From Champignyata,
I'm Colleen Thomas.
This is Daily Magic for Peace.
We'll honor the body's resilience to sustained stress.
Welcome to the circle.
So the item I would love for you to grab today if you have one is a balloon.
I don't actually have any balloons in the house right now,
So I'm just going to imagine one.
I'm gonna imagine a really big,
Beautiful red balloon.
As we arrive today,
I invite you to settle in,
Settle in for a few minutes together in the circle with all these beautiful people joining us across space and time.
You'll never see their faces,
You'll never run into them in the day-to-day world,
But perhaps you can feel their spirits here with you as we blend our intentions toward peace.
To calm the nervous system today,
I would like to invite you to join me in a practice we've done before called box breathing.
It's breathing in for four,
Holding for four,
Breathing out for four,
And holding for four.
And the trick to it is to breathe in very fully,
As fully as you can in those four counts,
And then to breathe out as fully as you can in those four counts.
It'll give you the chance to really expand your lung capacity.
So I'll count and you breathe.
So breathing in,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And all the way out,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And again in fully,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And now release fully,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four.
One more,
In,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And hold,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And everything out,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And hold,
Two,
Three,
Four.
And now you might just notice how your body feels.
Do you feel any different than you did before we did that exercise?
And while you're noticing,
I invite you to become aware of what you're standing or sitting or lying on and allow your awareness to drop down beneath whatever that thing is and then beneath and beneath and down and down until you've reached the crust of the earth and you can allow your intention,
Your awareness to drop into the earth,
Dropping a grounding cord or creating your unique connection to the unique earth that you are on at this moment,
Wherever you are on the planet,
Reaching down,
Down to the center of the earth,
Letting go of anything you don't need,
Letting go of anybody else's energy or any weird thoughts or anything you don't need to worry about right now,
Anything you're ready to let go of,
You can just let it go down that cord.
And now you might begin to pull up some of that earth energy back up to you,
Coming back toward the surface of the planet and up through your chakra system and reaching up into the sky,
The middle of the cosmos,
Creating a cord above you,
Connecting up until you're in that beautiful space,
Connecting above and below.
Alai Dao calls it your divine line,
This beautiful centered place where you are the middle ground between heaven and earth and feel those earth and sky energies running through your body and find your center within that.
And notice if there's anything else you'd like to release,
Anything that's not you and find that balance place,
That place where you're okay,
That place where everything might be very intense around you but within you is calm.
Find that calm and centered,
Balanced place within you.
And if you can,
Hold your awareness on this place and also visualize or pick up your balloon.
I'd like to do a little experiment with you around the idea of when things get to be too much and how we can recenter,
How we can come back to our resilience even when stress is sustained,
Even when things are difficult in an ongoing way.
When things are difficult in an ongoing way,
We need to take care of ourselves in an ongoing way.
And one way to do that is when our metaphorical balloon is full of stress,
We can notice it.
We can notice that,
Oh yeah,
There is so much stress going on around me.
I might need to let this go.
So imagining that balloon now full of stress,
What are some ways it could be released?
If we're holding a balloon,
Obviously we can just let it go and watch it fly,
Right?
Maybe we don't wanna let go of our stress in a way that just flies all over the place,
Right?
Maybe there's this way that we can create a container for it.
And now this isn't always possible.
But in an ideal world,
Maybe we can call a friend and say,
I need to vent.
Maybe we can do the thing with the beating of the pillows.
Maybe we can do the thing of crying,
Just,
Just,
Just crying,
Crying,
Crying,
Letting the healing that our bodies naturally have,
Their innate ability to heal,
Letting some of those modalities serve us and work for us.
And as we talk about this,
I invite you to stay in that place of centeredness,
Stay with your above and below cords.
Remember that this is your balanced self.
Even when you're dealing with a balloon full of hot air that you really need to let go of,
Even when you're letting go of it,
You can do that from a centered place.
The centered place is always here.
The centered place is always you.
So I'm gonna leave you with this vision,
This idea,
This metaphor of the balloon,
And ask you to take it with you today and to consider what are some tools you have in your life or you'd like to have to release stress so that you can continue to come back to this divine line within you and you can operate as much as possible from this place.
May it be so.
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.
