Nurturing Resilience

Welcome to the practice. I'm going to do a guided meditation so I would like for you to find a comfortable position. You can either be lying on your back, maybe with something underneath your knees, a pillow or a bolster, something underneath your head. The main thing is to find comfort. You can also lie on one side. If you're on your side, bring your knees a little up towards your chest. If your head is tilting down, you can bring a pillow underneath your ear so that your neck is in line with the rest of your spine. As you're finding your way towards comfort, really bring your intention inside to your physical layers and take the time to find perfect ease in the pose. This is a pose. Shavasana is a pose. It's a very advanced pose. See if you can find your position of complete comfort. Maybe adjusting the legs a little wider or a little narrower, taking the arms closer to the hips or further away, wiggling and adjusting to find the place where your shoulders can relax completely. Your hips can rest heavily in towards the earth. If you're on your side, you may even want to bring an extra pillow under your top arm so your top shoulder can completely relax. Do whatever you need to to find your yummiest position. And as you fine-tune and adjust your way in, your body may give you that signal of oh right there, right, right, right there. That's where you can completely surrender into the pose. Completely surrender into the support of the floor. And as your body, your physical layers settle into complete comfort, now you can start to turn your attention and your intention towards your emotional layers.

As you tune in towards your emotional layers, your energy is going to follow your intention. You can breathe into the emotional body, taking breath into any areas in the body where you might feel some emotional tension, taking breath into any areas in the body where you may feel some emotional ease, taking your intention towards your emotional layers, whatever that means to you in this moment. And breathe in and out of your emotional being. And you may feel and realize that the emotional body and the physical body are not separate, they are intertwined and interconnected. So as you breathe into your emotional layers, you may feel your physical body wanting to shift and adjust and you can let that movement happen. You may feel your physical body wanting to sigh with an exhale. You can let that sound vibrate all of your layers. Ahh. Good. And as you tune into all of these layers of yourself, you can bring a little awareness, bring our intention to how we take this body mind, how we experience our body mind out in the world and how the pressures of the world can be uprooting and ungrounding.

And from this place of safety, can we imagine, can we experience those pressures that we feel in our day-to-day world? Those pressures actually bring us into more a sensation of grounding. Just like gravity, the pressure of gravity draws us into this grounding in the earth that then lets our hearts rise and our head rise. The pressure outside that we often carry puts us inside that that pressure can make us strong in our root. Strongly connected to the earth that's supporting us. Strongly connected to ourselves. And in the middle of that pressure, can we find self-acceptance? That pressure lets us ground into ourselves so that we have self-acceptance and self-love. This pressure we're feeling actually helps us blossom into stronger beings. The pressure of the outside world is our opportunity to practice self-love, self-acceptance. And when we can have that routine of self-love, it allows us to be truly strong. It allows us to be soft. We're finding softness in the midst of pressure. Finding self-love when those pressures outside or the pressures that we have embodied, the stories that we have taken into ourselves, when those can help ground us into something more true, more real, more us. And we can soften for not fighting those outer messages, the outer world. The outer world brings us more into ourselves, more into our center, more into the joyous truth of who we are, way deep down into loving who we are right here, right now.

The next five breaths. I'd like you on the inhale to breathe in, I love, on the exhale, myself. I love, myself. I love, myself. I love, myself. Let that meaning, the resonance of those words, vibrate through your bones, echo across your ribs through your heart. Thank you.

Feeling the resonance of self-acceptance and self-love, it's like a very rich soil, a rich foundation for all of us to rest in. If you're resting on your back and can imagine that vibration supporting you, resting on your side, that vibration supporting you, your foundation, self-love, self-acceptance, I love, myself. That is the ground that allows the heart to open out in the world, allows the heart to open to yourself first, to your family. You can take the pressures of the world with a soft and open heart, with the resilience to bend, to move under pressure, staying connected to our truth, letting go of any effort with your breath, just resting into a deep relaxation, resting into this warm, nourishing ground of love. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gently, slowly start to deepen your breath again.

And bringing a little gentle movement into your fingers, into your toes. If you're resting on your side, you can stay there for a moment. If you're on your back, you can slowly start to bring one knee at a time, a little towards your chest. Then roll your way onto whichever side feels comfortable, bringing the head pillow up underneath your ear to support your neck. Then from your side, let your top shoulder roll a little forward and press that hand down to the ground.

Roll a little forward and press down slowly, rolling your way up your spine. Your head's the last thing that will come up. Then come to find a comfortable seated position. You may want to bring a cushion or a bolster or a blanket underneath your hips. Sitting up tall, feel your sitz bones at the bottom of the pelvis, connecting in with the pillow or with the earth.

Bringing the shoulders gently back and the head floating easily on top of the spine. Then bring one hand over your heart and one hand over your hata, your center, just below your belly button. You can allow your chin to tuck slightly towards your chest just a little bit. And bring your intention once again, bringing your intention and your energy to your hands. Imagine breathing into your hands, letting that energy resonate into your hata and into your heart.

You can breathe in the resonance of self-acceptance and self-love. Breathing out whatever we're ready to let go of. Bring in the heart and hata. And then slowly releasing your hands down to your legs, bringing the eyes up to the horizon. Hold your palms together in front of your heart.

Thank you.