Right let's take a deep breath and we'll place our body somewhere comfortable and take a few more full breaths as we start to become a little quieter.
There's no hurry putting our body our legs and our feet somewhere they can be still for a little while placing our arms comfortably in our lap.
Next time we inhale let's take a deep inhalation and lengthen our spine a tiny bit exhaling and soften into our seat a little bit softening our forehead and our shoulders we've parked our body we've not let it slump still alert and relaxed a little bit of both taking our attention inwards then away from the busy world into our body our breath our own internal state how are we hello internal world how are you feeling and however we find ourselves are we able to accept and even embrace that in this moment as if it were our beloved child our beloved person our beloved us just allowing the breath to be comfortable as we relax a little further we're going to allow our body to relax a little more so let's allow the muscles of our face to soften our forehead the muscles around our eyes becoming a little softer can we let our jaw be relaxed the teeth slightly apart on the lips gently together tongue resting in the bottom of the mouth see if we can put our head directly above our spine the back of our neck a little bit lengthened so we have absolutely minimum effort in holding the weight of our head shoulders are soft arms are soft hands and fingers at ease in neutral our spine is straight but not tense our chest and our abdomen are upright with the minimum of effort our buttocks pelvis and thighs are supporting our upper body but not tense we let a little bit more relaxation in and our lower legs and our feet a stable base now we're feeling more physically comfortable and relaxed let's see if we can bring in mental comfort and relaxation so let's bring to mind a place where we feel completely at ease a situation we love to be in we're so engaged and alive in this place and how wonderful we feel even if it's just some way you go in your imagination the feeling is what we're after here so use your imagination in any way that makes you feel good as you recall this place or situation or activity and put yourself there as best you can allowing the feelings you get when you're there to wash over you now we're feeling more physically and mentally relaxed I'm going to invite you to become even more relaxed in a healthier state of mind by counting from 1 to 10 and as I count slowly I'm going to allow ourselves to an even more relaxed more comfortable healthier state of mind we don't have to do anything and be with the experience in the moment 1 2 3 feeling in a more relaxed healthier state of mind 4 5 6 deeper more relaxed healthier state of mind 7 8 9 10 allowing ourselves the feel-good peace and relaxation that is our inner state rest here a moment with the breath and then I'll invite you to bring to mind an interaction that you weren't happy with so bringing to mind an interaction with another person in which you would like to behave differently and what's important here is that the focus is on us from a point of view of what we would like to bring in so the focus is only with the other person because they're a trigger in us for bits that we aren't comfortable with we're not attempting to change that other person in any way they are here only as a prompt for what pops up in us so there's no blame there's no criticism of self or other there's only what we find uncomfortable and what we would like to do in an ideal world so I'll give you a moment to bring to mind an interaction maybe from your recent past doesn't have to be anything major it's just an everyday conversation that you would have liked to interact with differently in a better way so I'll give you a moment and we're going to remember as much of that interaction as we can what was said how the conversation developed what was it about that that you would like to do differently in which you were put quote marks around this unhappy with your performance on this occasion how did you feel in that moment and presumably that's in some way uncomfortable for a moment let's allow ourselves just to feel that it's safe to visit this uncomfortable feeling because we'd like to improve we'd like to create a new way of approaching the situation with the hope of the intention of bringing a new energy a new way of interacting into a similar situation so it's okay to have a look at our response if we notice ourselves veering into blame of the other person criticism of herself let's return to just noticing what happened feeling the uncomfortable and then we can start to imagine how we'd like it to go how we'd like our bit of that conversation to go even if the prompts from the other person even if the words from the other person were identical we can still choose to respond from a healthier place how would it look what would we say and how would it feel so the emphasis entirely on our part of that conversation allowing the other person the freedom to have their own thoughts opinions how would we like to behave in that situation and why what's important to us how would we why are we going to this effort what's important here what's our goal and know that when we approach similar situations we'll have a new template now this will be in the back of our mind and we may or may not succeed we are creating with our intention a new pathway a new template for our interaction so we can store that away in our memory know that that's something we would like to achieve before we leave I invite you to just embrace where you are now having set your good intentions and we forgive ourselves for falling short of our own high standards high standards are a beautiful thing but can cause us difficulties when we fall short and we don't measure up to our own expectations so for a moment let's embrace our own flaws shortcomings can we put our arms around those and know that they're there because we've been wounded in the past and carry some memories of those wounds still they cause us to behave in certain ways where we defend ourselves or expect difficulties and that drives some of our behavior so that's all okay forgivable and understandable we're doing our best and can we also extend that spirit of forgiveness and acceptance to the other person in the interaction they too have flaws wounds goals agendas but we don't understand so for a moment embracing that whole interaction as it happened knowing that you did your best it's an opportunity to learn but we need not bring any energy of blame or shame or guilt or criticism we can allow that to just melt away so having brought some love to this situation and created a new ideal scenario we can wrap that up in a neat little box put a ribbon around it and put it on the shelf in our mind for when we need it coming back to our body and our breath how do we feel now we're going to start to return to our regular waking consciousness there's no hurry I will take a few deeper breaths and notice it energizing us and I'm gonna count from one to five and we're slowly slowly returning to our waking consciousness one two starting to move our fingers and our toes our arms and legs three four five having a little stretch and gradually returning feeling wide awake and better than we did before thank you for practicing with me
