Meditation To Activate Oxytocin

Oxytocin is sometimes referred to as the love hormone. It's released when we experience physical touch, give a compliment, or have positive social interactions. This is part of The Happy Chemicals Series that gets you naturally tapping into the hormones that boost your mood. If you're in need of an uplifting and heart-warming meditation, this is for you. It can help to reduce stress and balance your mood.

This guided meditation will help you connect with your body and visualise positive social interactions to help you produce oxytocin.

Transcript

Welcome into this meditation.

This is going to be a really soft,

Gentle and heart opening practice.

This is part of the Happy Chemicals series where we look at the neurotransmitters and hormones that we produce in our body,

Specifically the ones that naturally make us feel good and we look at ways that we can tap into that.

Today we're going to be focusing on oxytocin.

So oxytocin is sometimes called the love hormone.

It's the hormone that gets produced when we hug people,

When we have physical touch.

It can also be the hormone that gets produced when we're playing with a pet or animal.

It's when we spend time with children or people we love,

When we're hanging out with our friends.

It can also be giving compliments.

Basically it's the social hormone that's really important for us humans as social beings to allow ourselves to actually feel this.

And so if we're not getting enough of this,

It can affect our mood.

We're going to do a beautiful practice to tap into this.

So when you're ready,

Find a comfy position.

You can be laying down,

You can be sitting up.

You just get into a position that feels good for you.

Make it cozy though and make it really comfy.

Whilst you're finding that position,

Just a gentle note that if there's anything going on for you right now around loneliness or if you struggle with physical touch with people,

Be really gentle on yourself in this meditation if it brings anything up for you.

So once you've found that comfy position,

We're just going to start by settling the body,

Grounding down into the breath.

So can you just draw your attention inwards,

Perhaps closing your eyes or gazing down and beginning to tap into your breath.

Breathing in slowly through your nose,

Allowing your whole body to fill up.

And when you're ready,

Releasing your breath all the way out through the nose.

Deep breath in through your nose,

Deep breath out through your mouth.

Beautiful and again in through the nose,

Seeing if you can make it deep and slow.

Slowing everything down.

When you're ready,

Exhaling everything out through the mouth,

Letting go.

One more time,

Deep,

Deep,

Deep,

Deep breath in through the nose,

Seeing if you can go as slow as you can.

And when you get to the top of that breath,

Release everything out gently through the mouth,

Take your time to do so.

Staying connected with the breath and allowing it to find a natural rhythm,

Allowing it to be your anchor,

Your grounding point.

And we're going to start by surrounding the body in a beautiful soft pink aura.

So I want you,

If you can,

To just visualize a beautiful pink bubble of light surrounding the whole of your body.

This soft,

Angel,

Mother-like energy,

One that feels so soothing and so supportive.

The type of light and the type of energy that doesn't need anything from you,

Does not expect anything from you,

And just feels like unconditional love.

Feeling your heart open as this energy comes around you,

As you place yourself in this pink bubble.

So let's begin now to get that physical touch going and part of this practice.

And I invite you,

If you feel comfortable to,

To actually just start by giving yourself a big hug.

Now I know that might feel a little strange or you might feel even a bit silly doing it,

But I invite you to just see what this feels like.

Put one arm around another and just embrace yourself with your arms crossed over in a big embrace.

You might squeeze really,

Really tightly.

You might just embrace yourself in a really delicate way.

If that feels a bit uncomfortable,

Maybe just slightly stroke up and down your arms.

Or you might like to do both.

You might want to experience a big hug from yourself and then stroking up and down your arms.

Noticing what that feels like.

Recognizing that you actually are able to do that,

You're able to give yourself a hug,

You're able to embrace physical touch in this way from yourself.

And if anything right now is coming up for you around this,

Could be feeling weird or strange or even cringeworthy to hug yourself.

I want you to just notice that.

Notice how acceptable it can feel to give someone else a hug,

But how almost unacceptable it can feel to give ourselves a hug.

Why is that and why is it any different?

So I'm going to start to move into a visualization here and I invite you to allow your arms to fall to your side.

I'm going to start to move into a visualization here and I invite you to just allow your arms to fall to your side and then embrace yourself with your arms I invite you now to begin to visualize or rather recall a time in your life maybe recently where you've experienced the most beautiful social embrace from someone.

An embrace of a hug or physical touch or something that felt so good.

For me it's recalling my little nephew coming up to me and giving me a huge cuddle.

For you as well it could be a child,

It could be a dog,

A cat,

An animal,

It could be another adult in your life but see if you can pick someone that feels positive,

Somebody who you don't have a complicated relationship with and I want you to give yourself time to recall this and actually fill your whole body up with that energy,

That beautiful feeling of having someone cuddle you,

Have their arms around you,

Your arms around them or however they embraced you.

Enjoy that and fill your body up with that memory.

This feeling,

This experience right now is likely releasing oxytocin.

This is so important for our moods as humans because we are ultimately social beings,

Even the most introverted of people.

As you recall that noticing maybe how frequently you experience this,

If you would like to experience this more frequently or if actually you get to do this on a daily basis.

Perhaps beginning to allow that image to fade but just noticing any changes in your mood,

In your emotions or in your physical body.

What can that feeling and that insight tell you?

As you ground back down into your breath again,

Is there a realization of i could do spending more time just giving myself some gentle touch or embracing myself in a loving way?

Is it telling you that actually i could embrace people more in this way?

What are you needing personally?

Finally before we come out of this practice i want you to bring either the same person or someone else to mind and i want you to imagine giving this person whoever they are the most sincere and genuine compliment.

So whoever you've brought to mind,

A friend,

A family member,

A loved one,

A colleague,

Whoever it is,

I want you in your mind to look at them,

See something you love about them,

Something they are good at,

One of their qualities,

Something you just absolutely adore about them.

Imagine giving them that compliment and their face lighting up.

They feel so good hearing you say that and it makes them feel really special and seen and loved.

Take a little moment before we finish with feeding into that too.

Well done,

So when you're ready again grounding back into the breath allowing any images to fade.

Take your time to just start to become more aware of your surroundings bit by bit just bringing your body back.

In your own time start to blink your eyes open and if you'd like to now you could do a bit of journaling on what came up for you today.

I also invite you to check out the other three in this series for the happy chemicals.

Come over to my page and have a look as there's other meditations to get those happy chemicals going and i'll see you again in a meditation soon.

Reviews

Physical touch is my love language! I really needed this virtual hug! Thank you 🙏

Thank you Scarlett. This is an area that I've aware of for some time. I often feel CDS (cuddle deficiency syndrome).
This practice is helpful and goes well with the havening I've started doing.
Always appreciate your caring and generous heart. 🙏❤️