Hello,
Thank you for being here.
I'm Wendy and today I want to take you through a meditation that is about sensing who you are,
Really being present with yourself and accepting of yourself,
Your body,
Your presence here in this world.
I think often we find that we are judging ourselves by the way we look,
Our size,
Our shape and it seems to me such a cruel waste of our energy and of our creative spirit and it's not at all what we're here to do here on this earth.
In these times of excruciating pain and difficulty all around us it seems that the last thing we should be obsessing about is what we look like or how we appear to other people and the laughable thing is that often other people are so concerned themselves with how they look and how they might appear to other people around them that no one's really looking.
So today I want you to take just a little bit of time,
It's about ten minutes and we're going to do a meditation together and a visualisation and I've called it a rock because that's what we're going to imagine ourselves becoming.
So take a little moment to settle in whether you're sitting or lying down.
If you're sitting you could have your feet flat on the floor and perhaps a cushion or something so that you're comfortable but able to sit relatively straight.
We're not too bothered about being perfect and more concerned with being comfortable and in contact with ourselves.
So taking a few deep breaths,
Really feeling the breath coming in to your chest and down into your belly and out again.
And with your hands on your knees,
On your lap,
Either up facing up or facing down,
Just feel your shoulders drop a little more and really sense your presence here.
Sense the whole of you.
Feel your feet in contact with the floor,
Your legs,
The shape of them,
The form of them,
Your buttocks in the chair,
Your thighs.
Feel your middle,
Your lower back perhaps pressing against the back of the chair and the front,
The front of you.
Feel that girth,
That centre of you.
Feel your arms,
Feel their solidity,
Their presence.
Feel your chest,
The way your clavicles support the rib cage and your shoulders and your arms,
That sort of bar that runs across the top of your chest,
Just below your neck.
Sometimes it feels like a yoke holding your arms.
Feel your shoulders,
Just feel them drop slightly more as you sink further into your space in this chair and feel your head,
That's just easing your neck side to side a little bit.
Breathe in deeply again and out and just take a moment to really sense the whole of you here,
Present in this chair and any thoughts of judgement that come in,
Just let them float by.
You can acknowledge them and say that's a judgement and let it go.
We all have judgements about our bodies and in this practice we are going to try to release those just for now,
Just as a beginning.
Notice the judgement and let it pass,
Let it float on by and come back to that sense of presence,
To that sense of being here now,
Rooted in your body.
We'll take another deep breath in,
Right to the root of you and out.
I want you to imagine you're standing in front of a big rock,
It could be any sort of rock,
It could be a standing stone,
A morolith,
It could be a rock on a beach,
It could be a rocky outcrop on a walk somewhere in a woodland,
Edging a field,
Any sort of rock.
I want you to picture yourself holding out your arms and pressing yourself against this rock.
If it's small enough,
Perhaps your arms wrap around it or if it's large and flat,
Perhaps your arms are spread out against it and as you press your face,
Turn your head slightly,
Pushing your cheek against this rock.
It could be smooth,
It could be granular,
Cold or maybe it's warm from the sun.
Take a deep breath and breathe out and as you breathe out,
Feel yourself drawing closer to this rock.
Hold your palms flat against the surface.
What can you feel?
What sensations are under your palms and your fingertips?
And as you stand pressed against this rock,
Sense the energy in it,
Sense the ancientness of it.
This rock that has been here on this planet Earth for millions of years,
Formed perhaps by the falling of debris onto the seabed,
Perhaps by compacting of earth and whatever sort of rock it is that you are embracing.
Feel its energy,
Its sense of timelessness.
And feel that energy in yourself.
Feel your own timeless energy and as you sit back down now in your chair with your hands in your lap,
I want you to breathe deeply and imagine yourself as a rock.
You have no sharp edges,
You have no limbs,
You are a rock.
You contain all the energy of a rock down the millennia and things pass by you,
Noises,
Activity and you are neither active nor reactive.
Sense your body as a rock,
Something that has been here for millennia,
Something of enormous value in the being of the earth.
You are that rock.
Whatever your shape or form,
It makes no difference to your value,
To your being.
And as you take another deep breath in,
Be aware of just being.
Now relax briefly.
You you you
