Release physical tension and reclaim your peace by setting boundaries and understanding emotional triggers.

Health & Happiness

Grounded

Mindfulness Meditation

Buddhism

Mindfulness

Traditions

English

This practice is designed to reset and recentre your nervous system and then untangle latent judgements and people-pleasing tendencies in order to make room for personal freedom, compassion and conscious relating. It involves releasing tension from the body, relaxation, deep breathing, inquiry and reflection. 

Not Taking Things Personally Meditation

 So I invite you to take a moment to stop whatever it is you're doing and close your eyes, despite whatever you're feeling, and to bring awareness into your body and into your breathing. I want you to ask yourself a question. What core emotion am I most feeling right now? Just to land on one core emotion. And the next question is, where in my body do I most feel that emotion right now? Now that we've explored that, I invite you to do an exercise with me where we will tense and release our body. And when I invite you to tense, I invite you to do it in a way where you're releasing and expressing all the tension that you have, but without hurting yourself. And I want you to tense all through your body, fingers, toes, face, everywhere that's possible. So the first thing we do is relax your body as much as possible, and then I invite you to slowly tense it up, starting with fingers and toes, tensing up arms, legs, body, and face, tensing, tensing, tensing, tensing, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tensing, tensing, tight, tight, tight, tensing, tensing, tight, tight, tight, tight. And then slowly release and relaxing bit by bit until the entire body is back to fully relaxed. And breathe. And then one more time, slowly tensing the body, the fingers, toes, feet, hands, arms, torso, face, tensing, tensing, tensing, tensing, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. And then slowly release and relax. Feel what it feels like to relax your whole body after tensing and breathe. And then last one, slowly tensing, starting with fingers and toes, feet and hands, arms and legs, torso, face, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. And then slowly relaxing face, hands, feet, arms, legs, and breathe. It feels like having your whole body relaxed. And then I invite you to breathe all air out of your body fully, and then a nice slow deep in-breath into the belly, and a longer slow out-breath all the way out from the belly, letting go of all tension in the body. I want you to do this breathing at your own pace, but they need to be slow, deep, full in-breaths, and make sure the out-breath is even longer than the in-breath. And keep that going over and over and over for the rest of the practice. Nice, slow, deep in-breath into the belly, filling right up down into the belly. And then on the out-breath, slowly releasing from the belly, up and out, inviting any tension to leave you with the out-breath. And whilst you continue to do that breathing cycle, I'm going to say some words that I want you to repeat back to yourself as you're slowly and deeply breathing in and out. My trigger is not my fault. It is the conditioned result of the sum of my life experiences. I am doing the best that I can with what I have to be happy and to avoid suffering. My trigger is my responsibility though. I am the only one that can fully know my feelings and needs in this moment. I am the only one that can slow down my own breathing. I am the only one that can take action or ask for help towards meeting my own needs. I am the only one that has the ability to choose my own words and actions. I deserve kindness and compassion from myself. The person that I feel triggered with is also triggered. Their trigger is not my fault and their trigger is not their fault. It is the conditioned result of the sum of their life experiences. They are doing the best that they can with what they have to be happy and avoid suffering. I repeat, their trigger is not my fault and their happiness is not my responsibility. Anything that they say towards me or about me is the conditioned result of the sum of their life experiences. Just because they are suffering, their trigger does not mean that I have to. I have the power to set my own boundaries with this person and they deserve compassion and kindness as much as anyone else. I only have a responsibility to my own feelings, my own needs and the integrity of my own words and my own actions. I can always stop, breathe, feel and ask myself, who am I being right now? Is that the person that I want to be? What am I going to do about it?