Embodying Self-Compassion

This meditation can help you begin to open to the possibility of being kind to yourself, even if at this moment, you feel like you don’t know how to. You’ll be guided in bringing awareness to your body as you tap into the power of willingness, and the power of words.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Leah Sagan Shinraku and this is a guided meditation for embodying self-compassion.

So I invite you to begin by finding a comfortable upright seated position or you can also try lying down if that might be better for you.

Just try to have your spine straight and find a place for your arms and hands where they can be at ease.

And once you've found a comfortable position,

Just close your eyes and start to notice your breath.

Notice the way that it's moving in and out.

Might be smooth,

It might be ragged.

There's no right way for it to be.

Just notice how it is.

And then keeping your attention there on your breath.

Try taking three full breaths,

Three full inhales and three full exhales.

And as you do,

Just let go of whatever it is you were doing before this meditation.

And let go of whatever you might have planned for after the meditation too.

Just let your breath ground you in this moment right now,

In this experience.

And then just let your breath do what it wants to do.

Let it move the way it wants to move.

And notice any sounds in the room that you're in.

Notice the temperature.

Just see if you hear anything in addition to the sound of my voice.

Maybe it's totally still or maybe you can hear people in another room or outside your window.

Wherever you are as you do this meditation,

Just notice who else is here?

What else is happening around?

And notice again what's happening inside.

You know we've worked with the breath,

You've noticed your breath.

Notice what else is happening inside.

Notice any thoughts,

Any feelings,

Emotions,

Sensations,

Any images,

Memories,

Anything at all.

And you might be feeling anxious,

You might be feeling calm.

You might be feeling tension somewhere in your body.

You might be feeling really relaxed.

You might be feeling irritable,

You might be feeling bored.

You might be feeling annoyed.

You might be feeling kinda happy.

And you might be feeling several feelings at a time or it might be really hard to know how you feel.

You could just notice that,

You know.

If it's hard to know how you feel,

Notice that.

And if there are any persistent thoughts,

Just notice them.

Notice how familiar they are.

And let them be.

And then I invite you to bring your attention more to the surface of your body and notice where you're making contact with the chair or the couch or the floor.

Whatever it is you're sitting or lying down on,

Notice where you're making contact.

See if you can feel where the chair,

The couch,

Or the floor meets your body.

And as you do,

See if you can let it register that right now whatever's happening,

Whatever's happening internally,

Whatever's happening externally,

You're actually being completely supported right now by that chair,

By the floor,

By the ground,

By the earth.

So everything that's happening inside of you,

Everything that's happening outside of you as well is completely allowed to be here as it is.

In this moment there's nothing that is asking you to be any different from how you actually are right now.

Right now every aspect of you is completely allowed,

Completely accepted right now.

And see if you can let that register.

See what happens when you kind of let those words wash over you.

See what kind of response comes up in your body.

Just notice what it is.

And now we're going to bring attention to three different parts of the body.

We're going to start with our bellies.

So I invite you to put your hands on your belly and let them rest there.

And just notice how you feel.

Notice how your belly feels with your hands resting on it and notice how your hands feel right there on your belly.

You might feel the warmth of your belly,

You might feel the warmth of your hands.

And this might be hard.

For a lot of people the belly is a hard body part to accept.

So you might have some feelings come up that are uncomfortable when you put your hands on your belly.

Just see if you can notice those.

They're completely okay,

They're completely allowed and you're not alone in feeling that way.

Or maybe when you put your hands on your belly you do feel a kind of warmth and you don't feel any challenging feelings about it.

That's fine,

That's great too.

Just let whatever is here be here.

And I'm going to speak a kind of mantra for each of these areas of the body that we're going to focus on.

And I invite you to repeat the mantra silently or out loud after me.

And then just give yourself some space to notice what happens,

You know,

After you say that mantra or after you hear me say the mantra.

What happens in your body?

What feelings come up?

Any sensations?

What goes on?

But before we do that I'd like to ask that we bring some gratitude to our bellies.

Because our bellies work really hard,

They digest everything we take in.

So just see if you can allow your whole body to kind of send gratitude to your belly.

And you can do that any way you want or you can not do it if it doesn't feel right to you.

But if you would like to,

I invite you to find your own way of sending gratitude to your belly.

It might be a kind of pulse of energy,

It might be a kind of sprinkling of energy,

It might be a bath.

Whatever feels right,

You get to do it your way.

It's your unique way of expressing gratitude for this part of yourself.

Now I'm going to say the mantra for the belly and I'm going to say it three times.

And all you need to do is just notice after you hear me speak or after you repeat,

Just notice what comes up in your body.

So the belly mantra is,

I'm willing to be here with all aspects of myself.

I'm willing to be here with all aspects of myself.

I'm willing to be here with all aspects of myself.

And as I said,

Just notice,

Just notice what comes up.

There's no right way to feel.

However you feel is okay.

This is all just an experiment.

Just to see what happens.

There's no right way to do it.

However you do it is the right way.

And now I invite you to bring your attention to your heart and you can bring your hands to your heart now as well.

And again just notice how it feels.

Notice how your heart feels with your hands resting on your chest above it.

And notice how your hands feel making this kind of contact with your heart.

And your heart works so hard.

I mean it's hard and it's effortless at the same time because it's always working.

There isn't a single moment that your heart isn't beating for you.

It has a kind of silent devotion right there in your chest.

Keeps you going.

So see if you can send another expression of gratitude from your whole body this time to your heart.

Find some way that feels right to you to say thank you.

To acknowledge all that your heart does for you.

And the mantra for the heart is I'm willing to be open to all aspects of myself.

I'm willing to be open to all aspects of myself.

I am willing to be open to all aspects of myself.

So notice what comes up and notice how you feel.

Memories,

Images,

Whatever comes up just notice.

Now we're going to bring our attention up to our heads.

And I invite you to put your hands on your head.

And if that's uncomfortable you can maybe drop your shoulders,

Drop your elbows.

See if you can find a place maybe on the base of your skull where you can touch your head and still feel comfortable in your arms.

And again just notice how you feel with your hands on your head.

Your hands making contact with your head.

For most of us our heads work really hard too.

Can seem like nonstop.

And they're trying often to solve problems and fix things and really underneath it all make us happy.

Not so often the things that we think about and the ways that our head works doesn't really do that,

Doesn't really make us happy.

But we can acknowledge the effort and we can acknowledge the things that our head does that do really support us.

So I invite you to find some way to just express gratitude for your head.

Allow your whole body to in some way say thank you.

Thank you for working so hard.

Thank you for trying to figure things out.

And thank you for sometimes doing that for many times figuring things out and helping me and helping others.

Thank you.

The mantra for the head is I'm willing to be aware of all aspects of myself.

I'm willing to be aware of all aspects of myself.

I'm willing to be aware of all aspects of myself.

So just notice what arises inside in the wake of those words.

And whatever it is just allow it,

Allow yourself to recognize it.

Sometimes it can be really hard to have space.

It can be really hard to believe that there's actually space for whatever you're feeling or whatever thoughts you're having and that's okay.

That's all right.

You can notice that.

Notice it doesn't really seem possible right now to allow myself to be aware of all parts of myself but doesn't seem possible.

If that's true for you that's fine.

Just notice it.

Notice that that's here.

And now you can,

If you haven't already,

You can bring your hands back to their at rest place either in your lap or at your sides and just notice your internal experience right now.

Notice how you feel now that we've brought attention to these different body areas,

Our bellies,

Our hearts and our heads.

The belly is kind of the seat of power in a way and then the heart,

The seat of love and compassion and then the head,

Seat of kind of awareness and vision.

And we've given attention to these three really important aspects of ourselves and given some space for whatever response our body has.

So just notice,

See if you can take a kind of weather report inside.

How are you feeling now?

You notice any shifts.

Just notice whatever,

Whatever there is,

Maybe there is more tension or less tension or more space or less space.

Whatever it is just notice.

That's all you need to do.

Curiosity is a really potent form of kindness.

True curiosity.

So now I invite you to bring your attention back again to the surface of your body and again notice where you're making contact with a chair or cushion or the floor,

The ground,

The earth and again notice that you're being supported.

There's no agenda.

This chair,

This cushion,

This floor,

They have no agenda for you.

They're just supporting you right now.

And you can let your attention start to come back more into the room where you are and see if you can notice any sounds and again check in with the temperature.

Just notice your environment.

Notice what's around and if you know you feel that things were stirred in you in this meditation,

You can write about them in a journal,

Can be a great way to again just have space for what's happening and to digest it.

The

Reviews

That was such an interesting meditation, which brought some insights for me, and an immense gratitude for this body. Thank you so much 🪷 🙏 🪷

Lovely

The part where you focused on the head brought up some emotions. Lovely practice. Thank you ❤️