Earth Shorty

(wave sound) Welcome to the Earth Shorty. This is a great alternative to a seated meditation practice. I find that it's a really helpful practice when we hit the winter season and those long stretches where it's dark, you're not experiencing very much light. where it's dark, you're not experiencing very much light. I personally found living in Seattle a long time to be really a heavy experience to be in the winter and this was a way for me to practice meditation in a way that helped me maintain my energy level throughout the stit.

So instead of sitting we're going to stand, all you need is a place that level to put your feet on, and I'm gonna invite you to put your heels together and let your toes fan out away from each other, so as you look toward your horizon line, gradually bend your ankles to help bring the weight down evenly into your feet, and then when your feet are touching the ground let your hands just slide up to the navel, and then slide your hands just a little bit lower than the navel, so you're actually holding onto the lower abdomen. And then if you're comfortable here, we would close the eyes, or if you were lowering your gaze, and look down over the tip of the nose, just make sure that the head isn't drifting forward of the spine. So however you chose to be with your eyes, I'll close my eyes, and just start to come back down to the feet, where I'm contacting the Earth and trying to spread the feet into the ground. It requires sometimes some navigating around, there's some circumference of the feet to feel where you really land, and in the attempt to land, just like a plant grows, first we send a tap root down into the Earth. Just imagine you're sending a taproot into that stable earth underneath you.

When that's established, then we begin to bring awareness and growth up above the surface of the soil. So if you can maintain your firmness in the bones of your feet, ongoing evenness in the feet, in the bones of your feet, ongoing evenness in the feet, so that they're a primary anchor, and then as we settle more into the feet, just imagine the solid, stable energy coming up through the shin bones. Firming our lower legs, and then bring your attention to the knees and the hollowness in the back of the knees that starts to engage the bone tissue in your femurs, we wanna stand that's engaging the bones of the femurs, we try to imagine that the bones of the legs are in such great alignment, that they support you in relaxing your muscles more. So the practice is more cooling and calming than something that's creating excessive heat, making you uncomfortable. Find the right amount of bend in the ankle, downward pressure in the feet, start working the upper bone, your femur, largest bone in the body, your femur, largest bone in the body, and try to let that bone support you.

Try to sense and feel the shape of the head of the femur, the neck of the femur, and how your pelvis is sitting over these bones. Notice if you need to make any shift in the bowl of the pelvis to bring more space, more length into your lower back. You can imagine a little weight at the bottom of your sacrum, the bottom of your coxis that's slightly rooting you again to the Earth. From that point, let your awareness start to walk up the length of your spine, the unique shape of your spine. Bringing a little bit of light to the spine as you walk your awareness up toward the thoracic spine.

Sense and feel as you get up to the rib cage, just let your awareness, imagination and breath wrap all the way around the shape of the rib cage and all the bones. Until you can sense again a connection to the front of your chest, your sternum bone, your breast bone. Let's see if you can soften all the organs behind the ribs. As you breath in, let your awareness rise up to the top of your breast bone, out to your collar bones and down the arms into the forearms and hands. Start to feel the belly relax into the palms when you're breathing in.

The sense of the belly drifting away from the palms as you breathe out. As we relax more into the belly, just notice how that's helping you relax a little more into your throat and tongue, how it's all connected. Bringing your awareness up to the cervical spine, lengthening up through the neck, until we sense and feel up into the head. You can release your lower jaw from the upper palate. Sense and feel into all the bones that make up the shape of your head, all the way up to top crown of the skull.

of your head, all the way up to top crown of the skull. And so our attention stays deep when we bring our awareness to the bones of the body, a place where we're most like the Earth, most dense, most stable, is in the bones. So just another moment with the ankles bent downwardly pressing through the feet while aligning the bones to relax the muscles. And ever so slowly as we start to come out press down through the feet, straighten both legs, and then let your arms relax at your side as your eyes open if they closed, heel toe your feel a little bit wider apart. Mm, I hope that's helpful, thank you.