Vicki McGlew

Sarah

Ontario, Canada

You will explore a challenging memory or emotion, breathing loving awareness into the sensations in your body, and gently inquire into its message.

Recovery & Healing

Healing

Buddhism

Traditions

English

This meditation process is designed to take you into the body to process triggering emotions that have not been fully felt, seen and acknowledged in love. Using mindfulness, breathing, and loving kindness the meditator brings deep acceptance of the embodied aspect of the painful memory. It has the ability to provide great healing, relief and insight from painful memories. 

Breathing Loving Awareness

 So to begin with we're going to take three nice slow deep diaphragmatic breaths in through the nose, breathing down, filling up the lungs and drawing in enough air that as the diaphragm pulls the air into the lungs feels like it's pressing into the belly and slowly releasing that air another two really lengthening and letting go on the out breath last one and then allowing your rate and depth of breathing to just flow at its natural pace let me take a minute to notice our experience however you're sitting or lying just bring your awareness into different parts of your body check in with yourself how does it feel in my feet right now how does it feel in my legs right now in my hips and groin my belly my chest my back how does it feel in my hands right now how are my arms feeling shoulders neck that's my head feeling right now and once we've taken our diaphragmatic breaths and checked in through the body just briefly checking in and feeling into these different parts of the body I invite you to bring to mind something that's recent and significant but something that you feel safe to explore that triggered you the aroused emotion and groundedness increased your heart rate changed your thinking and your behavior maybe a personal conflict maybe an incident maybe even an argument it's okay if something comes to mind from the past as well if there's nothing recent you might find that a conflict or a stressful moment or a trigger from the past that's significant for you comes into your mind and if you haven't had anything in particular come to your mind I invite you to just stay with the process and feel and breathe through your body as we go along if you have had something called to mind take a moment to really see and feel what it was like in that memory what happened in that moment without getting into the story and as much as possible staying with visuals or sensations what was the trigger in that moment and as you bring your awareness to and get in touch with this trigger from the past I invite you to look within your body to see where it feels most obviously located where the emotion behind that memory is most obviously seated and if you didn't have a memory come to mind or if it's unclear to you where it's most obviously seated you can just use your intuition and see if there's a part of your body that might be calling out to you for attention more than the rest of your body is and once you've had the memory and the sensation come to your awareness I invite you to really turn towards and feel into the part of your body where that sensation and that emotion and that memory seems most obvious and relevant some really common places for this might be the belly or the heart or the throat but there's no right or wrong answer here we're just gently and curiously inquiring into our physical experience of this emotion and of this memory however if you've had something clear come up for you or if you've chosen the part of your body that you want to focus on invite you to once again turn towards and feel into the sensation and start to look at what the qualities of this sensation are you don't have to go into a dialogue about it or a story but I'm I'll make a few suggestions we can feel and see whether it's a light feeling or a heavy feeling whether it's dense or fine or subtle you can see how big it is is that the size of a $2 coin or a basketball or maybe it's expands it's within your body but it also expands to outside of your body the feeling might feel like it's in movement or motion and we're just bringing our awareness to it very curiously kindly noticing these different qualities you might even have a color come to mind and these different qualities may also be in flux the shape the size the density the color they might be morphing and moving even the location it might feel like it's moving and certainly as we bring our awareness kindly into this part of the body the movement will become obvious and sometimes as we lean in and feel in like this it can also seem sort of empty or numb or like there's a lack of quality to the experience we don't have to be deterred by that we can sit in that spacious numb experience sit with the uncertainty really lean into it and as we're feeling this part of our body I invite you to start breathing into that part of your body and you should imagine that with every in breath that you take the air comes down into your body and moves into the center of that sensation and as you breathe out that you breathe out from that part of your body and that the breath comes up from the sensation and out through your nose so at this point we're just noticing feeling and breathing with the sensation that is at the center of this memory of this trigger and we can start to ask a couple of questions and I want you to imagine that you're very tenderly asking these questions to the sensation as though the sensation had a life of its own and a simple way to start might be is there anything that you want to tell me and then we maintain our awareness and our breathing within that sensation and we patiently observe you might notice some words come up you might notice some images come up or you might notice that nothing in particular comes up or you might notice that the sensation starts to transform and change and tingle and there's no right or wrong response our only job is to continue to tenderly observe and breathe with and feel this part of our body just be open to whatever comes another question might be is there anything that you need quite often these sensations and emotions are there to tell us that there's an unmet need so we just feel and listen and watch and as we're watching and feeling and listening we can also imagine that the breath that we're breathing into our body and down into that emotion and then out from that emotion up and out of the body that this breath is actually a quality of loving awareness we're breathing awareness neutral and non-judgmental into the sensation into the memory and the experience and we have the intention that this awareness is also infused with love it's a loving awareness that it's benevolent and kind and safe and that it wants the best for us and it can help if we want to deepen the experience a little bit we can start to deepen our breath a little bit we can slow it down and we can deepen the breath so that we're breathing nice slow deep consistent breaths of loving awareness in and out of the sensation keenly aware and interested in what that sensation is and how it shows up and what it might have to tell us or teach us and after a while we may come to a sense that this feeling has been fully seen and heard and felt or that it has been seen and heard and felt enough and so again we can speak to the sensation and say thank you thank you for being with me we allow it to be there as long as it needs to be there and we honor it as one part of what we are and we let it know any time it needs to show itself communicate with us teach us something that will be there willing to feel and see and love it and if you like you can take one or both hands and place it on that part of your body with a sentiment of love and gratitude and then to finish the practice we let go of any specific area of awareness any activity of the mind and we just allow ourselves to be as we are for a moment and we can take in one last nice deep slow diaphragmatic breath through the nose into the belly back out again and then we can notice how we're feeling after this practice after this exercise we can start to wriggle our fingers and toes feel the seat and the ground below us gently opening our eyes observing the space that we're in and it can also help to rub your hands together rub them until you start to feel the warmth generated in your hands if you feel you need to rub them a bit faster together once they feel nice and warm gently placing them on your eyes and just feeling that warmth on your closed eyes and then gently taking them off and opening your eyes back up again