Wax Goddess - Medellin, Colombia

A morning soundscape meditation from Medellin, Colombia. The sheer practice of starting our day with the ability to come back home to ourself, and start from that place, amazingly sets the tone for all that we encounter throughout the day.

Photo by Daisa TJ from Pexels

Transcript

Welcome and thank you for joining me this morning.

Thank you for joining me from the space of your own mat or pillow or chair or bed or wherever you find yourself this morning.

Personally I am sitting on a bolstered pillow on a yoga mat in front of my window in Medellin,

Columbia.

So what you will hear today is from there.

Beginning our practice today I would like for you just to take a moment and actually feel your body sitting there.

Noticing the space around you,

The space that your body takes up.

And actually feel what it feels like for your body to take up space.

Being aware and almost accountable for the space that you take up.

And from this awareness of your body taking up the space that it does,

I want you to start with permission.

Permission to do so.

Permission for your body to need and both require and both actually doing the thing,

Actually taking up the space,

Needing the space,

Requiring the space and actually doing it.

I want you to just give yourself permission to do so and feel what that feels like.

That in this moment right here in time that you're sitting here filling your body up with the knowing and the permission to take up the space that you need to in this moment bringing full awareness into that sensation.

Your arms are relaxed at your side and your palms are face down.

If your eyes are not already closed,

Go ahead and close your eyes now.

I seem to believe that it is a way more easily for you to go inside if your eyes are closed.

So close your eyes and just enjoy the sounds.

Your breath is one that is very natural and easy.

Noticing where your breath is right now.

Noticing the small lifting of your chest and the falling again.

Noticing the simple way that the breath moves.

Simple yet very powerful,

Able to lift the chest and allow it to fall.

It's quite spectacular and magical that something so light as just air is able to lift muscle and bone over and over again.

You might want to take a moment and just say thank you to your breath.

Beginning at the top of your head this morning,

Imagine that there is a circle at the very top of your head.

You can just in your mind trace a circle on the very top of your mind,

The very top of your head,

Almost as if you are carving that circle like you're carving a pumpkin.

Just carving a circle out where you can actually just take that piece out of your head so that it's open.

See if you can feel the sensation at the top of your mind of an opening,

An awareness,

A connection to the air and the sky and the universe above it.

I feel a slight tingling at the very top of my head with my awareness there.

See if you notice anything.

That opening is just an easier ability for you in your mind and yourself to connect with you.

So beginning at the top of your head,

Slowly imagine that you are scanning from your head down your body in a very slow,

Slow fashion.

In my mind,

I imagine wax being poured from the top of your head and that wax moving all the way down you in a super slow fashion and you just following the trace of that wax so that you're doing a full scan from the very top over your face,

Noticing all of the little parts of your face that you haven't given attention to in a while.

Your forehead and your eyes down from your nose and just using your mind,

Using the power of your thought and your attention,

Just trace and scan slowly,

Noticing if you are in a rush,

Just to slow down.

More attention comes from slow awareness.

So just slowly go down your face and the back of your head,

Over your ears,

Onto your chin,

Not to forget your lips,

Your mouth,

Even on the inside of your mouth,

Down your neck.

Slowly,

Slowly being aware of the parts of you,

Your shoulders and how they are attached to your arms,

Your arms all together,

Onto your hands,

Feeling all of your individual fingers,

Noticing with this awareness that perhaps,

Perhaps maybe there's a slight tingling in the wake of your awareness,

Just bringing your attention to those spots or not.

Just notice what you feel and what happens over your chest and your back,

Slowly imagining that wax covering,

Dripping down,

Slowly covering you,

The wax being your attention.

Down over your chest and your belly,

Your sides,

Down your back,

Crossing your pelvis and your hip bones,

Down onto your bottom and through your legs,

The wax just melting,

Slowly,

Slowly dripping,

Down over your legs,

Your knees,

Scanning your body just for the awareness that it notices.

Coming down to the very bottoms of your legs and your ankles,

Ending at your feet,

Taking a breath and just noticing the totality of your body covered in your awareness,

Covered in your sphere of attention over all of it.

Naturally and easily using this wax covered awareness and attention to just breathe through that,

Bringing your attention to the breath,

Lifting your chest and falling again,

Noticing the slight concentration that you might feel in your body or not and noticing if you feel any sense of more density and more awareness,

Just pulling in your awareness into yourself,

For yourself and on yourself changes the frequency and vibration that you are focused on.

Instead of focusing outward,

You are just bringing it inward,

Bringing it back home to you.

The breath is gently and easily moving and you might notice that the breath is very shallow at maybe the top of your lungs or the middle of your lungs.

Notice where the breath goes now without changing it,

Without judging it,

Just notice where the breath goes and where it stops.

On your next breath,

Take in a little more,

Let the lungs expand just a little bit more,

Inviting more of the breath into a deeper part of your lung.

Noticing the balloons of the lungs filling up easily and naturally by just the invitation of just asking them to do so.

On the next breath,

I invite you to open up even more of the lungs,

The bottom parts,

Let your breath enter into those bottom sacs of the lungs and just feel the lungs so easily and naturally so where you feel more of your chest expand and rise.

On the next breath,

Just bring that breath even further down into your belly so that now with each breath of your lungs rising,

Your belly also rises and falls in the same tempo,

The same cadence so that the whole front part of you is lifting and falling together.

This is a natural way to tap into your parasympathetic nervous system or the part of you that is your relaxation.

The rest and digest phase of your entire nervous system is tapped in by belly breathing.

Noticing that you are lifting the entirety of the front of you with each breath and each cadence and that there's a rhythm and that this is something that you can come back to any time during your day that you might need.

Noticing where the breath starts and just inviting it deeper and fuller into your lungs and your chest and eventually your belly.

I'm just doing breathing from all of your lungs and your belly together.

Resets your attention,

Your awareness,

Your nervous system,

Drops the stress or anxiety that you might be feeling.

This is just a little tool to keep in your back pocket.

Just being aware,

Noticing your body together and whole in this space,

Breathing naturally.

So this morning has really been a practice of just awareness of this very moment of your body in this space,

All of your body connected,

All of the parts of you connected together in its entirety and just noticing what is happening behind the scenes of the breath moving in the body and out all the time,

All day.

When you are able to just drop into this very moment,

Not the next or thinking about what just happened,

But this very moment,

It brings a sense of solidarity to not only yourself but also the moments ahead,

This moment and the moments behind in giving attention and awareness that every moment is its own.

So before we end our practice today,

I invite you to turn your listening and your hearing outward again,

Noticing the sounds that you are hearing and just drop into a moment of listening.

Listening to the sounds outside of you.

You come from a place of moving your attention from noticing what's happening on the inside to lifting it outward to being aware so that you can hear and listen.

I want you to just notice that you're able to do that,

That you're able to both be aware and feeling every part of you with your attention fully on you and yourself and yet on a moment's notice you're able to lift it and go outward.

And from being on the outside,

Practice bringing your attention back to you as we end our practice.

Again,

Feeling the breath again and this time taking a bigger breath,

Taking a deeper breath.

Filling your lungs with the fresh air that is around you and ending our practice today with three gratitudes,

Three things for yourself that you want to start your day today by acknowledging that you're thankful for.

The first three things to come to mind,

Go with those three.

Don't overthink it.

But just take a moment,

Actually one by one say thank you.

May your day be set with this tone of just gratitude,

Lightness and thankfulness.

Thank you all for joining me this morning here in Medellin.

I wish you all the best day forward.

Thank you and goodbye.