Running Meditation

This is a guided meditation to help you learn how to run (and walk and stand) more efficiently and effectively. Unlike other fitness instruction, I use a meditative approach to build body awareness, which can lead to joyful, resilient movement patterns. I'll guide you through a grounding meditation, breath awareness, embodiment of gravitational force through your skeleton, and neuromuscular sequencing that helps you work with weight and force to minimize impact and increase buoyancy.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by René Sills,

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 René 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 there.

This is René.

Thanks for joining me for this meditation.

Today's meditation is going to focus on the area of the body that connects the legs and the torso,

Your hips,

Your pelvis,

Your hip joints.

With this exploration,

We're really going to be trying to tap into the part of ourselves that is still animal,

That is still knows what it is to be connected to the earth and instinctual.

That energy is something that we feel if we're running,

Especially if you're running over uneven terrain like trail running or hiking or trying to balance on something.

This particular meditation is an offering for those of you who are curious about a somatic approach to running to use it while you go and take a run.

I'm going to be doing the meditation standing because it would be hard for me to do it running.

You can also take a walk.

You can stand with me.

You can sit.

You can lie down.

You can dance.

This is a meditation for you to explore your body in whatever way is best for you in this moment.

We'll begin.

Wherever you are,

Let your eyes soften back into your skull.

If it's convenient for you to close your eyes and close your eyes,

If you're moving around in space,

Keep them open,

But let your eyeballs recede back into your head and feel that the corners of your eyes,

The inner corners and the outer corners,

Get a little more wide,

A little more soft.

Notice your peripheral vision.

There's no need to really focus on anything hard.

You want to let your eyes be soft and in that feel that your brain relaxes.

Feel your breath.

Start to take deep inhales through your nose and exhales out your mouth.

As you inhale,

Let the touch of your breath move up through your nose and into your sinuses.

Maybe you can even trace it back into your skull.

Feel the way that your breath spreads into your lungs.

As you exhale and sigh out your mouth,

Relax your jaw and tongue and relax your whole body.

If your body is in motion,

Then feel the way that in the exhale,

You give yourself to gravity.

You feel the exhale as something that delivers the weight of your body into the earth or into the ground.

We'll just start our meditation like this,

Keeping the eyes soft and relaxed,

Feeling that your brain can go from more of the thinking,

Doing space into the listening,

Receiving,

Sensing space.

Honoring your breath by paying attention to it,

Letting the sensations wash in and out.

Letting the quality of the inhale fill your body.

Letting the quality of the exhale release any tension that you're carrying.

As you breathe,

Remembering your intrinsic connection to life,

That the breath that you inhale is the exhale from the plants,

That as you exhale,

You create their inhale.

Giving thanks to the incredible and magical ecology,

The environment,

This system that we live in.

Often,

When I start meditation,

I begin with,

It's not always a prayer.

I don't always really put language around it,

But it's an intention that this experience that we're now having,

We'll have together,

Is in service to what is good in life,

Is in service to balance.

May this experience be brilliant and effective.

May it move past the blocks that we've created to our happiness and our well-being through fear,

Through resistance,

Through hatred.

May it surround all of our parts,

Our tissues,

Our bones,

Our skin,

Our hearts,

Our minds,

Our beings with love,

With acceptance,

With integration.

May we notice how easy it is to connect and may we remember.

Putting that intention into your being and letting your being get a little bigger,

A little broader,

A little more receptive to your environment,

Wherever you are,

In a building,

In a city,

In nature,

With other people around,

Alone.

Can you let your beingness move out and touch the structures that are near you,

Touch the space that's near you?

And can you feel the way that you're held in that space?

And then if it's appropriate,

If it's something that you find easy to do right now,

You can bring your hands to your low belly at either side,

The left and right,

Below your belly button,

Above your pelvis,

Just to the inside of your hip bones.

And if you're walking or moving now,

You might be able to feel,

If you're standing or sitting,

Actually,

Any way that your torso is upright,

You might be able to feel how your base is connecting to your trunk here.

And if you're moving,

You can shift your weight a little bit side to side,

Excuse me,

If you're standing,

You can shift your weight a little bit side to side.

If you're walking or running,

You're doing that anyway.

And just feel as you shift your weight one side and the other,

That there is left and right.

And these two sides come together,

The midline and your center.

If you're walking or running,

Feel that that center line is your directional guide.

So you're moving from your center and the left and the right sides hug in towards that center.

And if you're standing or sitting,

There's a little bit more subtle hugging in,

A little quieter.

If you're lying down,

You can feel this too.

Your hip joints are deep.

They're very deep joints,

They're ball and socket joints.

So your thigh bones,

Which are the longest bones in your body,

Kind of come up from your knees and then the top of the thigh bones,

Which are called your femurs,

Slant in diagonally from the medial,

Which is the,

Or excuse me,

From the lateral,

So either side to the medial.

And in that movement and that slanting up and inwards,

There's a simultaneous collecting from the lower body,

From the legs into the spine and ascending upwards to the head.

At the same time,

There's a releasing or a pouring of the spine energy down into the two legs,

Cascading down through the thighs,

Through the knees,

Shins,

And into the heels and feet.

So if you're moving your body in such a way right now that you can feel the way that your hip joints support your spine,

This is the place to pay attention to.

Noticing how the left and the right sides both feed into the center line and the center line is supported and turned in the base of the right and the left sides.

And as you move,

I just want you to notice if there is difference between the two sides,

There probably is.

And in that difference,

Paying attention to sensations of tightness,

Sensations of constriction.

Maybe there's one side that feels a little bit more inhibited than the other or one side that feels a little less protected or supported.

Maybe you notice that there is also a difference between front and back.

So many of us have kind of a turn to our pelvis and there's more force that we might feel in the front of one hip or in the back of the other.

And again,

If you're moving,

You can also take your hands back and find your sacral iliac joints.

And this is a part of your body where your hip bones meet the base of your spine.

So where your ilia,

Those are the hip bones,

Meet the sacrum,

The base of your spine.

And there's movement here too in these joints.

There's not a lot,

But there's a bit.

From your inner body,

You might feel more than with your hands,

But just to give a locational sense through touching,

Sometimes a good idea.

So what I want you just to notice right now is the way that you feel left to right,

Right to left in relationship to the center.

And don't do anything to change it just yet.

Just notice.

So as you're walking or running or dancing or sitting,

Feel the way that your right leg and your left leg feed up into your spine and notice the transition.

Notice the connecting or the communication point between the leg and the spine and notice how one side feels in comparison to the other at that translation point,

At your hip,

At your SI.

All right.

So now what I want you to do is find your belly button.

So again,

If it's easy to just palpate a little bit,

Feel where your belly button is and then draw a line from your belly button to the corresponding place at your back.

And when you get to that place,

You're just at the top of your lumbar spine and you're probably right at your lower ribs.

And this is actually the place where your leg strength you can think of as beginning.

And I want you to feel this corresponding place at your back body,

So the back of the navel to the right and the left sides of your spine.

And now reach all the way down from this place into your feet.

And as you reach into your feet,

Feel that that reach can travel through the inner and the outer hips,

Through the front and the back,

Through the inner and the outer knees,

Through the shaft of your shin bones,

Into your ankles,

Into your heels,

And then forwards through all your toe bones into the tips of your toes.

And if you're walking or running,

Then feel that reach even moving out of your toes as you push off in your gait,

So as the back foot is leaving the ground.

And that connecting point from your navel or waist area moves past the tips of your toes and it leaves a trail behind them.

That's the image.

So we'll work with that for a couple of minutes here and I just want you to keep playing with that.

If you're familiar with muscles,

What I'm kind of getting at a little bit is the iliopsoas,

Muscular chain and muscular strength.

And this is an important combination of muscles that literally connects your legs to your spine.

And it starts right here at the back of your belly button.

So the energy is moving from your spine all the way out through the tips of your toes.

Now,

As you feel that,

Notice again,

Is there a difference between the left and the right sides?

And this awareness might have changed what you feel there in that difference.

It might have shifted it a little bit,

It might have made something very different happen.

Maybe it's done nothing at all,

But I just want you to continue to really think about reaching out,

About extending from this central part of your body all the way out through the tips of your toes.

And if you're standing,

Then that is still the case that you're reaching through the floor.

The soles of your feet are growing tendrils of roots down through the floor and into the earth and continuing to spread and sink.

And you might notice that the upper part of your body has a different experience here as well when you're really reaching out through the lower part of your body.

So walking,

Running,

Dancing people,

Feel that you can push the floor away,

That you can push the earth away.

And it's like,

If you're running or walking,

It's almost as if you were making the treadmill happen that you're taking a step forwards and then you're grabbing the floor,

Grabbing the earth and pushing it back behind you.

That's the feeling now,

This extension of the leg.

So we'll continue with that.

And now we'll come into the midline again.

And again,

If it's comfortable and you might need to slow down your pace a little bit to do this,

I want you to feel now your sacrum in the front of your pelvis.

So you would be sensing the central portion of your pelvis.

And I want you to imagine here the kind of the cylindrical shape of your pelvic floor that moves up into the pelvis and the lower abdomen.

And for female people,

You can almost feel it as like the vaginal cavity.

For male body people,

I don't know what you feel.

I can imagine it,

But it's like it's the central portion of your pelvis.

It's in between the muscular walls of the pelvis.

It's not the organs.

It's just the space there.

And what I want you to feel now is from the inner body that there is a collecting from the bowl of your pelvis around this central cylinder and that that central cylinder is underneath your torso and it's over the tops of your legs and it's not hanging back in space and it's also not thrusting too far forwards,

But it's really just underneath you.

It's underneath your chest.

It's supporting you to be upright and really carried in your torso.

And now you can keep that and find your pace again if you're moving and combine that with this left and the right side of the reaching down from the waist all the way energetically into the space beyond your toes and from the two sides of the pelvis simultaneously gathering in to support this central cylinder and moving the central cylinder forwards.

And it's almost like,

You know,

It's not crunching the pelvis forwards,

But it's almost as if this part of the body is leading you and your legs are just keeping up.

They're just kind of carrying you forwards,

But this is the base of your spine and it's moving your body forwards and then your powerful strong legs are one at a time reaching into the earth and grabbing it and pulling it back,

Pulling it back behind you.

There's an idea in yoga called bandhas and the bandhas are their diaphragms and we have a mula bandha which correlates to the mula dhara chakra which is the base of the spine,

The base of the torso.

And this bandha is a gathering inwards and upwards of the pelvic floor and it's not a gripping,

It's not squeezing the pelvic floor muscles,

But it's a feeling that energetically we're supported from this root of our body,

From this seed point.

And it's described as being at the very center of the perineum.

And this is the central tendon between your sitz bones.

So again we're thinking of the sitz bones are kind of the base of your pelvis,

Your hip bones come in kind of right in front of them and there's a gathering in of the left and the right sides towards the midline and a gentle lifting in and up in that cylindrical space of the pelvis.

So there's this upward gathering feeling that moves up along your spine and into your torso and head and at the same time there's a downward flow that's got a lot of force to it from the waist,

Navel area,

Either side of your spine all the way down past your toes.

You want to try and find both at once as you move.

Okay,

So now let's feel how the upper body is,

The upper body is moving.

And again if you're sitting or lying down you just take these words and integrate them into your being in whatever way feels congruent for you.

The body is always moving,

There are always cells moving,

There's always blood moving,

As long as you're alive you're in movement.

So if what I'm describing in terms of motion isn't the exact motion that you're doing,

Let it come into you in whatever way serves you.

So we're contralateral beings,

We've learned to walk upright and this means that as one foot moves forwards in the walking or running pattern then the other arm moves forwards.

And I want you just to feel that now.

And lying down or sitting people make the connection between the left side of the upper body and the right leg and the left leg and the right upper side of the body.

And I want you to feel how the upper body and the lower body are,

They meet at this place near the navel,

So that's kind of our horizon line.

And feel the way that the circumference of your ribs can turn a little bit.

So as the right leg moves forwards there's a wash from the back of the spine into the left ribs and arm.

And as the left leg moves forwards there's a wash from the back of the spine into the right ribs and arm.

And when I say wash I mean that we feel the back body,

We feel the circumference in the back ribs and lungs.

And it carries the arm forwards.

And now can you bring everything together again?

So as you feel this back side of your upper body moving through your arms,

Connecting the upper body contralaterally down through the navel point,

Through that long reach from the side of the spine all the way down beyond the toes on the opposite side.

And then the buoyancy of the two legs where they come together,

Gathering in,

Gathering up,

Lifting the length of your spine,

Your torso and your head upright.

So as the ribs move the spine and the head actually stay upright.

They stay in their vertical column.

And we feel that there's a little tiny bit of,

It's not even a twist,

It's just a spreading of the back body.

It's a little bit of movement in the ribs,

It's movement in the arms.

If you're walking or running here I'm going to invite you to move your arms faster and notice how that affects your legs,

How that affects your pace.

And you might feel like,

Wow,

My legs and arms are so connected.

What the arms do when the arms move faster makes the legs move faster.

That movement in the upper body travels down into the lower body.

And always coming back to the downward flow and the upward flow,

That the gathering together in the center of the pelvic floor comes up into the spine,

Lifts through the torso,

Lifts through the central axis into the head.

And you feel your breath filling the space of your lungs.

And I like to think of the inhale here pouring down,

Down into the spine,

Down into the legs,

Down into the earth.

And the exhale is the rebound,

The force of gravity that comes up into the body that moves through the limbs into the spine,

Out the breath.

If you're exerting yourself then feel the rhythmic quality of your breath,

Whether or not you're exerting yourself I should say,

Feel the rhythmic quality of your breath.

If you're lying down you might try kind of walking with your feet anyway and doing like half heel rocks.

So one foot points forwards as the other foot draws back.

And noticing how that movement just shifts your pelvis.

Feeling the way that it moves up into your ribs,

Up into your spine,

Into your head,

From your ribs into your shoulders and hands.

It's just the connectivity of the body.

So last minute or so with this awareness I'm going to talk through it all again.

So as one foot meets the earth you feel the rebound of the earth,

The force of the earth coming up into that leg.

And it comes up into the hip joint and into the spine and then up all the way into your head.

And I want you to feel the force of that impact as fortifying,

As something to take into your body and grow taller with.

And the right and the left sides rhythmically hugging into the center.

And the center being supported at its base at the seed point of the pelvic floor and the cylindrical space of the pelvic floor kind of holding steady as the two legs move.

But their strength gathering in to hold it.

You might even imagine a continuous cylinder up along your spine,

Hugging your spine from all sides.

And as the force of your feet and your legs grows up through your body,

Out the top of your head,

There's the effort and the reach and the intention from your left and your right sides,

Either side of your belly button that travels down through your legs and out through your toes and extends beyond your feet.

And those of you that are walking and running,

You're moving the earth back behind you.

You're grabbing it with your feet and then shoving it back,

Moving it back.

This is the way that we move forwards.

You feel that that central line,

The base of the pelvis all the way up through the axis of the spine is leading you forwards and that the legs are there carrying you.

Feel the way that your breath spills into your back body and fills your back lungs and ribs.

And as you breathe,

Feel the broadness of your ribs spread into the shoulder wings,

Into your arms and feel the back body carrying the arms forwards and the arms reaching through the tips of the fingers.

And it's almost like you're then grabbing a handful of air and pulling it back.

And that movement of your arms turning a little bit through your rib basket,

Collecting in the navel center and conjoining with the force of your legs,

With the strength of your legs,

With that rebound force that brings the strength of the earth up into you.

The inhaling breath,

Drawing air into your lungs,

Sending it down through the column of your spine.

And the exhaling breath remembering your central core,

That gentle lifting in and up at the cylinder of your pelvis.

So you can pause and continue from here as long as you want.

And if you're ready to be done,

Then slow your pace.

And you're going to slow it all the way down to a still point.

And then we'll finish in stillness.

And in stillness,

Once again,

You're going to feel that in the left and right sides of your back belly button,

There is a reaching and an extension down through the length of the legs,

Through the soles of the feet and into the earth.

That that extension downwards is supported by a movement upwards.

By reception through the soles of your feet,

You feel the buoyancy and resilience of your body responding to the body of the earth.

Even if you're standing on the 20th floor of the building and you're connecting to support that goes all the way down.

That support underneath your feet collects in at the hip joints and the pelvis moves up along the spine,

Gathering in as it does the cylinder of your pelvic floor,

The cylinder of your central axis all the way up where it blossoms out of the crown of your head.

You feel the inhale breath filling your back lungs,

Letting your shoulders soften around that breath.

You feel the exhale breath.

And in the exhale,

There is a movement that is both releasing the body into the earth,

Trusting that you're supported and condensing the buoyancy that's created at the end of the exhale as the pelvic floor draws in and up.

And then once more,

If it's all right,

Place your hands one on top of the other this time below your belly button.

And this is a place that's called Hara in the kind of Asian traditions that are similar to yoga,

But it's the PowerPoint or power place in the body where power originates.

Such an important place in our body where the way that we move and connect to the ground and the way that we knew how to run,

Know how to walk for miles and miles that our ancestors were nomads and travelers,

All of us.

Breathing into that point,

Feeling that there's a simultaneous rooting and ascending that happens throughout the entire body and that almost originates here.

And in whatever other ways you want to close your practice,

You can close your practice.

So as you move forwards into your life,

I hope you can apply this body awareness into your other activities.

It's really helpful and supportive if you need to stand or really do anything at all in an upright shape.

I always appreciate your feedback,

Even if I don't respond to it.

If things help you or if you feel confused or want to give me feedback in any way,

Please feel free to reach out.

And I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks so much.

And I hope this has been helpful for you.

And until the next time.

Reviews

I have been searching for a way to connect my exersize with presence and awareness, and this was the most helpful guided meditation I have found. The connection between the arms and the opposite legs was a real breakthrough for me! Thank you... I will revisit this practice for sure.

Helping me to walk again....gad got some bad habits . Thank you

This was a wonderful way to bring inner price and awareness among others in my typical rec center setting. I appreciated the many practices: both interpreted as biological and spiritual. Thank you!

Really interesting! Definitely will listen again to get the next level of detail down.

Fantastic. I have been running a while, but this was a new experience, which I really enjoyed

Wow! Amazing! I will have to listen many times as there are many aspects to observe all at once. Thank you very much!

EXCEPTIONAL! A huge favorite of mine. I have been practicing this while getting back in shape for a 1/2 marathon. It’s good stuff. I am grateful to have found this one! Thank you and blessings! 🙏❤️💫✨✨✨🏃🏻

Just re-startend running
Realy helpfull to align the mind and body to running again. And feeling conciously How the body moves

Listened while running a marathon that feels really hard. I loved it!

It's very good, but I wish you could make one that is just for people who are running. Thank you!!

Great!

Really a helpful visualization. Thank you.

So powerful and healing—incredibly grounding

A unique way to connect mind and body through mindful movement! Thank you!

New to meditation, getting back into running, this made me feel so different than I have in the past while running. Thank you.

First time in meditation during run. I had an awareness and presence like never before. Thank you.

Wow. I’ve been doing running meditation for years. And, I’ve never heard a guided meditation that was this tailored to the experience. This was fantastic! I’ll be coming back to this quite a bit for sure.

Thanks for doing one for us runners. I know running meditation is kind of a minority activity. But, it’s the one that works the best for me. I’m used to adapting some other practice into a running practice. It’s great to find one that is actually a running practice!

Really helpful