All right, all right. Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Stephen Dunn with CORE Therapy and Pilates, and it’s our Mindful Movement Monday class, and in today’s class Megan is going to teach a meditation class, and right now we have a new Pilates reformer class on Monday nights at …?
5:30.
At 5:30 Monday nights, and it’s a Pilates reformer class, and it’s a meditation class, and it’s a new class that we’ve had about three, or four weeks now, and Megan’s going to teach, has been teaching it, and this is a little kind of class to go along with this, but something that can be done in sitting I believe, so with that said I’m going to get out of the way, and let her take over.
[Megan] Hey guys. Today I wanted to go over a little bit of a grounding meditation. We talk about a lot of mindful movement here, and what I want to do is, I want to kinda hone in on the mindfulness part. In order to kind of address our bodies, and the motion that we want to get when we’re moving, we need to kind of get into the body, and feel what’s going on around there. The first thing I want to do is, we’re going to do a little bit of a breathing exercise to start, and we’ve done this in the past for other things, but we’re just kinda use that as a lead into this meditation today.
I want you guys just to get very comfortable on your chairs. You can rock back, and forth, and just feel like those sitz bones are equally weighted, and then, just settle in, and then, I want you to notice the contact of your foot on the floor so you can kind of move the feet around, but we want to feel like our feet have nice contact with the floor. Let’s start by taking five deep breaths into the belly. We’re going to take a really deep breath in, like we’re filling up a balloon, then I want you to do a hot air exhale, so you’ve got to make the verbal “ha” as you exhale out.
We’re breathing into the belly, and exhale. We want to get all the air out of the belly. Let’s do that three more times guys, take a deep, inhale in, and exhale, good. As we’re doing these breaths, I just want you to become aware of the body on the chair. Last deep breath in, and exhale. The next thing we’re going to do is, we’re going to stimulate the vagus nerve, which will help with kind of that calming down. I want you to take a deep inhale, and on your exhale we’re gonna twist around the right side, like we’re going to go over the right shoulder, and exhale as we’re here. Good, come back to center, inhale and exhale.
We’re going to twist around the left side, and as we’re twisting and exhaling, I want you to feel like you’re getting all of the air out, so inhale back to the center, and going back to the right. Find that spinal articulation, and really that deep exhale. We’re going to come back to center, and one more time on the left side. Good, and let’s bring ourselves back to center, and I invite you to close your eyes. If you don’t want to close your eyes that’s okay, you can just kind of keep them a little bit hazed open, like you’re peering off into the distance.
We’re closing our eyes, and I want you guys just to feel the connection of the body, we’re taking deep inhales and exhales, just following that breath. Pay attention to the air as you take a deep inhale in, and you expand the ribs, and on the exhale we want to feel like everything, all the tension, all the tightness that we’re holding is releasing. We’re just going to do a body scan right quick, so first noting if there’s any place, or area where there is a specific amount of tightness, or you don’t feel the energy going through, and kind of you can, what you can do is you can follow your breath, and see does that breath stop anywhere? Or, are we breathing into our whole body?
And then, I’ll let you finish up with that body scan, and then, we’re going to bring awareness back into the heart area, and as we breathe in, and out I want you to feel like you can notice the blood in the heart pumping, so paying attention to that for just a moment, becoming aware of the blood in our heart, and then, I want you to watch that blood as it expands through your chest, and through your shoulders, and this energy that we’re following, we want to allow it to relax the body, and ease any tension, so then we’re going to follow that blood as it goes down the shoulders, and into the arms. It’s going to go down into the upper arms through the elbows, moving into the forearms.
It’s going into the wrist, it’s gonna bring notice to the palm of your hand, and also the back of your hand, and we’re going to bring that attention, and that awareness to our thumbs, feeling the blood as they enter our thumbs, going in to the pointer finger, the middle finger, the ring finger, and finally the pinkies. Then I want you to follow that blood as it goes back up to the heart, and then, moving from the heart we’re going to go up into the chest, and to the back of the throat, the front of the throat, moving up into the jaw, into the cheeks, up into the eyes, and the eye sockets, and to the temples and forehead.
Again, when our awareness comes, we’re just releasing everything that’s there, any tension or tightness. Then we’re going to bring our awareness to our scalp, our skull, and then, let’s take a moment, and bring awareness to our mouth. I want you guys to take a second, and make any adjustments that you need. A lot of times we hold tension in our jaw, so let’s open up our jaw just slightly, and then, I want you to take your tongue off of the roof of the mouth, and notice what happens there, so then we’re bringing the awareness of the blood in our veins back down to our heart, and then, it’s g going to move down into our ribs, and into all of our organs following our intestines.
It’s going to settle in the hips, and in the pelvis, and then, on your next breath we’re going to travel from the pelvis down into the thighs through the knees, into the curves, and finally into the feet. Let’s bring awareness to the top of the foot, and then, bring awareness of the blood going to the bottom of our foot, and moving into our toes, starting with our big toe, and then, going into the second toe, and the third toe, the fourth toe, and finally the pinky toe. Now, we’re going to keep the awareness in our foot, and I want you to visualize that we have roots growing out of our foot into the ground, and they’re going to go deep, deep into the ground. It’s going to go pass any structure that you might be in through the foundation of the house that you’re sitting in, and into the soil below.
And, we want to feel as it spreads, and it routes, and it connects with the earth around us. I just want you to tap into that for a second, and feel that out. Then I want you to feel like you’re making a connection with the earth, and that your breathing is going to copy the earth’s breathing, so whatever your body feels like that it wants to breathe to allow you to connect with the earth below us, I want you to go ahead, and find that now, and just follow that. We want to feel like we’re pulling the earth’s energy up through those roots that we have created, and we draw it up through the foundation, and through the floor, and then, it’s gonna move up into our feet. It’s going to travel up our legs, and then it’s going to find our core, or our root, and we want to keep drawing the energy up towards the crown of the head.
When you feel like you’ve got the energy at the crown of your head, I want you to let it extend out to the arms, and again, finding that grounding connection with the earth, and keeping the breath that helps find you grounded, and then, whenever you’re ready I want you to become aware of the noises that are going on around you, becoming aware of your sitz bones, and how they’re seated on the chair, becoming aware of the temperature of the air surrounding you, and finally bringing your attention back to yourself in the room that you are in, and then, whenever you’re ready I invite you to open your eyes, and this is a good chance to do any stretches that the body wants.
Everyone here might have a little bit different of a stretch, but you’re going to do whatever it is that your body is asking for you to do right now, and it’s going to be your own, it’s going to be yours, it’s going to be unique to you, and just finding that, and what this is, is this is bringing your awareness into the body, and listening what the body is trying to tell you. I hope that this has kind of brought you back down for the day, let you become centered, and grounded, and ready for your week moving forward, and we do classes similar to this, but with some movement every Monday night at 5:30, so we have to see you there. Thanks guys.
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