David Ko

Julia

Helena

Explore your physical balance by shifting weight and noticing how your body adjusts to stay grounded.

Science

Stress & Anxiety

Psychology

Stress

Guided Imagery

Visualization

English

This is the 1st meditation in my Embody course to help you get in touch with your body gently and progressively.  It's a standing meditation in which you bring your full attention to your posture and your balance as you make changes to your position. You learn to focus on your physical sensations of posture and notice how your body adjusts to maintain your balance as you make gradual movements.  The course is designed for you to practice this until it becomes easy and you want a new challenge.

Embody -01 - Posture & Balance

 Welcome to this embodiment meditation on posture and balance. This meditation is best done standing up. I'll ask you to get up onto your feet right now. Just stand naturally for a moment as you normally would. Pay close attention to the bottoms of your feet. Notice how your weight is distributed across your two feet. Do you lean more weight into your left foot or your right foot? Or do you distribute your weight evenly across the two? Explore a little bit with leaning your weight over onto your right foot and back over onto your left foot. Swinging back and forth slowly redistributing your weight and just notice what that feels like. And as you move from side to side distributing your weight over to the left and over to the right. Just allow yourself to settle in to what feels right and comfortable to have a balanced and stable posture for you. Just feeling and sensing the distribution of your balance across your two feet. Let yourself glide into the most balanced and stable position you can find. When you get to that balanced place turn your attention to how your weight is distributed from side to side within each foot. Are you standing more towards the outside of a foot, of your left foot? Or do you turn your weight in towards your big toe? When you do the same for your right foot do you stand with your weight distributed more towards the outside of that foot? Or turned in toward the big toe? Or perhaps you stand evenly across each side of each foot. Distributing that weight in a balanced way across each side of your foot. Let yourself play a little bit with that moving to one side of the foot and then the other side of the foot. And just notice how your muscles respond to that. You'll probably feel shifts in your calves and your shins. Some of the muscles in your feet. As you play with the weight distribution left to right within each foot. You may notice other shifts higher up in your thighs or your hips. Possibly even your core or your torso. And arms responding to that as well to keep you balanced. Just notice what your body does as you make these little shifts. Just paying attention. And next let's notice how you distribute your weight from the heel to the ball to the toes of your feet. When you stand in a balanced steady way where does your weight want to fall? Is it more on your heels? More on the balls of your foot? Or more on your toes? As before I'll get you to explore those differences by bringing your weight to your heels. Moving it forward to the balls of your feet. And up onto your toes. And back to your balls of your feet. And back to your heels. Just playing with that weight distribution back and forth. And again noticing what sensations accompany that shift. Do you notice shifts in your other joints? Your knees, your hips, your waist? The position of your arms, the position of your head? As you sway back and forth from your heels to your balls to your toes of your feet. And again just let yourself settle into the place where it's most comfortable and most balanced. So that you could stand perfectly still. Let's go back for a moment to shifting our weight from left foot to right foot. Left foot to right foot. And as you're doing this workout which foot feels more secure? Which foot is your dominant foot that prefers to have your weight on it? If you were going to stand on one leg. And let your weight settle more on that foot. And see if you can balance your weight really into that foot just letting it drop down so it feels really solid. With your other foot still on the floor but not bearing any weight. And just notice what that feels like. And I'm going to ask you with the foot that's not bearing weight. Just rise it up so that your toes only are on the ground. And if you're able to do this while maintaining balance you may need to put your arms out to do so. Just lift that non-dominant foot off the ground for a moment. And let's pay attention to what's happening in the weight bearing leg. Do you notice the muscles responding? Can you feel shifts and adjustments in that weight bearing leg? As you maintain your stability and your balance? And what is the rest of your body doing to help you stay standing on one leg? Let's just gently put the foot down that was raised on the toes. And then down to the heel and just gradually bring your weight back so that you're standing more evenly on both feet. And then let's ground our weight into the other foot. So that all weight is on that non-dominant foot and your dominant foot is still on the ground but not holding any of your weight. Take your attention to how that feels different to having your weight on your dominant foot. And then if this feels right and stable for you, lift up your dominant foot so only the toes are on the ground. And notice what that feels like in your non-dominant foot holding more of your weight and more of your balance. And if you can do this maintaining stability, just lift that dominant foot off the ground. And pay attention to the sensations in your weight bearing leg and foot. Do you notice muscle activation, adjustments, movement? What is the rest of your body doing? What is this doing to your feeling of stability? Can you see any differences in the way that this foot and your body with it work to maintain your stable posture? Just notice. And then gradually bring that dominant foot back down to the ground. And even your weight out across your two feet. And just take a moment, shake your body a little bit, enjoying that feeling of groundedness into the floor. And that concludes this meditation on embodiment of posture and balance. Thank you.