DEEPLY RESTORATIVE MEDITATION SERIES

This is a series I offered at Breathe! I intended to share my personal practice sequence I’ve developed through 10 years of meditation to help people have effective, and deeply restorative meditations every time no matter the length of time of practice. Enjoy!

1. Set up: decide your window of time with a beginning and end so you can rest in that space without thinking about the future.  Use a timer potentially.  Get your props and everything you need to be comfortable including water, layers, etc. Set up your space appropriately for what you need and want out of your practice.

2. Begin and orient: Get in your posture, take time getting comfortable, maybe do a little movement and settle in.  Orient to your space by looking around and gradually bring your awareness inside. (We will talk more about orientation later)

3. Check in: Once you have your eyes closed and you're 'inside' check in with yourself.  You can do this by scanning the layers of your body, mind, breath, energy, etc.  Or by tuning into your feelings and emotions, take a little scan through your day, etc.  Ask yourself how you are, what it's like to be you and wait for an answer.  Litmus test for what's up in the moment.

4. Ground: Bring energy down so a profound rest is possible.  Breath, intention, visualization etc. Tonight we used the orientation of the sacrum to the core of the earth.  This is powerful for many but there are tons of ways to ground.

5. Choose a technique and drop into it: You can choose to oscillate between two complementary techniques or pick just one.  Stay with it while allowing your experience to unfold.  Staying in non judging awareness as much as you can.

6. Check in periodically and re-relax or re-ground: There will be moments that call for you to reset - who cares how often you need it? Trust when the urge comes up and simply reset.

7. Deepen:  In the last third of your meditation see how much you can let go of the technique and flow with awareness.  Get more sensitive, intimate, and deepen into all the relaxation that’s possible.  You might be surprised how relaxed and aware you can get over time with practicing this and creating the space for it.

8. Release: Gently bring yourself back into the room by shifting your awareness.  Usually this means bringing it into your body, you can feel your breath, take your awareness to more solid things - your body, the ground etc.  Gradually move and pay close attention to the transition here because you may have gone deeper than you initially thought and need to go slowly.  It’s a sweet time!

9. Integrate and transition: After you’ve said goodbye to your meditation, tune into what your needs are.  You may need some moments or minutes to rest and digest your experience, journal, write down insights etc.  Then take care in transitioning to the next thing you’re doing.  Move with care as to maintain the inner peace you may have obtained.  And as not to ‘undue what you’ve just undone’ as one of my teachers says.