Reducing Stress & Anxiety

This guided meditation teaches simple, body-based awareness and breathing techniques that are quick and effective tools for reducing tension, stress, and anxiety. Take this time to process your thoughts and emotions and let go of them.

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.

Greetings and welcome.

Thanks so much for joining.

This is Renee and this is a somatic meditation for reducing stress and anxiety.

Somatic means in the body,

Of the body,

And this meditation will take us through various states of physical awareness.

I'll use imagery,

Some imaginative,

Some anatomical.

I'll ask you to use your hands to touch your body.

You can be in any kind of position you want to be for this meditation.

You don't have to sit cross legs or anything at all.

You can move around,

You can lie down.

And if what we do together is useful for you,

Then I hope you take these practices and techniques back into your life.

You can do them pretty easily wherever you are and you can definitely teach them to your friends.

If you enjoy these meditations,

Please share them.

And thank you so much for your donations.

When you donate,

Whether it's one time or recurring monthly donation,

You support me to continue making these meditations and offering them for free.

If you'd like more information about my work,

You can check embodiedastrology.

Com.

Every meditation I make corresponds to either the new moon or the full moon and so you'll learn more about my motivation there.

And you can learn more about me and the other things I do as well.

Okay,

So to begin,

Make yourself comfortable.

Find a place that you want to be.

And as I said before,

You can move around,

You can take any kind of posture.

But ideally you can be in a space where your energy can really come into yourself,

Where you can pay attention to your sensations and you won't be distracted by a lot of things going on around you.

When you've found that place of comfort,

Let your eyes soften and you can definitely close your eyes if you'd like to.

But feel that the energy of your eyes is not reaching out,

You're not looking at anything,

You're letting your eyes relax back into your skull.

And if you need to make some faces and stretch your face around in order to relax it,

Go ahead and do that.

So you might open your mouth really wide or scrunch your face up really tight and eventually feel that the skin of your face is soft,

That there's no mask that you're wearing.

You can have your lips parted,

Eyes soft,

Jaw relaxed,

And then begin to bring attention to your breath.

And as you breathe you don't need to do anything in particular other than notice it.

We're breathing all the time,

It's the thing that we need to live,

First thing.

As you welcome your breath in,

Just notice that you're breathing in,

And then you're breathing out.

As you welcome your breath in,

Just notice how it moves into your body.

And of course when you breathe,

You're bringing oxygen into your body.

Every cell in your body needs oxygen to do its job.

Taking a really deep breath or gulp of air isn't necessarily a better breath than taking a slower or maybe not as as deep a breath.

But as you breathe,

What I'd like you to notice is where your breath kind of naturally enters and resides.

Do you breathe into your chest,

Into your belly,

Into your back?

And if you use your hands now to feel the shape of your ribs and run your hands all the way around their circumference,

Feel how they descend further down your back and kind of lift higher and are more rounded forwards in the front,

You can get a pretty good idea of the shape of your lungs.

That's what the ribs are there for,

To protect them.

And you might be surprised or curious to feel how far down your torso your ribs go and to remember that the base of your lungs goes that far down as well,

That your ribs and lungs also reach into your back body,

And that the top of your lungs comes up even underneath your back.

And that the top of your lungs comes up even underneath your collarbones,

So they're pretty big organs.

And the inside of the lungs is kind of a spongy tissue with a lot of different kind of branches or pathways where the air comes in.

And one of the images that I appreciate for my own breath is feeling the breath seep in.

So rather than gulping the breath,

Can you invite it in to move slowly into all of the spaces that we just explored and the tissues of your lungs?

You can invite a gentle breath,

And it's like a caress.

This is the quality.

So of course you have two lungs,

The left and the right.

And now let's see if we can just bring our attention and awareness into each of them.

So as you inhale,

You can feel the left lung expanding.

And as you exhale,

You can feel the left lung condensing.

And then as you inhale,

You can feel your right lung expand.

And as you exhale,

You can feel it condense.

And move your awareness between the two sides just with every breath.

And you might notice that there are asymmetries in your organs as well,

That there's one side where it feels maybe a little easier to breathe,

Or another side where you can easily move your breath into some space that feels mysterious on the previous side.

When you find these asymmetries,

The best response is curiosity.

You can let that curiosity spread into your structure.

Maybe notice how the asymmetry extends into other tissues.

And please don't judge it.

Symmetry is a myth as well as it is overrated.

And none of our bodies are the same right to left.

So just noticing what that means and how it feels.

And now let's bring our meditation into our noses as well.

So when you inhale through your left nostril,

Track the movement of your breath down into your left lung.

And then when you exhale through your left nostril,

Track the movement of your lung through your trachea,

Through your throat,

And out your left nostril.

And the same on the right side.

So ideally you're breathing through your nose to do this.

And if you can't,

You can kind of imagine how the breath can travel down through your trachea.

That's your windpipe.

And maybe you've seen pictures of lungs,

But your trachea descends about to the level of your solar plexus,

And there it branches out into two trees.

And one tree is the left lung and one tree is the right lung.

And so you might just imagine this movement through the left and the right sides of your face down into your lungs if it's not possible to breathe through your nose today.

And if it is possible to breathe through your nose,

Then you're simply tracking sensation.

You're bringing your attention to the collecting of the inhale and the dissemination of the exhale,

The releasing,

The gathering,

And you're feeling the pathway that moves from the external to the internal and the internal to the external.

And as we do this back and forth between left and right,

You might just notice how you're starting to feel in an energetic sense.

And balance is a word that we often apply to our own health,

Whether that's mental,

Physical,

Or emotional.

We seek balance,

And this makes sense,

Of course.

Extreme states,

Even when they're really fun and pleasurable,

Are not sustainable.

So as you practice balance in your body,

You might also notice that imbalances in your emotional,

Mental,

Physical states,

If you are experiencing them,

Might be responding to this breath.

And sometimes the response isn't balance,

Just to say that,

You know,

That if we're doing something and it's very different to what we normally do,

There can be a little bit of a getting to know you period in our bodies.

And if you're having a response to this breath and it feels like anxiety,

Then my suggestion is to let it go and just revisit every couple of breaths,

This awareness between left and right,

And then just let it go and go back to your normal breath.

You don't need to do anything at all.

And then bring it in again.

And once again,

There is no need to breathe in a certain way.

You don't need to count.

You don't need to measure.

You don't need to fill your lungs to its absolute capacity.

You're just tracking left to right,

Internal to external.

So let's take maybe another couple of breaths like this.

So now let's continue.

And we're going to bring this breathing pattern into the entire side of the body.

And so this is an imaginative exercise as you inhale through your left nostril or left side of your face and you feel the traveling down into your left lung.

Imagine that that breath can move downwards into your torso,

Into the left pelvic half,

And all the way through your leg,

Knee,

Ankle,

And toes.

And as you exhale,

There's a collection of whatever the exhale is.

It dispels toxins out of your body and it collects from the toes all the way up the leg through the lung,

Torso,

Etc.

And out your nose.

And the same with the right side.

So as you inhale,

You're feeling the movement of actual breath into your lungs and then the spreading of the movement of breath,

Not the inhale itself,

But the movement of it from your right lung into the surrounding tissues and with your imagination,

Following that breath through your leg and all the way down to your toes.

And of course,

With the exhale that there's a collection of energy and a releasing from that side of your body.

So as you continue now at your own pace with your own breath,

Gathering up the air from the left side of your body,

Feeling it move through your skull,

Through your throat,

Maybe even down into your arm and your hands,

Into your lungs,

Into your pelvic half,

Into your leg.

And then the collecting of the exhale,

The condensing through the tissues,

Toes,

Fingers,

Leg,

Arm,

Torso,

Neck,

Face,

And out.

And with the inhale,

There's an invitation to fill and expand the inner body to bring in nourishment from your breath.

And with the exhale,

There's an invitation to condense and contract the inner body.

And in the condensing,

There's kind of a squeezing out and the exhale,

Of course,

Moves waste products or byproducts of your energy production back out into the atmosphere.

And so the exhale breath is cleansing and the inhale breath is nourishing.

And you can imagine that quality coming into your breath as well.

So inhaling into one side of your body,

You can feel like a bath running through your inner body all the way through that side and exhaling from the side of your body.

You can feel a kind of cleansing,

A releasing.

And as you release,

Know that the byproducts of your energetic production are the ones that are necessary for the flora of our planet.

So our tree and plant friends live off of our exhales as we do with theirs.

And the symbiotic relationship is a beautiful,

Harmonious relationship and it's one that we need.

And so as you exhale,

It's with gratitude.

And though you might be exhaling also your stress or any kinds of negative feelings,

That is something that is,

You know,

Your human experience.

And so if you can just imagine it leaving you on the exhale and just feel how it turns to neutral as it enters the space around you,

It leaves your body and then it's neutral.

And then the last little place that I want to bring in in this left right breathing are your kidneys and adrenal glands.

And to find where these organs are,

You'll want to feel your lower ribs and find the space that you want to feel.

And so you can feel the space that you want to feel.

And so you can feel the space that you want to feel.

And so if you're where these organs are,

You'll want to feel your lower ribs and find the kind of cusp of your lowest rib and follow it all the way back to your spine.

And your low ribs,

For most people,

Just rest a couple of inches off the top of the back of their pelvis.

And so they descend quite low.

And just inside the lowest ribs towards the spine,

You can press your fingers into that hip.

And this is about the height of your kidneys.

They're a little higher than the belly button.

And there are two of them,

So one on the left,

One on the right.

The adrenal glands sit on top of your kidneys.

And glands,

Of course,

Are part of the endocrine system.

So the kidneys are organs and they are part of your detoxification network.

And they are one of the organs that help filter your blood.

And they,

Well,

We'll leave that anatomy lesson for another time.

They're part of your detox system.

And on top of them rest the adrenal glands.

And the glandular system is made of kind of bodies or groups of differentiated cells that have something that they secrete.

And so these cells produce hormone.

And your adrenal glands are really important glands.

And there's two,

The left and the right.

And in each adrenal gland,

There's two parts.

There's the outer part and the inner part.

And the outer part produces hormones that you need to live.

These hormones are responsible for your basic metabolism and your energy,

How you convert sugar into energy for your life.

The inner part of the adrenals produce adrenaline.

And this isn't necessary for you to live.

But it is necessary for you to respond to your environment.

And everybody knows adrenaline,

It's the drug that makes you feel,

Can make you feel pretty crazy.

It produces the fight or flight response.

And so it'll send a surge of energy into your body and tell you to go.

So it's at this place in our body where stress and tension don't necessarily originate there.

But they collect,

These feelings collect in this place in our bodies.

And whether or not your hands are still there,

If you just kind of let your attention reside here,

Many,

Many people use this part of their body to propel them forward when things are fatiguing,

Tiring,

And stressful.

And you might know how in your body you can kind of clench or tighten around this space and it would make your chest move forwards and up and kind of lift your head.

And it produces a kind of the military style posture,

This like upright puffed up chest and a really tight back.

Similarly,

If you're in a state of a lot of depletion,

You're very fatigued,

You're in a state of depletion,

You're very fatigued.

This is the hinge place in the body where we begin to slump.

And so if we're feeling fatigue and depletion,

Holding ourselves up in this space can often become hard or challenging.

And so many of us go back and forth between these two states of tension and inertia.

Particularly if you're someone like many,

Many,

Many people are overworked and overstressed,

You might be very familiar with these feelings.

So now as you breathe,

What I'd like you to do is really direct your breath,

Whatever side you're breathing on,

So through your face,

Through your throat,

Through your lung,

And then into your kidney and adrenal,

And let the movement move downwards as you inhale.

So there's a resting down of the kidney of the adrenal.

And then as you exhale,

You can continue to relax this area of your body.

So I don't want you to tense it or move it upwards.

And the feeling here that I want to promote is a releasing in the adrenal area towards the legs.

And in this releasing,

You might feel kind of a flood of energy from your upper body descend into the lower body.

And if that's not something you're feeling now,

What I'd like to invite you to do is remember this technique for the next time you're feeling stressed and anxious,

And you might feel it then.

So when we become stressed,

When we have anxiety,

The sensation often moves up into our heads,

Right?

We become less grounded,

More fearful.

We've got a lot of thoughts that are going on.

We tend to get more quick,

Shallow breathing,

And we go into fight or flight modes.

We're like,

What?

I got to do something.

And the lower body from kind of the kidneys down is where all of your digestive organs are,

Of course.

And when we're inhabiting,

Occupying this part of the body,

We are more relaxed.

And then,

Of course,

The pelvis and the legs connect us to the earth.

And so what I want to visualize here is kind of a flow like rivers run down from mountains into the sea.

And as you're inhaling,

You're inhaling at the top of the mountain in your breath.

And this is just a movement that travels through your body and winds its way through,

Finds its way through into your lower body and cleanses your kidneys and adrenals as it does.

And then as you exhale,

You can allow the dissipation of the exhale to travel out of all directions.

Okay,

So we're going to come back to this in just one moment.

For now,

Just pause what you're doing and take an internal glance into your body and notice what sensations are present,

How you're feeling.

We've just done about 20 minutes of left-right observation.

And you might really at this point feel the left and the right sides as almost even separate entities.

So the left and the right,

We hear this language all the time in our world.

Left side,

Right side.

In our bodies,

We have similar experiences.

One side was dominant,

One side is more receptive and intuitive.

In the left and the right sides,

You'll find lots of asymmetries and some of them are structural.

So your heart and your liver are on the left side,

Which means your left lung is a little smaller and that brings the kidney on that side just a little higher than on the right side.

You probably have structural differences.

Most people have at least a trace of scoliosis and as you're breathing,

You might have really discovered some of these asymmetries and be feeling them right now.

So let's just take a moment to feel the left and the right sides and to feel their,

I don't know,

Different characters or different identities.

How do you notice them right now?

Where the left and the right sides meet is called your midline and this is your vertical axis.

So the line that travels from the earth into the sky and the midline is called the midline.

So the line that travels from the earth into the sky and that axis could continue infinitely.

You can feel how your left and right sides now can begin to come together and strengthen,

Potentially elongate that axis.

And from your vertical axis,

You can imagine the root of your body descending right into the core of earth and you can imagine your crown ascending into the core of heaven.

And now we'll begin to work to integrate the left and the right sides to bring them into balance with each other and to help their energy infuse and support one another.

So the technique that I'm offering now,

You might have heard it called alternate nostril breathing.

This is a technique that's used a lot in yoga and yoga classes and it's been shown to have a really calming effect on the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is one of the cranial nerves.

Cranial nerves are the nerves you absolutely need to live.

They innervate your vital functions,

Your organs.

And what the vagus nerve does is it moderates between sympathetic and parasympathetic states.

Sympathetic is being awake,

Ready to take action,

Focused,

And parasympathetic is being relaxed,

Maybe even being asleep,

Not needing to take action and it's when your organs are actually,

They're the ones that work.

So the parasympathetic is your organ system and when we're relaxed that's when they get to do all their best work.

So we really need the balance of both.

We need enough time in the rest and digest state if we're going to be alert,

Present,

And also reasonable.

You know what it feels like to be overtired and stressed out and your capacity for reasoning really goes out the window when that happens for everyone.

Okay so we'll work to bring balance into these two sides.

Again I'm going to cue the nostrils and again if this isn't possible for you to feel breath in your nose then you just imagine it coming in to your face and you can kind of track the sensation of your breath through the left or the right sides of your throat.

Okay so we'll begin by taking a full exhale and we'll just do one side at a time first.

So let's just inhale on the right side,

Feel the whole right side on the inhale,

And then exhale to the left side.

And then when you inhale on the left side,

Feel your left nostril and your left body filling.

And then when you exhale,

Bring your attention over to the right side.

So feel the exhale pass out of your right nostril and feel the right half of your body emptying.

And let's do another few rounds like that.

So you inhale on the right side and the whole right side body is receiving the inhale,

That kidney space is receiving the inhale.

And then at the top of your breath switch your attention over to the left and exhale and feel the left side of your body condensing and dissipating and relaxing.

And then we'll inhale on the left side and you can feel your left nostril taking the breath in,

The left kidney and adrenal receives the breath,

It relaxes downwards and moves the flow into your foot.

And then as you exhale,

Bring your exhale switching over to the right,

Feeling the exhale release through the right nostril,

Through the right side body.

So let's continue like this for a while and you're always switching at the top of the inhale.

So you'll do an exhale then an inhale on one side and at the top of the inhale you'll switch to the other side.

And as you breathe in this way side to side,

You're invigorating and stimulating the kind of contralateral responses in your body.

This is the relationship of like your right arm to your left leg basically and you're supporting the flow of information between the left and the right hemispheres of your brain.

And as I said you're also supporting and stimulating the vagus nerve.

And the effect of this breath for many people at many times is really deep balance,

The feeling of internal balance.

And once again if this breath is causing any kind of anxiety for you then simply just pause,

Go back to your normal breathing,

No effort,

And then when you're ready just do a round or two or three.

The purpose of pranayama,

And pranayama is a Sanskrit word,

Prana means breath,

And yama is an ethic.

It's a way to practice responsibility and right relationship.

So we practice responsibility and right relationship with our breath and we learn how the breath really is one with the mind and with the emotional and energetic state.

So in this breathing we want to honor the needs of the breath and notice how the breath affects the emotional and energetic state.

If it brings up anxiety that's not the point.

And there is definitely a learning curve or a getting accustomed to a more directed breath.

And so again no judgment if you need to just take a pause every couple of breaths that's great.

Okay so we'll take a few more rounds again just inhaling on one side and at the top of the inhale switching and exhaling and imagining the other side just flow out and down.

And then inhaling on that same side and then switching sides and exhaling and imagining the exhale travel all the way through the side of that body flowing out and down.

And whenever you're ready and there's absolutely no rush but the next time you exhale out the right side just let that be the natural ending of this inquiry and let your attention move back into both nostrils and both sides.

And then just see how you feel and compare it with how you felt about a few moments ago when we had just been doing back and forth.

So for me I feel a much stronger awareness and anchoring in my center at the midline and I also feel that the two sides of my body have become like down pillows or something.

They're fluffy and kind of expanded around me.

So to kind of finish up this meditation let's bring our attention once again to the kidneys and the adrenals and now just let this part of your body find its own balance.

So feel that this part of you is not pushing forwards and collapsing back and there's a quality of releasing from this part of your of your body towards the pelvis.

That doesn't necessarily mean towards the back it's more of a draining down.

And when I can do this,

When I'm conscious of it,

I feel a lot of release all the way up the sides of my spine and into the base of my skull and actually that's where your kidneys first grew.

When you were a little embryo they started growing right up at the base of your skull so there's relationship in any bilateral organ,

Kidneys,

Lungs,

Ovaries to the two sides of your body.

To conclude our practice let's feel out from the lungs.

You can take an inhale and feel your inhale spread out into your left and your right arms.

Then go ahead and place your palms together to touch and if making a gesture,

You can feel your palms spread out into your left and your right arms.

Then go ahead and place your palms together to touch and if making a gesture of prayer feels good to you,

You can do that or you can simply just hold the hands together on your lap or something.

Feel how the left and the right sides come together,

How they meet at the center.

Let that gesture remind you of the simplicity and the clarity of your own center and your own vertical axis,

Your relationship to heaven and earth.

Then let's end today with a very simple prayer which is that we each as individuals and our immediate communities,

Friends,

Families,

Extended communities,

Neighbors,

Cities,

Towns,

And broader communities in the world and particularly all of our families,

And particularly all of our leaders and people with positions of power and influence are able to find internal balance,

Are able to self-soothe and pull themselves away from overwork,

Stress,

Reactivity,

Are able to rest deeply inside of themselves and feel a state of peace,

And are filled with the desire to extend peace to all beings.

Thank you so much for practicing with me today.

Once again,

If these meditations are helpful for you,

Please share them.

And until the next time,

Much love.

Bye for now.

Reviews

❤️

When I meditate my hands and feet are heavy what does it mean? I feel totally relaxed thankyou for your meditation Rita.