Serenity Wellness Podcast E6: Release, Relax, Restore

This meditation dives deeper into our mindful awareness of body tension, effects on our system, and a progressive relaxation exercise to assist in improving your connection to your build up and how to relax and restore your body. I also share two more ways to be mindful in your day. As always, thank you for joining me and your continued love and support. I greatly appreciate you!

Transcript

Hello, Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast. My name is Nicole White and I'll be your host for this podcast series. This series is dedicated to helping you tap into your full potential of how you can heal and balance your mental, Emotional, And physical well-being. Together, Let's explore inner self, Connect to our strength, And manifest your true nature, One full of love, Purpose, And passion. Welcome back everyone to those of you who continue to join me each week and welcome to those of you who are new. As always, Thank you so much for your continued words of love, Encouragement, And support, And continuing to share this podcast with others you think might also find it useful. My heart and soul greatly appreciate you. Today is episode 6, Release, Relax, Restore. We're going to continue to build upon that wellness toolbox that we've been talking about and I hope everyone had a great weekend and you were able to start to tap in and be aware of some things that you can continue to add into your own wellness toolbox to fill that gratitude and joy tank that we have and really connect to self. We've been working in terms of some breath work and allowing breath to create some space and thoughts but also allowing breath to connect us more to the presence and be that anchor. So I hope you've found some usefulness in that and use that as a resource to continue to elevate your understanding in your body system and also how that correlates to all those things we've talked about in that anxious body system in terms of heart rate and thoughts and the things we're going to continue to build upon. I hope you've also had some awareness in those thoughts related to words we use and we'll continue to talk about that further on Wednesday and building upon what we started last week. With today though, With episode 6, Release, Relax, Restore, We're going to talk a little bit more about some mindful awareness in terms of our body tension, The effects it has on our system. I'm going to take you through an expanded progressive relaxation experience that's going to not only take you into a little bit of a meditative awareness but it's also going to enhance your awareness of how and where you hold your tension and assist you in relaxing and restoring your body system. At the end then I'll give you two more daily mindfulness things that you might want to consider adding into your daily life that will, As we talked about last week, Also enhance those neural network pathways and the whole body communication system that it works on when we're just practicing daily mindfulness. Also enhancing, As we've talked about, That gratitude and joy center just by experiencing what we're doing in the present moment. So to start today as we're talking about this idea of body tension and awareness, One of the things that leads to the importance of this is because we often will just hold on to tension in our body through our day without even being aware. You might have noticed that when we went through that short experience last Monday when I took you through that connection to your body and different places we hold tension and that release. But like in this moment, For example, If you were to check in real quick, How are you sitting? Are you all slunched over? We often do that at a desk or if we're driving, We're like, Our shoulders are all like forward and we're kind of folding into ourselves if you would. Check with your shoulders real quick. Are they all hunched up towards your ears? Or are they nice and relaxed? How about your jaw? Are you clenching? Your cheeks? Your cheeks all tensed up? You know, All these areas that we hold, Our fists, Especially driving, Like are you clenching your steering wheel with your fist? So just being mindfully aware of where we're holding tension blindfully is such a beautiful tool to just start incorporating and it helps to regulate our body system as well as balance some of the internal systems. With, You know, The way that we hold on to this tension, Right, Like we'll kind of hold it through our day without awareness and then we go into situations and we're already primed up and ready to go. We have this like reactive cycle as we talked about with that fight and flight system when we're holding body tension, Then it's going to affect how all these other systems are working. It's going to activate that fight or flight to send that blood flow more to the muscles to respond. Like I said, You know, It's a biological system from and it has a great number of positive things that it does for us in our awareness and how to respond, But we don't need to stay in it in order to be ready to respond. So holding on to muscle tension blindfully through our day or, You know, As you increase awareness, You'll be aware of it and then you're going to be able to practice getting a different type of baseline or using it as an emotional regulation tool as well as awareness tool. But with it, As we talked about, You know, In some previous episodes, This whole system and how it correlates and works together, It's not just you're holding tension in your muscles and then that's it. You know, That's affecting the blood flow. If the blood flow is going more to the muscles, It has to go away from other areas of the body. It has to go away from what it needs to be doing in our digestive system, For example. It affects our adrenals and our cortisol level. It affects the inflammation cycle in the body. All these things are correlated to our mental, Emotional, And physical well-being. So by starting to continue to build upon these tools and these techniques that you can have in awareness, You start recalibrating and reorganizing your system in a way that you have a better baseline so that you're not in this reactive, Active mode all the time, Pumped up, Ready to go. We don't need to be doing that all the time. It also, In terms of the internal body system and the energy body, Has a great impact in our energy body system in terms of the chakras, The aura, Our fascial system, Those are all episodes way down the line. Well, Maybe not way down, But down the line when we start talking more about the energy body and where we hold in emotion and emotion memory. Because research is also showing about this emotion memory where, For example, If you have a stress trigger in your daily life, Like right now, Today, I don't know, You have a trigger of stress in some way, And you're already pumped and primed, Like we just talked about. So you're pumped and primed, Ready to go, Because you're holding this tension maybe in your shoulders, In your jaw, Maybe your tongue is at the roof of your mouth kind of thing. So you're primed, Ready to go. You have this stress trigger happen. Well, The body has this mind-muscle memory system, So the body remembers what it feels like based off a previous experience that you've had in your life system of this elevation of the tension, The elevation of the heart rate, The elevation of the adrenals, And then pumping into the system, Etc. So the body has this mind-muscle memory, And it helps us to elevate in each new trigger that comes along as well. So it's not only about the being pumped and primed, It's also about the memory. So we want to also create a different memory system that it can tap into as well. So that's why repeated cycles of this, It's not just a one-time thing. We want to create a cycle. We want to create a memory in the system, This mind-body awareness, Which we'll talk about a little bit further right before we get into the experience of progressive relaxation today. Research shows us that within the first few seconds of experiencing a stressful emotion, We have an automatic tension set up in our body. So we'll automatically, After just the first few seconds of a stressful emotion, We'll tense our jaw, Around our eyes, And our mouth, Just within the first few seconds. So think about what we're talking about here. We're primed and ready to go. We have this emotion, Mental memory in our system that correlates with the muscle memory in the system. So the muscles remember and activate based off previous events. They're activating because they're primed and ready to go. We have the biological system that helps us respond pretty quickly. So it's within a few seconds that already we have this auto-tension build-up. But we can rework it, We can rewire it, And calm it down so that it's not so quick and automatic in the holding. Holding stress over time, Also research has shown us that it will actually shorten your muscles. So for one who tends to really hold a lot of that tension in our neck and in our shoulders, Over time you're actually going to be shortening those muscles. So if you're shortening the muscles, It's showing us in this research they're doing that then it's also increasing pain, It's increasing chronic pain, But it's also decreasing mobility. So it's having, You know, Those are just a couple things. It's having these profound effects just by this like blindly holding on to tension through our day. So that's why today we're going to really try to connect a little deeper to truly what it feels like to hold on to tension. Like where are you holding? How does it feel? How does it feel to truly relax just that area of tension? Which you'll understand a little bit further. So some examples with our jaw, We tend to really hold that jaw tight if we have anger or stress. It's, You know, Where we just clench, You know, Sometimes you can think of it in terms of energy. It's, You know, We clench there because we're holding back and we're often swallowing. We're swallowing that true emotion. We're going over to secondary emotion and we're clenching. Clenching down, Holding in, You know, And holding on. So if you find that happening to you, Just like give a yawn, A nice sigh. There's a yogic technique called lion's breath that you can look into and practice. But just letting that sigh out, Opening the mouth widely and letting out that nice exhale and maybe doing it a couple of times. Maybe you even add in a stretch, Just stretching out the arms, Stretching out the legs, Opening up the hands, Pushing the palms out a bit. Letting out that stress, Letting out that tension that you're holding on to. It's a really cool thing to like if you want to experience real quick, If you do that stretch, Like hold out your arms and push your palms out a little. You can almost feel it like pulling down and releasing that tension up in your shoulders and your neck area. I know we were talking about the jaw, But as I was talking, I just did that and so I thought I'd share. Anyway, The brows, Another place. We hold a lot of tension in between the eyebrows there. Often without even realizing it, We'll just kind of be like walking around our day like that, Just like holding. Holding that brow space really, Really tight. And also that's where we tend to hold on to the emotion of worry. And if we're looking down a lot, You know, If you have to look down at paperwork a lot and stuff like that. So a quick thing you can do there is just like raise your forehead a couple times, You know, Up and down. Give you a little exercise there and maybe closing and squinting your eyes really tightly and then relaxing them and doing that a few times. So the brow. Another place is the neck as we've talked about. The neck not only is, You know, Some tension of just like stress tension that we hold on to there. But also if you have a way of living that requires you to look down a lot, Maybe you have to do a lot of paperwork at your job or look at the computer a good bit. So that neck area and to just help, You know, Stretch that out a little bit. You could just do some head movements. I have to be aware that I'm recording. I keep doing this stuff as I'm talking about it. So hopefully it's not creating some background noise. So with your neck, You can just do some side to side movements or move your neck in some small circles just a few times even. Just will help you to feel that tension and feel that release going down your neck, Which again, It feels great, Especially as I mentioned, I've been doing some home renovation projects this weekend. So my neck's a little tense and not tense, But just like build up some soreness there from using some muscles I haven't used in a while. So doing that even helps with that. Feels great. The shoulders are another place when we're sitting a lot, We're looking at our computer a lot. If you have to drive a lot, We can hold a good bit of tension up around that shoulder area. Also, It's where we tend to hold a lot of stress. You know, You might have heard about that, Heard about, But heard that saying, You know, Holding the weight of the world on your shoulders because we can tend to hold our stress. But we also hold a lot of worry stress there. So stress that's not even ours or we have no control over or we'll worry about like other people's stress that they also don't have control over. And we have no control over, But you know, For some reason we think us worrying about it and holding on to it is somehow going to be helpful. But that's okay. We will rewire and rework that system through awareness and techniques we'll continue to build upon. So the shoulders are another area. And again, Just like giving yourself a nice stretch. And that thing I just talked about a little bit ago about pushing those palms up. So like stretching your arms down, Pushing the palms up will help release those shoulders, Doing maybe some shoulder rolls forward and backward a few times. Increasing awareness and letting go of some release. The hips are another place. That lower back area, The hip area is another place we hold a lot of tension there. And we hold our tension there not only from having to sit a lot and driving and postural stuff that we have to do in our daily living. But again, Where we can hold on to a bit of tension within there and in the energy body, It's where we hold a ton of different emotion. So that's by our sacral chakra area. Again, That's a whole other series down the line. But that area there is where we hold a lot of emotion. So it's our emotion storage center of anxiety and depression and tension build up and trauma and stress, Addiction. We hold a lot there. But again, All able to be reworked, Rewired and recalibrated through just different techniques and awareness and systems in our body. You know, Down the line, We'll be talking about comfort and emotion and sitting in emotion. A lot of us, As I mentioned before, We jump over to secondary emotion or we swallow our emotion. And that creates all this just yuckiness in our system and our body cycle and our reactive cycle. So in our Wellness Wednesday series down the line, We'll be talking further about emotion, Emotion, Comfort and sitting in emotion. But it has to do to again about this hip area and that storage center. And if we're swallowing and eating our emotions, It's got to go somewhere, Right? So that's the area. That's the area that we hold on to. So those are just some things to be aware of. And now I'm going to lead us a little bit more into the progressive relaxation part of today. So with today, You know, Last Monday we did that brief meditation where I just took you a little bit more into connecting to your body and connecting to some muscle groups and some awareness. Today, I'm going to take you through a progressive relaxation, Just a shorter experience, But you can expand this. And I'm going to explain how here. But you can expand this as long as you want. But today is just to give you a bit of experience so that you can understand what you're doing and take this into some daily practice. Because the technique we're going to do is we're going to kind of segment your body into three different sections, If you would. Section one is going to be section three. So section three is going to be your head area. So it's going to be like your scalp, Your face, Your cheeks, Your jaw, Your lips, Your nose, Behind your ears, Your ears, The back of your head. Maybe just right at that base of your head. So section three is going to be your head area. Section two is going to be your torso. So that's going to include that neck, Your shoulders, Your arms, Your hands, Your breasts, Your back, Your lower back, Your stomach, Your abdomen area, And a little bit of the hips too. So that's going to be section two, Just that like by that lower back area, How it kind of joins that hip area. And then section one is going to be the lower part of your body. So it'll be that lower part of your hips, Your butt, Your thighs, Your knees, Your shins, Your ankles, Your feet, Your toes. So we're going to section off three, Two, One. Each section, Don't worry, I'll be guiding you through this. Each section we're going to be holding tension in specific areas. And then we're going to hold that tension for five seconds. And then we're going to release with some just guided awareness in that release. And we're going to do that a series of five times for each muscle group. And then just go into a brief connection to something that's relaxing and calming for us. So when I get towards the end part, I'll be guiding you to, In your mind's eye, Take yourself to a place that is relaxing. It can be a place that you've actually been. That can be helpful because it really brings in all senses because you're aware you've been there. Or maybe you modify a bit, A place that you've been to make it really your own and how you want it to be. Or you make up a place. All of those options are wonderfully fine. But what you're going to do when I guide you there is you're going to bring all your senses to that place that you're at. You're going to bring taste, Touch, Smell, All of it. So for me, I take myself to a beach. The beach has nice Caribbean blue water. It's a deserted beach. Sorry, I just kind of want to be by myself with this experience when I go into relaxation. So deserted beach, Nice blue Caribbean water, Some white sand. The sun is beaming and I could feel the warmth. So feeling. I could feel that warmth in my body. I could taste the air and how it tastes different from the surroundings I'm in. I can hear nature. I can hear the water rushing upon the shore and gently guiding itself back into the ocean. I can maybe hear some birds going by. So really taking my senses into the experience with me, Feeling my toes in the sand, Maybe even burying my toes a bit in the sand. So you get the gist, Right? So wherever you're at, Take yourself there. And we'll stay there for just a brief time today, So maybe like two minutes. I'll keep you there and then I'll verbally bring you back to the space just again so you can get this experience. So why, What I said about brief experience and then practicing it more in your daily life, And that is because of that mind muscle memory that I've been referring to a little bit today. If you decide, Any technique, As I've mentioned, I teach you, It's up to you whether you want to try to use it or not use it. You know, There's no judgment or anything like that. Not that I follow up and talk to you anyway, But I guess I'm just used to saying that to the people I teach in person. Yeah, No judgment. You don't, You know, If you use it, You use it. If you find it useful, That's awesome. If you don't, Okay, Then you don't. Maybe you'll find another one useful for you, Etc. But if this is one that you want to really try to incorporate as a technique and tool, Then you want to be trying to practice this. And you want to practice it first when nothing's going on. So just, You know, A couple minutes. You'll see when we go through it, You could do this in just a few minutes. You don't have to do this for 20 minutes, Etc. So you spend, You know, A few minutes doing this and you want to do it when nothing's going on. If you have difficulty falling asleep, By the way, Great technique to practice when you're trying to fall asleep as well, Because you can't count and focus and do what we're going to do and also think about everything you need to do tomorrow you didn't do and want to do. And we'll talk about other techniques to get rid of the monkey mind when you're trying to fall asleep down in some Wellness Wednesday episodes in the future. But this is also a technique you can use to quiet that monkey mind when you're trying to fall asleep. You might fall asleep though. So also practice this technique when you're awake and sitting up and experiencing so that you can create this, You know, Deeper muscle and mind memory situation that will happen. So over time, If you do this and you practice this, You'll find it easier and easier and you'll find then that not only does it increase your awareness in daily living, You know, When you're certain to feel that body tension increase, Maybe you're going to be clinching down on that jaw, You're going to be more aware of it after you start experiencing and practicing this. Again, It works on all those body systems we talked about, But also down the line we work on emotion, Awareness and regulation. It's a great tool because our body is a wonderful regulator in how to navigate, Understand, Feel safe with and respond and regulate those emotion pathways. But again, Different episode. So I will try not to go on one of my tangents. So where was I? Progressive relaxation. Yes, Practicing it. So then when you practice it and you try to practice it more in daily living, Then what will happen or excuse me, Practice it over time. Then what will happen is like, Say you are in a meeting and you can feel the tension start rising in your body because now you're aware that you're holding tension in your neck. You're holding tension in your shoulders. You probably at the meeting don't want to be tightening up your face muscles like we're going to do here in a minute. But if you practice this over time, Then it creates this memory. So then in your mind, You just do three, Two, One and your body's like, Ah, Memory. Remember that memory we were talking about? That's why practice is required because we need to create a cycle of memory. We practice it more than once to create memory. You're not going to just jump into a marathon without practice. Your muscles have to get memory so they're not taxed out sore and you really injure yourself. So this isn't going to require injury without practice. But if we want the three, Two, One in our mind to help regulate, Calm down and release, Then we want to have this practice to create the mind muscle memory. So those are some things to consider as far as how this could be useful for you. Okay. Are we ready? Go ahead and get yourself into a bit of relaxation state of comfort, Whatever that is for you. You can be laying down. You can be sitting up. You can have your legs on the floor if you're sitting in a chair. Maybe you're sitting on the ground with your legs crossed or stretched out. Whatever feels right for you in this moment. This experience will be about five minutes or so. To be honest, I'm not really sure. I didn't time it, But I'm going to just guess it'll be around five minutes. Okay. So go ahead and get yourself relaxed in your space. Gently closing your eyes. Starting to just relax with your breath and the act of breathing. Taking a nice deep inhale and exhale. With each exhale, Just letting your body further relax into our space. If your mind begins to wander, Just observe. Allow that thought to float away and gently just connect back to our experience. Back to your breath. Back to my voice. Or back to the instructions that you're to be following. So begin now just to get the body started by taking a nice deep inhale. And we're going to hold that breath for 20 seconds. Just take that nice deep inhale and hold. And release. Letting all that air. Nice strong release. Letting that oxygen out. And now just returning back to your regular breathing cycle. And moving your awareness up to section three. And again, Section three is going to be your head space. And as I guide you, You're going to go ahead and tighten up all those muscles in section three. Tighten up the head, The eyes, The brows, The nose, The mouth, The jaw. Holding, Holding. And release. Letting go of all that tension. Imagining it just trickling off the face. Down the body. Section two, Go ahead and tighten. Tighten up the neck, The shoulders, The torso, Your breasts, Your stomach, Your lower back, Hips. Tighten, Tighten. And release. Allowing that tightness to just flow down the body. And section one, Go ahead and tighten. Section one, Tighten the lower back, Your butt, Your legs, Your shins, Your ankles, Your feet, Your toes. Hold that tension. Hold, Hold. And release. Letting that tension trickle down into the earth. And back to section three. Tightening up those muscles in section three. Tighten up the head, The scalp, The eyes, The jaw. Tighten, Tighten and hold. And release. Letting that stress and tension just flow down to the earth. Taking a few breaths. Starting to feel a little bit of difference in your face muscle tension area. And let's move now to section two. Tightening up the neck, The shoulders, Holding this tension, The arms, The fists, The body, The torso, The breasts, The lower back and stomach. Holding, Holding. And release. Letting that stress and tension just flow. Blowing off down into the earth. Flowing, Trickling off your fingers. Taking a nice breath here. And now section one. Go ahead and tighten. Tightening the lower back and hip area again. The buttocks, The thighs, The shins, The ankles, Feet and toes. Tighten and hold and hold. And release. Letting that muscle tension just trickle down into the earth. Down to the soles of your feet. Taking a few nurturing breaths here. Just gently checking in with your body. Potentially noticing a little change. A little less holding on. And let's return now to section three again. Tightening up, Tightening that scalp, The back of the head, The cheeks, The nose, The jaw, The tongue. Tightening and holding all that tension. And release. Allowing yourself to imagine that tension and stress just trickling down into the earth. Taking a nice nourishing breath. And moving to section two again. Tightening up the neck, The shoulders, The back, Your breasts, Lower back, Your abdomen, Arms, Wrists, Fingers tightening, Tightening and holding. And release. Allowing that tension to just release. Trickling down your fingers into the earth. Experiencing that nice nourishing breath again. The mood is seeing the body start to change. And down to section one. Tightening up again. Those hips, Your buttocks, Your legs, Your thighs, Your shins, Ankles, Feet, Toes, Tightening, Tightening and holding. And release. Allowing that tension to flow down into the earth through the soles of your feet. Taking a few nourishing breaths. Feeling the body start to change. We're going to go through this two more times. Back up to section three. Go ahead and tighten up section three again. Tightening up all those muscles in section three. Holding that tension in your face, Your jaw, Your scalp, Back of your head. Holding, Holding. And release. Go ahead and release that tension. Feeling it flow. Feeling it release down your body. Taking that nice nourishing breath. Feeling the difference in your body. And moving on to section two. Go ahead and tighten up those muscles in the back of your neck, Your shoulders, Your torso, Your arms, Your fist. Tightening that lower back and abdomen. Holding that tension. Continuing to hold, Hold. And release. Feeling that tension. Feeling it trickling down off those fingers into the earth. Maybe pushing that palm up a little. Feeling that tension further release through the shoulders, Through the neck, Down the arms. Taking that nourishing breath. And section one. Go ahead and tighten again in section one. Tighten that hips, The butt, The legs, The thighs, Shins, Feet, Toes. Tighten and hold. Continuing to hold. And release. Feeling that tension just trickle off down into the earth. And again, Taking that nourishing breath, Noticing the body and how it feels a bit different. One more time. Let's move that attention back up into section three. Tightening those muscles in section three. The scalp, Behind the head, The ears, The jaw, The nose, The brows. The tongue, Cheeks just tightening and holding. Continuing to hold. And release. Go ahead and release that tension. Feeling it trickle down. Taking that nourishing breath and being aware of how that section feels now. How your body is starting to feel a bit more relaxed. Moving down to section two. Go ahead and tighten up those muscles again in your neck, Your shoulders, Your torso, Your breasts, Your lower back, Abdomen. Tightening and holding the arms, The fists. Tightening and holding that tension. And release. Go ahead and letting go of all that tension. Feeling it trickle off your fingers into the earth. Taking that nice nourishing breath. Checking in, Noticing how your body feels different. More relaxed. More at ease. And one more time. Let's move to section one. Tightening up those hips, Your butt, Your legs, Your thighs, Your shins, Your feet and toes. Tightening and holding. Continuing to hold that tension. And release. Allowing that tension to flow down into the earth. Trickling from the soles of your feet. Taking that nourishing breath. Allowing yourself to experience that awareness of how your body from head to toe is feeling a little lighter. A little more relaxed, At ease. Using this awareness and taking yourself to a place in your mind's eye that brings relaxation. It can be someplace you've been, Someplace you want to go. Or maybe someplace you can only find in your imagination. Allow yourself to go there. Experience it with all your senses. Feel your surroundings in your body and against your body. Take in the sights around you, The colours, Their vibrance. What do you see? Take it all in and experience how your physical body is connecting. How your vision is connecting. What do you smell in the space that you've taken yourself to? Connect to the smells, To the sights and feelings. To your full experience. Taking yourself to the awareness of what it sounds like where you are. And being mindfully aware of how you feel here. This relaxed state of being. All your body experiences it, Embraces it and relaxes further into it. Breathing in a nice deep inhale. And exhale. Taking a moment to connect to this awareness now of how your body feels and beginning to come back into our space. Connecting back to that physical movement of the body. That gentle rise and fall of your body as you breathe. And bringing with you this awareness of how your body feels now. Compared to how it felt at the beginning when we first checked in. Gently starting to wiggle your fingers and your toes. Reentering your body system. And as feeling ready, Opening your eyes and reentering your space wherever that is for you. Thank you for joining me through that experience. I hope you find in your awareness right now in this moment that your body is a little bit more relaxed. A little more free. Lighter. Less busy. Chaotic. And that was just a few minutes. I'm not really sure how long, But a few minutes. And so you can do this experience just like that in the amount of time we did or maybe you want to expand it a little further or a little shorter. But just letting yourself practice. Start creating that muscle and my memory. When you went through that with me, You might have noticed what it really felt like to hold on to tension in some areas that you weren't aware of what it really felt like. Now that we opened up this awareness and if you continue to practice, It's going to help you tap in and tune in in your daily living to that awareness of where you're holding. And then you can release. And then also, Again, You can create this mind muscle memory that in other situations you can just do that three to one countdown in your mind to help activate that system of muscle memory for release. So that's a little bit of release, Relax and restore for your toolbox today. A little bit of daily mindfulness that you might want to consider to add into your practice. So last week we just talked about how to do some things mindfully that maybe you're already doing. And we talked about drinking coffee or tea or taking a shower mindfully. Some other things we do every single day is talk to other people. So that's going to be another tool to consider adding into daily mindful awareness. When we are having conversations with people, We're often not fully present. Not by intention. It's not that we don't care what the other person is saying or we're not trying to fully engage. But often the mind will jibber jabber in its own and jump here and there and come up with scenarios and what ifs and should I say that or what do I have to do later? I wonder what they're thinking. It's fragmented. It's not fully present when we're doing all that. Are you really listening if you're having 20 conversations with yourself at the same time? So no, You're not. Just answer that question if you're wondering. You're not fully listening. So mindful communication. How to mindfully listen. Again, It's very natural for our mind to start wandering and jumping and doing this and that and all these other things that we'll continue to explore further in our mindful Monday series. But allowing yourself to continue to practice what we're building here in this mindful Monday. I think I might have just said that. Well, It's Wednesday. You know what I'm saying. Anyway. In the Monday series of mindfulness, We're going to continue working on that observer versus participator role. And so if we think about observer versus participator in a conversation and communication, When we're actively listening, We're fully observing and engaging. We're actually fully participating in the now by participating in the conversation and not participating in our thoughts. So because we have so many thoughts a day, You know, 60, 000 thoughts and all these judgments that we have in our own minds for itself and situations, It's quite natural and normal for us to get sidetracked when we're trying to the best that we can actively listen and engage in communication. So how to do that mindfully and become aware is, Again, Through building that awareness that we've been working on. But when you find your mind wandering, Allowing that thought to float away, Bringing self back to awareness of the present moment. So that might be honing in on the movement of their mouth, Practicing eye contact. I know eye contact is scary for people, But we'll work on that in the future. It's a beautiful thing. Practicing eye contact or maybe in your mind, You're just repeating a few words back as they say it to reconnect and rehear what they're saying, Honing in on their body language and really connecting to the experience. Over 75 percent of what we say is through our body and not our words. So allowing yourself to actively engage in listening and actively engage when we're talking. Sometimes we're talking and we're also thinking. It's like, Whoa, How are we really, Truly actively talking and being present when we're doing all this other stuff inside? So trying to practice that. And then another daily mindful thing is listening to music in a mindful way. If you enjoy listening to music, Try to listen to it differently. So we're tuning into our mindful listening skills through active communication, Active listening. Music is a great way to do that. So when you're listening to a song, Maybe you've heard it hundreds of times. Listen to it differently. Listen to it in a mindful way. Be mindfully aware of maybe the instruments that are in the background, Maybe the beat cycle that's happening. Maybe be mindfully aware of the emotions that come in for you. You can play a song as an emotion regulation technique. I know I'm jumping into other topics, But you can do that. So if you're feeling down, Find a song that makes you want to dance, Makes you want to sing, Makes you feel joy, Has that muscle memory of joy in your body because it was attached to a previous event. Play that. It's a great mindfulness technique, But also an emotion regulation tool. So mindfully listening to a song in a different way or mindfully tapping in as you're listening to that song to your body awareness, Actively listening through ears, Through body. That's it for today, Everyone. I greatly appreciate you joining me and I hope that you found today's techniques and tools useful to add to your toolbox. I look forward to spending some time and space with you again this Wednesday on Wellness Wednesday, Where we'll continue to talk further about some of those thought cycles and and word cycles and what they're doing to our body system and how to regulate awareness and recalibrate our system within it. So thanks again for joining this series. This series is dedicated to helping you tap into your full potential of how you can heal and balance your mental, Emotional and physical well-being. Together, Let's explore inner self, Connect to our strength and manifest your true nature. One full of love, Purpose and passion. I look forward to sharing space with you again. If you're interested more in what I do or the services at the center, You can check us out at serenitywellnesscenter. Com. C-E-N-T-R-E, Like Center County. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And obviously you can follow me here on this podcast. Thank you again, Everyone. Have a beautiful day. Bye.