Cara Bradley
Mindfulness Teacher, Speaker, and Author
Guided Meditation:
Standing up, separate your feet. If you’re in a place where you can be barefoot, all the better. We’re going to do the same synchronized body-mind warm-up that we did last session. So here we go: inhale, reach arms forward and up. Spin palms open and exhale, moving arms out and down. Synchronize your breath and movement. Inhale reach up. Exhale reach down.
Inhale, reach up, and on your exhale, sway to your right. Inhale, move back up to center, arms high. Exhale and sway left with a big reach. Inhale, back up to center. Now exhale and sway to your right. Try to take the whole breath to get there. It’s in this way that we synchronize the body and breath. You could even do this move in your office.
Inhale, reach up, exhale and bring your hands to your knees like a baseball player. Pull your bum back in space here. Breathe in. And breathe out. Now reach your arms back. On your inhale we’re going to reach up and slightly back. Now exhale, bending your knees, and reach your arms back. This doesn’t have to be too deep. Focus on synchronizing your breath with this dynamic movement. Reach both arms all the way up and then release your arms by your side.
Standing upright, lift your right leg up and hold with your knee at 90 degrees in front of you. Rest your gaze on something in front of you that is not moving. This will help you work toward balance. If any of this is too much, touch your toes down to the floor and try again. You may notice your upheld leg or foot start to move around a bit. That’s OK. Bring your attention to your left foot, firm on the floor. Just bringing awareness there can help to fire some muscles. Now engage your left quadriceps and your left glutes (the muscles in your butt cheek). Draw your low belly at the back toward the spine and imagine you’ve got a corset around your waist. This is stabilizing your body. Stay right here. Steadying your eyes also helps to stabilize your mind. Let’s take three breaths. And now release your foot down to the floor.
Shift weight to your right leg now and lift your left knee up. Again, returning your toes to the floor is OK if you’re feeling unsteady at any time. Keep your gaze steady. Now bring your awareness to your strong right foot on the floor. Really press down through your toes and heels. Engage your right quads and your glutes. Now brace your core by tying up that corset around your middle. Let’s take three deep breaths together. Just notice the breath. If you’re shaking a little, I assure you, you’re not alone. And now let’s have both feet on the floor.
Stand tall. Shifting weight into your right leg, taking the left knee up, now take your left toes back to touch lightly the floor behind you. And now before making any other moves, let’s focus on engaging our standing leg—think stability. Set your gaze and lift your back leg up, outstretched behind you, and lean gently forward with arms outstretched behind you. This is called an airplane. Again, this move doesn’t have to be big to count. From here, we’re going to move dynamically a little bit: Lifting your back leg up a little higher, now slowly swing your back leg through and forward. Bring your knee to 90 degrees in front of you again and stretch your arms overhead. It’s OK to shake and wobble. When your arms go back, your leg goes back. And remember: you can always just touch down to regain stability. Simply moving or shifting your weight onto one leg is building strength and stability in that standing leg. Now release your foot to the floor and your arms by your side. Amazing, that’s the simplest thing and I’m out of breath, too.
Now let’s do exactly the same set of moves for our other side. Really engage your left, standing, leg. You need that stable base. Set your gaze for mental stability and take your right leg back, toes down, touching the floor, or toes off the floor—either way. We’re using our body here as an anchor for our mind. This is all about noticing what’s shaking and what’s not. And shaking is OK, remember? Come back up slowly. Reach your arms overhead. Let’s do this two more times to get those stabilizing muscles working. Now release foot to floor and arms by your side. This is true for all of our mindful movement: it doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective and to spur body-mind synchronization.
One more balancing standing pose for today: tree pose. Let’s root our left foot down firmly and bring our right foot to the inside of that steady leg: the foot can be placed as high as your inner thigh, or below the knee on the shin. Just don’t press on the knee itself. At any time you can touch toes to the floor to regain stability.
Remember: it’s more about what’s happening in your standing leg than it is about the other leg. And none of these have to be big moves. Our stabilizing muscles are getting a workout no matter what. Once you get yourself steady, physically, set your mind by setting your gaze to one spot. We’ll start with our hands together and then reach them up overhead. With a steady gaze, bring your attention to your standing foot, your standing quads, your glutes, your trunk. From this stability we can then become more agile; we can reach up a little higher. It’s OK if you fall out of this pose. Just steady the gaze again, root down your standing foot and leg and try again.
Don’t play it too safe here. This is the training. Even if you’re shaking, it’s OK. Now release your arms by your side and switch legs. From stability, we become more mobile. From stability, we become more agile in this pose by reaching and expanding—and I mean that both physically and mentally. Play with this pose with these things in mind. Now release foot to floor, arms to your sides.
Now let’s come down to the floor and take rest. Lying on your back, just allow yourself to drop into the floor. Notice your body speak to you through the language of sensation. Notice tingling, coolness and heat, throbbing, pulsing. It’s like a symphony in there that we ignore all day long because we’re caught up in our head. Notice what it feels like to just be here in your body and your breath, in this moment. Notice your body breathing you. Notice your lungs expand and deflate. In your whole body, embrace the inhale and let go on the exhale.
This mindful movement practice helps us to expand our awareness—not only to what’s happening around us but also what’s happening within us. As we become more versed in the language of our body, we start to be able to sense more about them more often when we’re out there in the world. It’s in this way that we can begin to notice thoughts, emotional patterns, sensations. And tuning like this means we become more capable of acting instead of reacting to whatever might be happening in our lives. All of this helps our mind to stabilize and grow steady. It also enables us to become more aware of when we get fixed mentally and how to shift into being more fluid and into a more allowing state of mind.
Pull your knees into your chest and roll over to one side. Then roll up and have a seat. Open your eyes. Carry this clarity with you throughout the day. Carry the stability with you as well. And share it with others, just by being you. Fully you.
Credit: mindful.org
