Calming the Senses

Welcome back. Today we have a meditation for calming the senses. It's inspired by the work of Gary Craftstyle and can be done anywhere, say, during your day to manage your stress. It is exceptionally useful for when you're calming down for sleep or unwinding from your day. Feel free to practice it sitting as I'm doing here or be comfortable and lie down and use it more as a contemplative practice. We'll begin by warming up the hands. Then place the palms across your eyes. The heel of the hands is on the cheekbones and the back of the knuckles press into the brow. Allow your eyes to relax remembering that the eyes are both voluntary and involuntary and choosing to let the muscles around the eyes start to become soft and warm. Open your eyes a little or not at all and move your fingertips down into your temples. Begin to slowly circle in the temples with your fingertips. Allow the breath to be deep and to move into the belly. Then walk your fingertips down to the jawline. Begin close to the ears at the hinge of the jaw and gently pressing the fingertips along the ridge of the jaw or smoothing it out with your fingers too. Whatever feels good and allows the jaw to relax. From the jaw begin to move your hands over to your earlobes and gently tug on your earlobes and let the head even wag from side to side or left and right. Eventually drop your hands down into your lap or alongside your body if you're lying down and take a few rolls of the shoulders. Allow the shoulder blades to slide on the back and turn your palms down for today's practice. Allow the eyes now to gaze just a little bit in front of you with your eyelids barely open or close the eyes if that feels comfortable. Take a moment to feel the breath particularly at the belly. Notice the rise and fall of the belly with your breath. Then guide your awareness to your eyes where your gift of sight lives. Visualize that you can choose to draw that gift of sight back up the optic nerve all the way back to the very center of your brain. You might see this gift as a warm light moving back. Now guide your awareness to your nose remembering the last good thing you smelt and slowly draw that gift of scent back to the passages of the nose back to the center of the brain. Now guide your awareness to your tongue. You might imagine the last good thing you tasted grateful for that gift of taste. Then begin to draw the gift of taste back, back, back to the very center of your brain. Now bring your awareness down into the body, down into your skin where the gift of touch lives. Feel the support underneath you grateful for the gift of touch. Beginning to draw that gift of touch up the corridors of the arms and legs of the torso, up the neck, all the way up to the center of the brain. Now bring your awareness out to your ears. You might even hear a few things in your environment grateful for the gift of hearing. Then consider drawing that gift of hearing, the sense of hearing all but for a little bit of it all the way back to the center of your brain leaving just enough hearing to follow the meditation instructions drawing the gift of hearing back. Feeling those five senses dwelling there in the center of the brain like a warm ball of light. Begin to guide that warm ball of light down the front of your spine, down through the neck, down through the chest, down through the belly and the pelvis, down even through the support below you, down to the earth below you, down to the platelet below you, all the way down, down to the molten core of the earth. Feel and see your five senses intermingling with the warm supportive molten core of the earth. And if you're resting perhaps you stay with the sensation energetically plugged in, grounded, common senses. If there's more for your day then tune me in and follow these instructions.

Begin to guide your five senses in their little ball of light up from the center of the earth, up through the levels of the planet, up through the earth below you and up through the pelvis up through the belly and through the heart, through the neck and finding that home in the center of the brain. You can now unfurl your sense of hearing out into your ears and your sense of touch spreads and repopulates the skin, revived and refreshed. Kindly set the sense of taste back into your tongue and the sense of smell back into your nose. The gift of sight, returning to the eyes, eyes washed and refreshed if needed at all. Allow the muscles around the eyes to remain soft and calm throughout the course of your day. Slowly lift your hands, cupping the eyes again and behind your hands begin to open your eyes. You're going to spread your fingers allowing a little light in and then let the arms come down. Thank you for practicing calming your senses. Namaste.