Guided Meditation For Relaxation And Embodiment

A 30 minute guided relaxation meditation, with an emphasis on embodiment. In this practice you'll scan from the top of your head to the tips of your toes slowly, emphasizing a sense of relaxation and you check in with yourself.

Transcript

So as the sound of the bell starts to fade,

Just bringing your attention and your awareness to all of the places where you notice your body touching the ground.

If you're seated,

Noticing the feeling of the ground beneath your knees or your hips.

And if you're lying down,

Noticing the ground beneath your shoulders,

Your head,

Your heels.

Just seeing if you can bring your attention and your awareness to those spaces where the ground feels really present.

And with our attention and our focus there,

Just taking a few deep breaths,

Breathing in and out at a pace that feels right for you.

Noticing as you breathe how your body changes while it's touching the ground.

Maybe you notice your chest expanding,

A sense of tightness somewhere,

Some gentle movement as your body inhales and exhales.

In this practice tonight,

We're gonna spend all of our time in our body.

Starting by bringing our attention to the very top of our head,

As if you were picking a point that was the highest point on your body.

And with your attention,

Your awareness there,

Just seeing if you can foster a sense of relaxation,

A sense of space.

Allowing that sense of relaxation to slowly spread and start to move down our head,

Into your brow and your forehead,

The space above your ears,

In the back of your head.

Slowly scanning down.

And as you scan,

Consciously releasing the muscles,

Releasing attention.

We're just fostering and inclining towards a sense of relaxation.

Sometimes this shows up as a sense of heaviness,

Almost like thick honey.

It's just slowly working its way down around our head,

Into our temples,

The space behind our eyes,

The bridge of the nose,

Our cheekbones.

Noticing as you slowly scan around where your body is holding on to tension,

Seeing if you can consciously relax the muscles in your jaw,

The back of your head,

The space below your ears.

Allowing a sense of stillness and heaviness to pervade all the spaces that you've inventoried.

Moving into your neck,

Noticing as you move into different areas of your body,

Different parts,

If the attitudes or stories that we tell ourselves about our body start to show up too.

Seeing if we can create space to just focus on relaxing.

Moving down into the lower neck,

Your Adam's apple,

And your collar.

Seeing if you can feel into and distinguish all the little muscles that hold your neck to the rest of your body.

All the while,

Not forgetting to breathe.

Knowing that your breath may feel shallow or light as you become more relaxed and more concentrated.

That's okay.

Feeling into your shoulders,

First rib,

And the tips of our shoulders.

Noticing how your shoulder muscles really feel in this moment.

Noticing if they feel tight and stringy or loose and relaxed.

Knowing that even if we can't get our muscles to relax the way we'd like to right now,

We can still incline towards a state of relaxation.

A state of letting go.

Creating space where they can relax on their own time,

Their own terms.

Moving into our arms,

Our bicep,

Tricep,

Down into our elbow.

Allowing these body parts to become heavy.

Still seeking to embody the space inside our elbows to allow those little tiny muscles to release.

Moving down through our forearms into our wrists and our hands.

Noticing what our hands are touching right now.

Noticing how it feels.

Is it warm or cool?

Does it have a texture?

Is it moist or dry?

Do our hands feel loose or tight?

Allowing the muscles in our hands,

Our palms,

And our fingers to release.

To stand down and relax for just a moment.

Allowing our arms and our hands to have a sense of heaviness.

So heavy that you have no desire to move them.

Just allow them to be still and relaxed.

To rest.

Bringing our attention back up into our shoulder blades.

Seeing if we can create a sense of space between those muscles and the rest of our body.

Moving into our chest,

Our solar plexus,

And our ribs.

Noticing how our breathing shows up in these spaces.

Noticing if our breath is shallow or deep,

Short or long-winded.

Allowing the muscles and our ribs to relax for just a couple moments.

Moving to our diaphragm and into our belly.

Allowing our belly and our internal organs to unwind.

Letting go of any sense of tightness.

Any sense of having to be a certain way.

Feel a certain way.

Moving into our waist.

Noticing in this space if we can feel the clothes on our bodies and what it feels like to be a body inside clothes.

Relaxing our waist and our low belly.

Moving down into our hips.

Now if you're a human and you walk upright,

There's a good chance that your hips are pretty tight.

If you've done enough yoga,

You've probably realized too that the body stores a lot of stress.

A lot of uncomfortable emotions in our hips.

So I would encourage you to be very intentional,

Very methodical and very slow as you scan down through your hips,

Your sits bones and all of the musculature that connects our legs to our body.

Knowing that there is a lot to relax and it's probably pretty tight.

And as you're scanning,

It may be helpful to breathe into these spaces.

And when I say that,

What I mean is that on your inhale,

You can imagine just taking that breath that you're inhaling and just sending it into those spaces.

Into your hips and your waist.

As if you were pushing the oxygen and the energy into your hips,

Allowing them to rest and relax.

Relaxing your hips.

Breathing into your hips.

Creating space in your hips until they become heavy.

Starting to move into the space around our knees.

Relaxing the muscles on the outside of our knee,

The front of the knee,

The top of the knee,

The inside of the knee and the back of the knee.

Taking time to distinguish between those muscle groups.

Breathing into them.

Inclining them towards a sense of relaxation.

Scanning down into our calves and our shins.

Allowing our calves to release.

To get juicy and heavy.

Depending on your posture,

You may feel your calves against the floor.

Investigating what that sense of touch feels like.

The temperature,

The texture.

Doing the same for your shin.

Seeing if you can connect with the shin muscle.

Allow it to relax and become heavy.

Starting to work your way into your ankles.

Taking time to distinguish between the inside and the outside of your ankle.

The top of your ankle and your Achilles.

Breathing into these spaces.

Giving them permission to rest and relax for just these few moments.

Working into your heels.

Feeling your heels against the floor.

The arch of your foot.

The ball of your foot.

Working through each toe.

One by one.

Slowly,

Methodically,

Relaxing.

Noticing a sense of heaviness in your body.

And then noticing the spaces that don't feel heavy.

The holdouts.

The muscle groups that need more cajoling to relax.

Spending time in those spaces.

Re-relaxing the jaw.

The shoulders.

The hips.

Allowing the sense of heaviness,

Of relaxation and peace to permeate your body.