Harnessing Your Inner Power Intro And Practice

Embracing the resistance to feel difficult emotions like fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, and grief. Meeting your emotional pain with a compassionate presence. This is a meditation to allow yourself the time and space to feel and experience your struggles and tune into your internal landscape. “What will determine your life is not your emotions but your attempts not to feel your sadness anger fear and shame. You compensate by developing coping mechanisms that keep you from allowing you to experience

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome.

I hope you're well.

We're going to begin our practice today.

So please find a comfortable seat,

A seat that you can commit to for yourself for the next 25 to 30 minutes.

Take a moment to acknowledge yourself for showing up because I know it isn't easy.

And welcome if you're new to our daily meditations.

It's nice to see you.

So as you know each day is different.

Each day we are experiencing different emotions,

Different feelings within us,

And this container that we create here together is a space for you each day to find stillness for yourself and understanding that when we sit in stillness we can feel into our inner world,

Feel into our hearts,

What's going on for us.

And today I wanted to speak about harnessing your inner power and what keeps us from stepping into our source that we have within us of strength.

And so the past couple days I've been thinking about how pain in our lives has a purpose and how when we have behaviors,

Patterns to keep us from feeling that pain,

How it really inhibits our spiritual growth.

So I want to read what my teacher Gabor Maté has said.

What will determine your life is not your emotions but your attempts not to feel your sadness,

Your anger,

Your fear,

And your shame.

You compensate by developing coping mechanisms that keep you from allowing to experience yourself the way you really are.

If you don't want your life to be determined by what happened,

Allow yourself to feel exactly what's there.

So another explanation of addiction is repressed pain and the definition of addiction is those habits that you go towards that initially give you a sense of relief but have long-term negative effects.

So this can be,

For me it was alcohol.

Clearly I stopped almost seven years ago.

I'm very open about it because it was thanks to that that I really went deep within myself and had a true spiritual awakening.

But for some people it isn't that.

You can drink without being an alcoholic but I used it as a way to cover my anxiety which most people actually do.

I still believe and I say openly that I think it's one of the worst things in our society and keeping us in a holding pattern is that alcohol is everywhere,

It's on every corner,

It's keeping people numb and quiet.

That's another discussion.

I just want to us to work today on finding the area in your life whether it's food or alcohol or drugs or gossiping or simply or sex,

There's sex.

Also judging.

Staying in the judgmental mind is an addictive behavior.

We can get addicted to negative thoughts because there is some type of pleasure in this self affirming judgments towards ourself so we can sit and constantly criticize ourself.

I also know that because when I stopped drinking I started doing that or others so always sitting back and just looking at the world and blaming everybody.

Alrighty so let's begin our practice.

Let us explore into those areas of your own life that you are finding ways to numb or to run from your own pain and a very simple process.

Let's begin by finding our breath together and this will allow for our mind to settle so that we can dive into our own hearts.

So take a deep breath in through your nose,

Suspend your breath and exhale out your mouth with sound.

Exhale all the air out feeling a release,

An energetic letting go,

Draining out of the bottom part of your body.

Exhale all the air out and hold the air out.

Coming into your body,

Letting your body ground in the present moment and then when you're ready inhaling,

Taking in some more air,

Suspend your breath,

Notice the stillness in your body and exhale out your mouth,

Exhaling,

Emptying out the back of your throat,

Letting go of stagnant energy,

Releasing,

Exhaling,

Exhaling,

Letting go,

Letting go.

Hold the air out at the bottom of your exhale and again inhaling through your nose as you lengthen your spine,

Feel a widening in your shoulders,

Taking in some more air,

Pausing at the top of your exhale,

Lingering in the stillness and then exhale,

Exhaling,

Exhaling,

Letting go of the narratives,

Letting go of the mind.

Coming into your body,

Exhale all the air out,

Feel the pressure of your body as it touches the ground,

Giving yourself permission to be present in your body,

Holding the air out,

Letting gravity weight you down a little bit more and then when you're ready,

Breathing in and out of your nose,

Staying connected to your breath,

Each inhalation noticing as your body gently rises,

Your lungs fill up with air,

Inhaling all the way to the top of your head,

Taking a moment to pause before exhaling,

Following with your attention your exhale all the way out,

Exhaling out completely,

Holding at the bottom of your exhale,

Before naturally and spontaneously inhaling through your nose,

Setting your intention,

Today I would,

Today my intention is to harness my inner power,

State your intention three times and let it resonate within your body,

Within your body,

My intention is to harness my inner power for my highest good and for the highest good of humanity and always and throughout the meditation if you find your mind wandering please understand that that is part of meditating,

It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong,

It's just a cue for you to notice how often you go into your thinking mind and as sticky and as attractive thoughts may seem,

This is an invitation for you to bring your attention back to focusing on your breathing and how the breath feels inside of your body as you breathe,

So each time you notice you've gone into thinking with a smile,

Bring yourself back and align to your breathing,

Noticing the qualities of your own breath,

Rough or smooth,

Deep or shallow,

Long or short breath,

Letting your breath breathe you and creating our safe,

Sacred container,

Acknowledge the ground beneath you,

Thank you Gaia Mother Earth,

Either touch the ground or just feel its presence and express gratitude,

Thank you for feeding me,

Thank you for feeding my family,

Thank you for sheltering us,

Giving us beautiful trees,

Birds,

All of the animals,

The water,

The mountains,

The lakes,

The butterflies and instead of feeling like you need to hold your body,

Allow your body to soften so it can be held by the ground beneath you,

Allowing the stillness and the stability of the ground beneath you to come up through your spine,

Calming down your own nervous system,

Literally you're plugging in,

Visualizing that connection between your tailbone all the way down into the center of the earth,

Inviting you to envision this element of your energetic body called your crystal core,

A tube of liquid light coming from the center of the earth through your tailbone up through your spine,

Through your brain,

Out your crown chakra at the top of your head and extending upwards into infinite space,

Calling in the presence now above you of all of your teachers and mentors,

Your own guides,

Your angels,

The archangels,

The divine itself,

However you see that you can just envision consciousness itself above you or simply a caretaker or someone from your past that really saw and loved and held you for who you truly are so you can feel that coming down from the crown of your head in the opening being seen how does that feel in your body being loved being protected calling in behind you the presence of your ancestors your lineage you running through your veins you have the DNA of those who walked on the earth before you feel their wisdom and strength behind you remembering in front of you all of our children all of your friends children and their children that we have on this planet right now to come and we want to make this land fertile abundant rich with beauty and so may we walk together unified for this purpose bringing your hands to your heart and your belly or both on your heart whatever feels better feeling the touch of your own hands upon your body turning towards yourself and acknowledging where you are feeling pain or suffering judgment within your own body right now welcoming all of the parts of you because if you want to harness your inner power first we must remove the masks and find those areas within us that are struggling and I know this isn't it easy if you're finding resistance I invite you to lean into that uncomfortable sensations as they might be arising where have I felt judged criticized unworthy and I invite you to bow your head and to honor any emotions that you're feeling within you as you do this name the emotions staying aligned to your breath as you do this using your breath as your anchor in these recent days have you felt fear how does the fear feel have you felt anger can you invite the anger into your body right now have you felt sadness or grief or maybe just overwhelm anxiety inviting you to turn toward yourself imagining yourself as a child turning towards yourself looking yourself as a child in the eyes seeing the tenderness the vulnerability and either inviting this child into your arms or onto your lap and if the child isn't ready respect that but just stay next to him or her leaning in with your presence and let's take three deep breaths together with this child within you taking a deep breath in feeling a sense of connection to this part of yourself a sense of acknowledgement that now you're here exhale out your mouth exhale all the air out letting your body really release shiver ache exhale all of your out and then take another deep breath in together with your inner child holding one another and exhale exhale all the air out inhaling again feeling that deep sense of connection to your own heart to your vulnerable self inner child and exhale exhale all the air out holding the air out finding that place of stillness within your body quietness in your heart you trusting in this process of releasing pain so that you can harness your inner power your inner strength and resilience inviting you today to notice when you're feeling the fear or the grief the anger the anxiety that give yourself this space to tap in and to tune in and to feel the emotions the feelings instead of running to hide or numb asking yourself what is one behavior that I do to avoid feeling pain and let your body answer let your heart respond and understand that it is in that precise place area behavior that you can learn to hold to connect to your heart to remind yourself that this is where transformation occurs by holding the pain just like we did today so check in with yourself how are you feeling letting your whole body fill up with this liquid light from your crystal core letting it pour over into each of your cells imagining a small tiny flame lighting up in each of your cells flowing into your blood and your bones cleansing ancient blueprints thanking your guides bringing them into your heart melting them there your angels remembering your ancestors bringing them also into your heart remembering your connection to the ground the next time you get taken away by narratives stories taking things personally remember the ground beneath you and remember that we are here to step into our wholeness to find our gifts so that we can evolve our humanity so thank you for showing up and just notice the difference of how you feel than when you began and understand that this is a process it's it's a daily uncovering of these parts of ourselves and facing challenges as they arise is the major part of it it's not thinking that everything turns out to be beautiful and gorgeous every day yes there are amazing moments but when you walk a path aligned to spirit there are a ton of challenges but it's how you meet them and understanding that days of lost hope and faith and confusion are part of that it's being able to because I remember many days where I felt amazing and then I would feel off again and just what what are small changes you can make today to treat yourself with love and to not do things that are hurtful just stop before you do something and take something and say do I really need this right now or can I just sit with myself maybe I just need to put my arms around myself lay down I I never laid down so much my life that I do now I lie down I just breathe these are intense intense days so be gentle with yourself but also be vigilant don't let things slide it's now the time to wake up so see you tomorrow thank you have a beautiful day