Open and Alive

(swooshing waves) Namaste. Thank you so much for joining me. We often sit for long periods of time so I thought it might be nice to share a standing practice that's short but really alivens and awakens your energy. So if you have been sitting or traveling or whatever, these are things that you can do in airports, by the side of the car or by your desk at work if you have a few minutes. So we'll start by stepping our feet at least hip width or wider if that feels good so just feel into what really works for you and we're going to invoke the imagination now by visualizing a big beautiful tree, a fruit tree.

Now, it can be any kind of fruit you imagine. Maybe a strawberry kiwi or something that doesn't even exist but we're going to hold that visual image of this tree that's full of fruit and begin to pick that fruit so reaching up, clasping the fruit in your hand and it's hand and eye coordination so you want to gaze at the fruit as you reach up and as you drop it down into a basket in front of you. In the old days, we picked all of our own food many many years ago and now that we go to supermarkets, we don't do this movement quite as often. Some of you do grow your own food which is wonderful but if you don't, this is a nice way to activate a lot of those same stretching movements that come as we pick and stretch and reach and hold and you may even begin to smell the scent of the fruit as it passes your nose or if you want to stop and take a bite and visualize. So we're adding that additional activation of the brain and visualization here awakening the meridians in the body and you can start to reach out and maybe over to the side of the tree and lengthening, pressing down through the feet.

Feel the fingers reaching and clasping. And breathing. And perhaps we go a little further across. And then maybe we reach a little bit higher to the very top of the tree. You may even want to come up on to your tippy toes as you find those last few pieces at the very top of the tree.

Strengthening the ankles. Good, we're going to reach. It helps to hold your focus point when you're doing a balancing pose so I'm gazing and finding my focus point upward but it can be also down below at the Earth. Just a few more pieces. Reaching high, feeling nice and warm and awaken and then we'll drop it all in front of us into the basket and with a soft bent knee, we'll exhale as the arms come back.

Inhale as they come forward. And some people like to do this in a really grand ways if they're downhill skiing and really getting a lot of momentum and movement. You can do it in a very gentle way so see what feels good to your body. And this opens the chest, the shoulders. It also activates the thymus gland which is the gland of the immune system.

Exhaling back, inhaling forward. So in the thymus, that's where the T cells are made that fight disease so we want to keep our thymus alive and awake and this helps to open that area, really get it activated. And five. Four. Three.

Two, one more time. And then taking a moment to tap and tapping, there's many different ways you can tap but we're going to start with just below the collarbones. By the way, this can be helpful when you're experiencing trauma or panic attacks. Tapping around the top of the collarbone, the different places on the face, even the space right between the pinkie and the ring finger here or a karate chop can be a really good. Tapping if you're starting to feel a stress response.

But try this, try tapping around the collarbones, breathing deeply and along with a deep long breath that's very calming. Very soothing. And then we'll tap the thymus itself which is above the breastbone. It's protected by the bone here but feel beneath it. It's one of the glands of the endocrine system that has its own small chakra.

It's one of the minor chakras. Not one of the major ones. And the color that's often associated with the thymus and with this little or smaller chakra is the color of turquoise blue like the ocean outside. So lastly, after activating it, waking it up a bit, we'll take one hand over the other and we'll bathe the thymus with the beautiful light of turquoise blue. Your whole body moving into a peaceful harmonious state.

Feel that light expanding like a flow of water washing through the body rejuvenating, restoring, bringing clarity to everything it touches. And gently opening your eyes now. Namaste.