Heart Breath Meditation

If there was only ever one meditation to practice, I think it might be this. Breathing consciously into our heart space we allow the light of love to expand out in all directions, dissolving through all illusions of separation to bring us back to remembering unity. As our light expands, our hearts expand to encompass all things until we are a beautiful soup of love that includes everyone and everything. Then, coming back into our heart space, we dance with the polarities.

Transcript

The following practice is led by Sonia Lockyer,

Host of the Wellbeing Ritual Club.

Okay,

So we'll start by settling into a position that feels comfortable.

So as many cushions as you need,

It's really helpful to have your hips higher than your knees if you're sitting on the floor.

And that,

For me,

Means a substantial amount of cushions.

My hips don't open easily.

So don't feel ashamed of creating quite the pillar,

Quite the stack of cushions to get yourself comfortable.

And you can,

Of course,

Sit on a chair.

You don't have to sit on the floor.

You can lie down as well,

If you would rather.

So take your time and get comfortable.

And during the practice,

If you start to find you're uncomfortable,

Then change your position.

There are meditation styles that dictate that you be absolutely still during the practice,

But that's never been my style.

Honestly,

When I practice meditation,

I tend to rock or circle or feel this sort of flow through my body.

So whenever I've been to a meditation class where they've asked me to stay still,

It's been like a real obstacle for me to try to be perfectly still.

And my experience is that there is stillness in the movement,

Which sounds like a contradiction,

But I think if you've ever felt that,

You'll know what I mean.

There's a stillness in that movement.

So dead legs,

Pins and needles,

Things like that,

Don't just sit there and suffer them.

Move.

And always allow yourself to be the most comfortable expression of yourself as you can.

So the spine ideally is straight.

And again,

If that's not possible to you as you're sitting,

Then lie down on your back with your knees bent.

That will help.

Tongue is gently pressed up into the roof of your mouth.

And when that happens,

That allows a softening through the palate,

A softening through the jaw,

Even the teeth and the gums.

The whole skeletal network of the skull eases.

You might notice how your ears feel,

The space around your ears.

And the space within the ears.

And if you can soften your ears.

Noticing the sounds.

Perhaps you can hear the sound of your own body as you breathe.

The inhalation and the exhalation.

And sometimes they respond to being heard.

The inhalation and the exhalation become just a little deeper.

A little bit longer.

As your awareness meets them.

Sometimes the eyelids are down,

Other times we prefer to keep the eyelids open.

You choose.

Either way,

Allow the gaze to soften and to broaden.

You're not looking straight ahead at a single point.

You're looking in a wide landscape.

And that might even be beneath closed eyelids.

And you can feel your skull start to loosen,

Your scalp to soften.

Let's bring some gentle movement in to encourage a sense of ease in the body as we practice.

Really taking ear down to shoulder.

Circle our head,

Chin down to chest.

Ear across to shoulder.

And then coming up and over as you inhale,

Trying to avoid dropping the head back.

And switching directions.

Moving at the right pace for you.

Usually feels more nourishing the slower you go.

Sometimes moving slow can be quite hard.

Just allow yourself the space to slow it right down.

And then circling the shoulders in the way that feels most helpful to you.

As your exploration,

How can I make these shoulder circles feel as good as possible?

If you're really lucky,

You'll get a good symphony of clunks and clicks that you can feel and you can hear.

Maybe taking full arm extensions if you have the space.

As you raise your arms up high overhead,

Just enjoy that stretch.

Diaphragm loves it.

The brain loves it.

So we're using both left and right hand side.

And then when you're ready,

Hands to knees circling the heart.

If you're lying on your back,

This won't be so easy.

You can just skip this bit.

If you're sitting,

Taking slow steady circles with the heart.

It gives you the opportunity to feel what's going on in the lower back,

What's going on in the thoracic spine.

Between the shoulder blades.

Switching directions.

And then finding your way back to center.

Sometimes I wonder what it is I'm doing when I come into my meditation practice.

Recently,

It's been about noticing whose agenda I'm following.

So the senses are finely tuned to reading our external environment.

We're watching one another all the time to understand what our reality is.

How safe are we?

We're listening,

We're watching,

Feeling temperatures.

And constantly responding to this external world.

We do it very,

Very well.

But the moment we pick up our phone or we interact with others,

There's a gazillion different agendas coming to us and we're responding to them.

So when we come to a sitting practice,

A breath practice,

A meditation practice or a yoga practice,

We're creating a window of time and space to prioritize our agenda.

The agenda of our body.

The agenda of our internal environment is coming home to who we are and allowing that essence to be felt.

The third,

Acknowledged,

Experienced.

We start our day from a place of attunement to ourselves and then we can allow those other agendas to have their emergent way with us.

We can flow like a river,

Adapting and switching and changing.

But first we listen to ourselves.

So let's start by listening to the breath,

Noticing how the inhalation sounds and how the exhalation sounds.

Without forcing,

Perhaps we can let that breath lengthen and become deeper.

So if we were to draw the pattern of the breath,

It would be this beautiful,

Smooth ocean wave rather than a choppy harbor side wave.

There might be a natural pull towards the inhale or a natural pull towards the exhale.

One of those might feel more comfortable.

Just notice that.

Perhaps the pull is towards the space between the breaths.

That moment where the lungs are full at the end of the inhale.

We can rest before moving into your next exhale.

Maybe the pull is in that space at the end of the exhale where the lungs are empty.

Maybe this feels like a good place to stay for a while before you move to your next inhale.

Aclock over here.

See if you can pull your in breath right the way into the very center of your heart.

Notice how that feels and then let the exhale expand from your heart out in all directions.

See if you can pull your in breath right the way into the very center of your heart.

Drawing the inhale down into the very center of your heart.

And allowing the exhale to expand from your heart outwards in all directions.

And the normal healthy pattern with a meditation practice.

At the three stages there's the moment you begin where you're fully aware of what you're doing,

You're engaged with this,

Breathing into your heart,

Breathing out from your heart.

And then there's the second phase where you notice you're thinking about something else.

You smile like you would a sweet child that had wandered off and got distracted.

And the third stage you come back to the practice,

Aware of the heart space,

Aware of your breath.

Noticing what it is that you feel as you breathe into your heart and breathe out from your heart.

And then drawing that breath right the way down into your pelvis.

Drawing that breath right the way down to the soles of your feet.

Expanding that breath out to the palms of your hands.

Expanding that breath right up to the crown of your head.

Every single cell,

Every fiber of your body is saturated with this breath.

As you inhale visualizing a glow through the whole of your body like a ready brick glow.

And as you exhale allowing that glow to expand out in all directions.

As you inhale and the glow becomes stronger edges start to blur.

Boundaries start to dissolve.

As you exhale that glow expands filling up the space that you're in.

Dissolving the walls,

Structure of the building,

Filling up the space outside,

Perhaps the garden.

So this light just becomes more and more magnificent.

Dissolving through any illusion of separation between you and your exquisite heart and all things and all people.

That inclusive all encompassing.

Light stretching out across miles and miles of land.

Moving down deep into the center of the earth and reaching up high into the sky,

To the stars.

Breathing from your heart out in all directions beyond your world is parameter of what is possible.

Dissolving a sense of time.

A sense of you and me.

Allowing solidity.

Allowing yourself to bask in the immensity of this light.

All things dissolve.

And yet all things remain in this light.

Bring your awareness back to your heart center,

Noticing what you feel.

Maybe there is a sensation or an emotion.

Perhaps there's words or just feelings.

Let your heart receive the invitation,

Your invitation to be aware of where your heart would take you next.

What's the next step,

The next thing to do?

What's the next step?

What's the next step?

Allowing your heart to answer in whichever way she sees fit.

And trusting that the answer has been heard,

Whether your conscious mind knows of it or not.

Bringing your hands to your heart,

Dropping chin to chest and listening to the sound of the breath again.

Listening to the sound of the space that you're in,

The external world.

Maybe the sounds of the day beginning around you.

Is it possible to hold the polarities of both recognizing this world of material matter separation,

You,

Me,

And simultaneously recognizing the light that dissolves through everything and creates or rather shows the unity between all things.

Offering up the fruits of our practice to all beings.

As we practice our personal wellbeing,

We fortify and nourish collective wellbeing.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you 🩷🙏

That was great, I enjoyed your guidance and voice