Today I'm gonna take you to a quick practice that helps you ground yourself and cope with tension in your body or anxiety or stress.
It's an exercise that really helps me ground myself,
Soften and release tension.
So I want to start with saying that you should find a place where you can relax for a bit,
Where you can relax your body,
You can sit yourself down or lie down on the floor.
Just make sure that it's a place where nobody can interrupt you.
You can put both of your feet flat on the floor or sit in cross-leg position,
Whatever is more comfortable for you.
You can put your hands in your lap or on your knees.
Make sure your shoulders are down and relaxed.
And close your eyes.
Now we're gonna start to take some really deep breaths and every time we breathe out we're gonna sink a little bit deeper into the floor,
Into the ground and our body becomes a little bit heavier.
So breathe in through the nose,
Sigh it out through the mouth.
Let your body become heavy.
Breathe in through the nose,
All the way to the top and breathe out through the mouth.
One more time,
Breathe in as far as you can,
All the way until the top and as you breathe out,
Relax all your muscles,
Sink deeper,
Let your body become heavy in the floor.
Now tune in with that part of your body where you feel tension or that stress or that anxiety.
Maybe it's a knot in your stomach,
Maybe it's tension between your shoulder blades,
Maybe it's a tight chest,
Maybe your neck or maybe somewhere completely else.
Everybody is different or everyone feels tension somewhere else but tune in with that place where you feel the most tension and if it's not a specific place,
If you have trouble finding where it is in your body,
It's more of an overall tension and just tune in with your whole body or your whole,
Maybe your whole upper body because that's where mostly the stress sits and I don't want you to have an opinion or a judgment around that tension in your body.
Just feel it,
Just observe it,
It's there and then what I want you to do is imagine that you're gonna create some softness around that tension.
Usually what we do is we don't want to feel the tension,
We don't want to feel the anxiety,
We push it away that's what actually makes the tension worse.
So this time we're gonna give it some love.
So imagine some pillows around it or some mushy clouds or just some softness around it.
And just imagine it's all surrounding an area of tension.
It's like embedded in this softness.
And don't imagine that you're pushing that softness against attention,
Just give it some space to be there.
Just slowly surround it with softness,
With some love.
And see if with that feeling of softness you can kind of relax in that tension,
In that anxiety.
Just let it be there,
It's safe.
It's okay to be there,
It is allowed to be there.
Now see if you can feel or imagine or visualize that these soft clouds and this love is like slowly mixing with the tension.
It's not just surrounding it now,
It's just blurring the lines of where the tension is.
It's just slowly mixing and slowly it's evaporating a little bit.
By giving it some love and some softness and mixing the softness with the tension it will slowly become a little bit less tense,
Less separate from us.
And if you feel tension is still there,
Again don't judge it,
Don't try to push it away.
Because when we try to push it away it becomes only stronger.
Can you just let it be there,
Let it be okay that you feel a little off,
A little anxious,
A little stressed?
But don't stress about the stress,
Don't become more anxious because you feel anxious.
Don't create extra tension on the tension because that's what we usually do.
Let's see if you can let it become a little bit smaller,
Smaller and smaller,
Softer and softer.
Whatever is left just leave it there,
It's okay.
Now we're gonna take some really deep breaths like we did in the beginning.
With these deep breaths every time you breathe out we breathe a little bit of that leftover tension out.
Breathing through the nose,
All the way up and breathe out through the mouth.
Breathe all that tension out.
Breathing through the nose,
Make yourself tall,
Straighten your spine all the way up until you cannot breathe in anymore and sigh it out,
Breathe all the tension out.
One more time,
Breathe in,
Straighten your body,
Become strong,
Breathe out and breathe out all of the tension.
Relax your body,
Sink into the floor,
Return your breathing back to normal and slowly open your eyes.
Thanks for doing this practice with me,
I hope this made you feel a little bit less tense,
A little bit less stressed and remember that you can practice this in the small form at every point in your day,
Every time you feel yourself pushing against that tense feeling located in your body.
Create some space and some love around it and just let it be there,
Let it be okay.
I'm sure attention will be less severe and you'll be able to go about your day.
Thank you and see you next time.
