English

When we begin work with our internal systems, a key that is often talked about is the need for capital "S" self-energy. This meditation uses a framework to help listeners build self-energy, and assess how the process of building is going. This meditation is designed to be repeated for a couple of days in a row.

IFS: Increasing Self-Energy

I want you to take a moment and allow yourself to close your eyes and begin to go inside of yourself. See if you can match your breathing with the count four six eight. Breathing in for four, holding for six, and exhaling for eight. As you begin to do this, following this count, begin to take some time to observe what is happening internally and where you are at right now. See if you can notice what types of thoughts are moving around, what feelings might be making themselves known, what sensations are drawing your attention, and see if you can also just any impulses that are coming up as you continue in this breathing practice. Now take a moment and see if you can begin to connect with your self-energy. This self-energy is always with you, but it often fades into the backgrounds as parts with their absolute best intentions take over our lives, situations, and relationships. See if you can begin to feel this energy, this energy that has an element of curiosity to it. Use this curiosity to begin to investigate those questions that we had asked before. See if you can begin to find an internal position that allows things to move through you just like a river. Also noticing with curiosity anything that might feel stuck. As you continue walking this path of building self-energy, see if you can begin to feel a deeper sense of calm come in. A calm that matches the parts of you that feel the safest. Taking a moment just to connect and notice those parts. For many of us with challenges in our lives, we might often forget about these parts or wonder if they exist at all. If you find this to be the case for you, see if it's useful to recall the last time that you just felt relaxed. Even if it was 10 to 20% of that sense of relaxation. Maybe that came from a conversation or a walk or a moment in nature. And as you call this in, notice that you're just using your internal muscle to build the self-energy inside of you. See this self-energy growing and getting stronger. This isn't an energy that needs to take over or have its way all the time. It's an energy that knows how to balance self while feeling a deep sense of connectedness with the world around it. See if you can notice that now. How the self-energy doesn't need to take over but instead empowers you to feel an even deeper sense of connection to the world around you. Often as people talk about encountering this sense, this side of self-energy, they notice that they can begin to swim in the depths of relationship because they're starting to come into contact with a deeper sense of being, but doesn't just need to react to things, but at the same time knows what it wants and what it needs relationally. And as you continue to go deeper into this sense of self, see if you can sense courage coming forward. You've had the courage to go this deep inside of yourself thus far to meet and start exploring what's alive for you within this meditation. And just notice how you can recall this sense of courage coming more and more alive in front of you. It's like having to be able to meet the storms of life head-on, to be in that position, to send the ship through the rough waters, to still know how the sails work and how to navigate and how to find the land that you're looking for following just the light of the stars. Pause for a moment and notice your body. Notice how your feet might be in contact with the ground or just even how your back is, the nature of your breath, and continue to just call in this self-energy without a need for that energy to work one way or the other. See if you can begin to see this self-energy, and maybe you might even begin to notice that you begin to see your life in clearer ways. And also notice how this self-energy is filled to the brim with self-compassion. Often we might see our patterns with clarity, but having compassion for ourselves is a struggle. At this point, if you notice that this might be a challenge for yourself, see if you can have an outside figure come and meet you with this sense of boundless compassion. Maybe that figure is somebody famous or somebody that matters a great deal to you, but regardless of who you decide on, notice how they are filled with boundless compassion for you. And perhaps this figure can even offer you one drop of the sweetest energy of boundless compassion, and just feel it as almost like honey meeting your lips and taking it in. As you swallow this honey, see if you can begin to notice how much more clarity is coming into your life and into your system. Notice the sense that your body can become even more solid. Notice how this energy can follow you even into the rest of your day, and just notice how brave you are to sit like this, meeting your self-energy and getting to know it on such a deeper level. See if you can notice that the parts of you that begin to take a backseat as you avoid less and meet things more. And as you notice these things, we're just gonna take a moment and we're gonna rate zero through ten, some of our qualities of self-energy. Zero being not strong at all, ten being fully strong. And you can rate these qualities out loud, you can whisper them to yourself, you can even just take a moment to write it down. And there's no sense or intention of having to judge or needing to do any one of these qualities perfect, but we're just getting a sense of working with our self-energy, of building it, and getting a sense of how that building process is going. Okay, just feel into these words and rate each on a scale of zero to ten. Connectedness, calm, creativity, courage, curiosity, confidence, clarity, compassion. See if you can just notice what you rated each one of these things, trusting that your rating is accurate for where you're at in this moment today. And when you feel ready, take a nice deep inhale. As you breathe out, allow this meditation to close, coming back into the rest of your day.