underneath your occiput so you can feel the place where your skull moves on top of your spine.

And let your other hand come to your forehead.

And use your hands to give your head a little bit of support.

And now as you rock your spine and rock your pelvis,

Notice how your head is moving.

The top of your spine travels up along the back of your throat.

And if you can feel inside your own mouth right now,

Use your tongue to trace along the upper palate and the top of your mouth.

Or feel where your nose and sinuses rest on top of your mouth.

That's kind of the level of the top of your spine.

And let's let our awareness be in the front part.

And as your hands hold the front and the back of your head,

See if you can find the front of the top of your spine.

The front part of the spine that rests behind the throat.

And you bring your felt sense and awareness into that place.

And then keep the hand at the back of the head and take your other hand now back to the front of your pelvis.

And I want to invite us to try and feel into the inner body.

The inner part of your central body.

And as you move your pelvis,

Can you feel a relationship from the perineum all the way up to the head?

Can you get curious about the movement that's happening in the front of your spine?

And if you can keep your felt sense in these places and release your hands,

Allow your hands to release.

And now your movements,

The rocking that you're doing beginning at your feet might become more oceanic.

They might start to take on different shapes.

And as you investigate the sensation,

The feeling and awareness in the front of your spine.

And let's continue to let our spines move in relationship to our feet.

Kind of like our bodies are kelp and our feet are where the kelp is rooting into the ocean floor.

And the reason I love sitting on a ball is because I can shift my pelvis in lots of directions.

And that might feel a little more challenging for some folks on chairs,

But you can try it out and see if it works.

As you move from your feet,

You might push a little bit more into one foot or push and pull from different feet.

Letting the movement in your legs travel up into your pelvis.

And letting your pelvis tip around like a bowl.

And getting curious about the movement then that could travel through the front of the spine all the way into your skull,

Into the space between the front and the back of your skull.

And as you feel the space at the front and the back of your skull,

Top of your skull,

Top of your mouth,

Behind your nose,

Top of your spine,

Maybe this space wants to start to lead some spinal movement.

Your head might want to take you around like a snake takes its body around.

You might try some reaching or pulling or turning from the top of your spine from your head.

And notice how it moves through the rest of your body.

Inviting your awareness to stay central as much as possible.

We have muscles connecting to the back of our spines.

And muscles have more nervous system awareness than the inner body.

So our organs and the front of our spine feel differently and might be a lot more subtle to feel than the muscles at the back body.

The invitation here is to get curious about what's happening in the inner body,

That central space.

We'll play for another minute or so.

Allowing yourself to move like kelp in the ocean.

Allowing the feet and the support of the feet to be part of whatever's happening.

And for one more minute now,

Let's try and intentionally move our spine in all directions from the front of the spine.

How might you twist or side bend?

Forward fold or back bend?

Try and explore different movement potentials from the front of the spine.

And your spine might just continue to move like kelp in all directions.

But if you've only been moving in certain directions,

See if you can try some other ones.

How would the front of your spine move you into a twist?

Okay,

And then letting your movements get smaller,

More gentle,

Until you come back to pretty still,

But not entirely still.

So continue to let some undulations happen for you.

Allowing the movement of your breath and the natural fluctuating,

Balancing and rebalancing of your body to continue to happen in a fluid way.

And as we connect once more to our feet,

And feel the way that even just pushing down into the feet a little bit,

Brings some feedback into the pelvis.

Let's enliven the pelvis and see if we can really let the pelvis anchor to the earth.

And maybe from that central space between the front and the back of the pelvis,

We could reach down into the earth.

You might use the tip of your tongue to trace a line from your front teeth back as far as your tongue can go.

And when your tongue has moved as far back on the roof of your mouth as it can go,

Press upwards gently.

And let that actually lift your head,

Supporting your spinal column.

As you continue to reach for the earth from the center of your pelvis.

Use your imagination and visualize a column of light running between these two locations.

Let that column of light extend beyond your body into the earth and all the way up to a star that's right above you a million light years away.

Okay,

And in this central column of light,

We are going to imagine that's the energy of this spirit,

Of your spirit,

Coming down to incarnate in this lifetime.

Whatever the magic is that fills you up,

The life force that is uniquely yours.

It's traveling between the earth and the stars.

See if you can sense it and visualize it running through the central part of your body,

Like a column of light.

Now,

As you tune into this beam of light,

This central anchor,

Again,

Take a hand to the front and the back of your pelvis.

And now breathe into the depth here.

And let the light that's moving in the center of your body get bigger so that it isn't just a column in the center of the body.

It moves out into the front and the back of your body,

Maybe even a little bit beyond them.

Let your hands slide up a little higher,

Maybe to the front and the back of your upper belly,

Your solar plexus.

And again,

Find the depth between your front and your back hands.

And let the awareness in your central body expand into them.

It can be hard to touch the back of your heart,

But you can bring the front hand over your heart and imagine the space behind your heart.

Let the central column of light expand.

One more time,

Bring one hand to the back of your head and one hand to the front of your head and feel the depth,

The space between front and back.

And if you can locate the center of your head,

The front part of the very top of your spine,

Expand your awareness from there into the back and the front of your head.

And then we'll release our hands down and now we'll feel this depth expanding from the central column of light to the back of your head.

And as we feel this light moving through the centers of our bodies,

Now let it grow into the forward and the backward awareness.

And let it extend infinitely.

You might imagine that it could extend so much it would wrap the entire globe.

And in the space behind and in the space in front,

Let's just breathe into the continuity of life and breath.

And in whatever way it's available to you right now,

I want to invite a sense of protection.

Again,

You might call upon ancestors,

Guardians,

Guides,

Your own good choices,

Holding space behind you.

The impact of love,

The consequences of your highest intentions,

The potentials in the future that are actually good,

Try and feel that in front of you.

And in your depth between the front and the back of your body,

I invite you to feel your own power and agency,

Your capacity to make choices that are good for you,

That care for you to the best of your extent.

Okay,

Then we'll take our hands right to the tops of our heads and really gently trace a line to the right and the left brushing over our ears.

We're going to let our fingertips trace down the sides of our necks over to the outer shoulders.

When you come to your shoulders,

Cross your arms in front of you so that your opposite hands come to the opposite sides and then trace down the outer arms.

Bring your hands to the sides of your ribs and touch down the side of your body.

Just swoop your hands all the way down the sides of your legs to your outer ankles and then come all the way back up again.

Breathe into the touch of your hands and your outer ribs and then let your hands rest out,

Maybe even resting to the sides.

And from the depth and from the length of our bodies,

Let's now extend this inner body awareness into the right and the left sides.

And if you're still working with the image of the column of light that travels through your center,

Now let it grow and expand into the sides.

And as that light spreads through the sides of your body,

Imagine that it can stream out your arms,

Your right and left ears,

Through the sides of your body,

Through the sides of your feet.

And the right and the left are sourced and come back to the central space.

So as you feel outward moving in the right and the left,

Also feel how the right and the left move in to hold your center.

And to your right and your left sides,

Envision a circle of people that you're a part of.

And in the circle of people,

You might place familiar faces,

Your longest life friends,

Your colleagues,

Your family,

All the people that emerge in your mind right now as teachers,

As people who you love,

And also people who might be more challenging for you but have helped you learn some lessons.

You've grown with each other.

And breathe into your width.

And in whatever way it's available to you right now,

Remind yourself that you belong here.

Humanity does not always feel so clear about our own belonging.

But sometimes it can be pretty simple.

So we belong here.

We belong with each other.

There are relationships where you belong.

Feel free to fill your circle up with the more than humans that you belong with,

The trees,

The animals,

The mountains,

The lakes.

And then we'll just rest for a couple of breaths.

And as we rest,

Let's continue to feel these directions from the very center of our bodies,

Opening to the earth,

Opening up to the stars,

Receiving power,

Nourishment,

Light and life force,

Feeling our own depth,

The power of our own choices and agency,

The materiality of time that moves through us,

And feeling our own width,

Sense of belonging,

Relationships.

Here we are.

Okay,

And then one more time,

I'm going to ask you to bring up your retrograde themes.

Now from this place of centeredness,

Allow the retrograde themes to occur in your mind.

And I want to ask you,

Inside of these themes,

How you you want to care for or be with the different directions.

And so how the themes might take shape in your body,

If you ask to feel them,

They could do different things in your directions,

They might diminish something making you flatter,

Or more compressed,

Twisted or turned in certain ways.

These themes might fortify you or create even some rigidity or hardness in certain directions.

So we'll take a couple of minutes just to ask to feel into these themes to notice how they want to move in our bodies.

And then we want to care for them.

So there might be some kind of awareness inside of our bodies of how do we care for these themes.

And then we want to care for them through our bodily awareness.

So this isn't about coming up with the action in your mind,

Or the remedy for some situation.

Is there a way that we can help support ourselves in the directions where we might feel compressed,

Allow ourselves to open and expand where we might feel rigid or blocked.

And if all of that is too complicated,

Then just ask to feel these themes in relationship to what we just explored with our length,

Our depth and our width.

What does your body know that it needs,

And your shapes can change as you explore.

So you imagine these themes and you feel the shapes that they might have made in you.

Allow your body to help you make some new shapes.

What feels like the truth of the need that you're having?

What is the truth of the feeling?

And then if you found a new shape,

Breathe into that new shape.

Let it fill up your consciousness.

Let's not tense our muscles,

But let's really inhabit the space,

Really inhabit the shape.

Breathe all the way out into it,

Try and make it bigger.

And then let it go,

And take your time,

You might want to stretch or wiggle or just meditate.

And some of you might want to take some notes.

So if you felt like you had good information come in,

Take a couple notes and just remember it,

Help yourself remember what might have come through.

Thank you.