From Chez Pinata,
I'm Colleen Thomas.
This is daily magic for peace.
Today we will send gratitude for family.
Welcome to the circle.
So today all you need is a family item,
Something that speaks to you of family,
Something that helps you feel connected to your family,
Whether that's blood family or chosen family.
Maybe just look around your space,
See if anything jumps out at you.
Maybe you have a special something already.
And if there's nothing that's quite right,
Maybe just picture a moment when you felt connected with your family,
Almost like a snapshot in your mind.
Just pause that moment in time and hold that,
Almost like it's a photo you're looking at.
I welcome you as we gather today,
Whether this is your first time joining us or you've been here since the beginning,
I welcome you to take your seat in the circle,
The circle that is comprised of everybody who has or will listen to this episode.
To begin today,
We're going to calm and center with the five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
One exercise.
This is an exercise you can reach for anytime you want to be a little more present.
And it's very simple.
What we're going to do is we're going to look around and look for five things.
What are five things I see right now?
And what are four things I can touch right now?
Maybe things that have a different texture,
A soft thing and a hard thing and a metal thing and a fuzzy thing or whatever's near you.
What are three things I can hear right now?
What are two things I can smell right now?
And what is one thing I can taste right now?
And I invite you to join me in taking a breath.
And maybe now let's notice our grounding,
Notice how close we are to the earth,
What's connecting us to the earth.
What are you sitting,
Standing or lying on?
What does it feel like to let this thing support your weight?
What's under this thing?
And what's under that thing?
And down and down and down and down until you find the earth.
Allow yourself to trust the earth a little bit more,
To let gravity pull you closer a little bit more,
Beginning to reach down toward the center of the planet,
Beginning to release anything you don't need to the center of the planet,
Connecting with the spirits of the land where you are.
If you know the names of the indigenous peoples who might've lived there before you,
You can honor them,
Say them out loud.
If you know where your peoples came from on this beautiful earth,
Maybe say that place,
Honor your own ancestors,
Honor the land where your ancestors came from,
If it's not the land you're on right now.
And when you feel nice and connected and you're releasing anything you don't need,
You can just begin to draw up some of that earth energy,
Just let it effortlessly float back up to the center of the earth,
Let it just lock up to you through your cord or through your connection to the earth and let it just flow into your whole body,
Your limbs and your core,
Maybe floating into your chakras,
Helping you ground and open and calm,
Calm,
Calm yourself,
Settling down,
Calming down.
So now bringing to mind your snapshot of that moment of you with your family or grabbing that family item.
Gratitude for family.
Being part of a group and being part of a family means bumping into each other sometimes.
And it also means having that ancestral stuff,
Whether it's trauma or whether it's pride or whether it's just weird rules that have come down to us.
There's a lot to being in a family that's hard,
But there's also a lot to being in a family that can be enriching,
Can help us feel like we have a place in the world,
Can help us have a sense of who we are.
It can be very overwhelming to be a person on the planet and just having that connection can be grounding.
So knowing that it's a mixed bag,
What I'd love to invite you to do is to take your representation of family,
Your object,
And see if there's anything in it that you might like to let go of.
And by that,
I don't mean it's not important or you're gonna get rid of it forever.
I just mean in this moment together in the circle,
In this moment of sending gratitude for family,
There might be something in your family history or whatever kind of family you're dealing with that you just don't need or you don't wanna focus on right now.
So taking this object,
See if you would like to allow anything to leave,
To ground out this beautiful grounding cord we've already established for ourself today.
Maybe there's something there for you with family that you don't need to worry about right now,
You might wanna let go of,
A hard conversation,
Something that's been bugging you,
Something you wanna forgive,
Anything you might wanna let go of.
I invite you to try that process and play with that process,
Allowing your own grounding cord to be the cord or setting up a separate grounding cord from this object if that feels better to you.
The idea is that as we release just whatever little thing we're ready to let go of from this concept of family,
Hopefully it'll shine a little more brightly.
This concept of being part of these people will shine a little more brightly.
So just playing with that idea,
Seeing if that resonates for you,
Is there anything you'd like to let go of?
And if you're letting go of it,
Just seeing it happen,
Letting it be very organic and seeing if the energy around your family object maybe gets a little lighter,
A little brighter,
Less heavy.
And now if you've gone through this process and your item is maybe a little bit different now,
Just noticing the good things,
Just like you picked out a couple of bad things maybe to let go of or hard things to let go of,
Notice what are a couple of really beautiful things about this family unit,
These people,
Things you shared,
Things you have in common,
Ways you feel like you belong with them,
And see if you wanna enhance those and send some gratitude for those.
And if you do,
You might hold this object in your hands or if it's just an image,
Just maybe put your hands out and imagine you're holding this image and just allow some love from your heart to flow into this representation of your family and allow it to grow a little brighter,
Maybe allow your heart to open a little bit,
Allowing it to grow a little brighter.
And if you feel moved,
If you feel a lot coming out of your heart,
You might open your hands a little wider and send out some love to these people that are represented,
Maybe to your ancestry,
If you're working with your blood family or your chosen ancestors,
Just allowing any love or gratitude to flow out of your heart and into your hands,
Your palms and go out specifically in the world to these people.
And as we begin to bring today's meditation to a close,
I invite you to call to mind and maybe welcome into your heart anybody,
Anybody in Ukraine or Russia who has lost a family member recently or who's lost a family member in the history of conflict in this region.
May we all continue to be connected to our family.
May we know we belong.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Your presence,
Your energy and your heart make all the difference in healing our world.
Remember to breathe today,
Breathe and expand.
And I hope you join us again next time.
Please consider inviting a friend.
That's it for Daily Magic for Peace.
Our music is by Terry Hughes.
I'm Colleen Thomas.
Thanks for listening.
