Welcome to Let's Sit Together to relieve some stress and anxiety.
And the first thing we'll do is we'll just wiggle a little bit to make ourselves comfortable.
And one way we can help to sell the body is if you raise your hands above your head and take in a nice deep breath.
And as you release that breath,
Lower your arms down either side of your body.
As you lower them down slowly,
Releasing the breath,
Just finally place them on top of your legs in a comfortable position.
And we're going to do a couple of deep breaths together and this helps to connect the body to the mind and the mind to the body.
And we do this by,
I'll come back from three and we'll breathe in deeply and then we'll hold it and then we'll breathe out and continue breathing naturally.
So one,
Two,
Three,
Take a deep breath in and hold it.
And now just breathe out naturally and slowly,
Controlling the breath on the way out.
And then just breathe naturally for a few moments.
The best way of quieting in the mind is just to move into the body,
Move our awareness and give our mind something to do while not trying to quieten it.
The more we try to quieten the mind,
The more the mind gets noisier.
So we do it a different way.
We kind of trick it.
So let's take another deep breath together.
One,
Two,
Three,
Take a deep breath in.
And now hold it and now just let it go naturally,
Just releasing any stress or tension that may be in the body and then breathe naturally.
And with the rest of this meditation,
Just allow your breathing to be whatever it wants to be.
We don't need to get involved anymore.
We're just sitting here and becoming aware of the breath.
Just be aware of every breath.
I'm breathing in and I'm breathing out.
Now we're going to go through and relax the body.
And we'll start from the face and the eyes,
Just imagine your face relaxing.
The muscles behind your eyes,
Your nose and your cheeks and your ears.
Imagine it all just relaxing and becoming slightly heavier.
Again,
Relaxing isn't something we naturally do.
It's just something we allow to happen.
Just become softer and gentler and let go of that alert state that they're normally in.
And now that your face and your eyes and your cheeks and your mouth and nose nice and relaxed,
Move down through the neck and the shoulders,
Down through your arms and out through your fingers.
And we're just allowing all the muscles to relax and become calmer and a softness to them as we go through the body.
Going through the chest and into the belly and your bum and your legs and down further and your lower legs and your feet.
It's almost like a wave going down through your body,
Starting from the top of your head right down over your body.
And every part it touches,
It just allows that muscle to relax.
It's an invitation to just be present in this moment.
And you notice the more we become aware of the body and the more we allow the body to relax,
The less anxious and the less stressed we feel.
And very often to get rid of stress,
We add more stress by trying to force it to give up its hold on us.
We want to become less stressed,
Which is a tightening in itself.
But when we move our focus to our bodies and I'm just breathing in,
I'm just breathing out.
Breathing in calm,
Breathing out relax.
When we do that,
It automatically just calms the mind,
Calms the mind from this running flywheel to a walking and then a gentle slow pace.
And then eventually it's like as if the mind just sits with us,
Just sits with us in this place,
That's nice.
We don't have to do anything to remove this anxiety and stress.
We just have to allow it to be what it is.
A feeling,
A thought,
An emotion that when we bring our awareness to something else,
The other awareness of that just fades away.
And if you find your mind wandering into a story or back into feeling a little anxious or stressed in any way,
Just imagine yourself sat on a log somewhere in the middle of nowhere,
Perhaps in the middle of a field.
Imagine the trees around you,
You can see all the grass,
You can see the wildlife and perhaps you can see some rabbits playing.
We can use our imagination and our mind to imagine a lovely peaceful place where we're sat.
And the idea is to not shut the mind off completely,
But to give the mind thoughts and give the body the emotions and the present moment to be able to remain calm.
Most of the anxiety and stress comes from the way we approach things.
And imagine if you went through the rest of your day approaching life just like this,
From this calmness that's below the noise,
Below the thinking,
Below the story of whatever is going on in your life at the moment.
Imagine if you could approach from this relaxed state of just being present.
Whenever you're feeling a little stressed or anxious,
You can just go to your breath.
Go to your breath and I'm breathing in and I'm breathing out,
Breathing in calm,
Breathing out relaxed.
And that's often enough to get the mind just to soften.
Very often we complicate things with adding more layers of what we must do and how we cope with all these different feelings and these feelings of anxiety,
You know,
When it comes up inside of us.
When really all we need to do is just sit,
Take a breather,
Become aware of the breath and recognize that this moment is okay and we don't have to do anything with it.
We can have a little thought and we don't need to do anything with the thought.
We can have a feeling and we don't need to do anything with the feeling.
And that in itself is freedom and liberation from often the feelings that we don't enjoy.
So as we bring this meditation to a close,
Again,
Imagine what it'd be like taking this calmness to the rest of your day.
Imagine approaching your work or approaching whatever you've got to do in your day with your children or perhaps with a phone call you've got to make or whatever it is that might be causing a little anxiety.
Just imagine approaching it with this calmness and this wisdom from within.
You've got this.
In a moment,
I'll come back from five and we'll bring back the present.
As we bring this meditation to a close,
We can come back from five.
Five,
Four,
Open your eyes gently.
Three,
Wiggle your arms.
Two,
Take a deep breath and a little more energy.
Smile and ah.
Remember you can always go to a place of calm.
Just use your breath as the gateway.
Just I'm breathing in,
I'm breathing out.
Breathing in calm,
Breathing out relaxed.
Very often the mind will follow.
Thank you.
Namaste.
