The Taproot Podcast - 📡Bodyscan Meditation for Relaxation and Mindfulness - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Episode Date: March 27, 2022

This is a free mindfulness meditation for relaxation and processing anxiety.Mindfulness works because in the present moment there is usually not that much to worry about. Maybe we are a little tired, or hungry, maybe it is cold, but there is not much to deeply upset us. Find more free resources on the website: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/   To subscribe to the podcast, you can click on the following link: 🎧🌟 Podcast For additional free resources, you can visit the Get Therapy Birmingham website: 💻 GetTherapyBirmingham.com One of the available resources on the website is a meditation designed to help you connect with the shadow part of yourself, which may have been repressed due to trauma or negative experiences. This meditation aims to bring awareness to the aspects of yourself that you may avoid. Please note that the resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the site and social media platforms are not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you require professional assistance, it is important to seek help from a qualified mental health provider. In case of an emergency, please contact emergency services or a local mental health provider. The provided phone number and email address are for scheduling purposes at Taproot Therapy Collective and may not be regularly monitored for emergencies. For more information and to explore additional content, you can visit the Taproot Therapy Collective website: Address: 2025 Shady Crest Dr Suite 203 Hoover, AL 35216 Email: [e-mail] Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8 Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] #depthpsychology #meditation #meditate #integration #jung #carljung #psychology #asmr #trauma #healing #growth #shadow #alchemy #creativity

Today we're going to be doing a mindfulness meditation for relaxation and for grounding. The idea of mindfulness as a discipline is that anxiety pulls us into the future, where we worry about things that are going to happen to us in the future, and into the past, where we relive things that have happened in the past that we're worried are going to happen again and we wish didn't happen there. And when we can pull ourselves into the present moment, into the here and now, and get in touch with the small sensations that our body is feeling, then all of a sudden we're able to live reality

in the present moment and be aware of our sensations and we're no longer afraid of it because we're out of the future and we're out of the past. So at the beginning of this meditation, before we begin, I want you to find a comfortable place and unlock all of your joints and try and relax your muscles and extend your palms and your fingers outward and open and sit with your spine straight but make it comfortable and i want you to just kind of make your core loose like a gummy worm like if somebody pushed you you'd kind of wob, but you're going to stiffen up right like a flower in the wind right now. And when we start to go into our fight-or-flight response, which is what we're given so that when we're existing in the wild,

if a tiger growls at us, we're going to have to run 500 miles away from a tiger, or we're going to have to fight a tiger. And so the first thing that's going to happen is that we're going to lose to run 500 miles away from a tiger, we're going to have to fight a tiger. And so the first thing that's going to happen is that we're going to lose touch with our body because we don't want to feel what's going to happen to our body if we have to do either of those things.

We're also not going to notice that our heart rate is increasing. We're not going to notice that we're holding tension and muscles across our body. Those tight muscles are going to use more oxygen. A tight muscle uses more oxygen. So when you go to the gym and you're working out, you're going to breathe heavier. We're also not going to notice that our posture changes into a tense posture

that restricts blood flow and blood movement. And we're not going to notice that instead of taking deep breaths, we take short, shallow breaths. Instead of... We start to take short, shallow breaths like... without noticing. All of this speeds up our heart rate, and it makes our fight-or-flight center,

our amygdala, at the base of our spine, beginning of our brainstem, start to tell our hypothalamus to go more into fight-or-flight, release more fight-or-flight hormone, and we lose more touch with our body, and we start to panic. Even if we're not aware of it, even if this happens on an unconscious level, it happens lots of times during the day. So to begin the fight or flight, we're going to contradict this experience by relaxing all of the muscles and opening up our posture into something where blood can flow easily, starting to reconnect our sensation and our experience of being alive with all of the different feelings that our nerves are picking up all the time and that our body

is always experiencing, but that a lot of the time we don't notice. We filter them out. We're also going to start to take deeper breaths. So before we start, go ahead and get into that posture where you're loose like a gummy worm, and you'd wobble if somebody pushed you, because you have little resistance. But you're not limp, you'll snap back into your open posture. And as you do that, I want you to start taking deep breaths, and the deep breaths should fill your lungs all the way,

but not to the point where it's uncomfortable, and they should take about four to six seconds in, and you should hold the in-breath for about one to two seconds. So before we start the meditation, we're going to do two of these. The body scan is an old-as-dirt meditation. It comes from the 60s, when mindfulness practice is starting to creep into psychotherapy and starting to become part of the mental health routine of the West. So you may have heard this before, but even if you've heard it before, I want you to just

let go of that thinky, cognitive brain experience that's trying to anticipate the next part of it, and just drop down into the present, even if you've heard it before and listened to what's happening right now and notice it and feel it and let go and just participate in the experience with me, okay? So we're going to go ahead and start taking a series of deep breaths right now. I want you to start to take a deep breath in. One, two, three, four.

Hold it and let it go. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four in. And one, two, three, four, out, and one, two, three, four, in, and one, two, three, four, out, and one, two, 3, 4, in. And 1, 2, 3, 4, out.

And 1, 2, 3, 4, in. And 1, 2, three, four, out. And notice this experience of taking these deep breaths shouldn't be a jerky motion, but it should feel more like a wave where you're going in and then you're going out. But there's kind of a bell curve when you're speeding out, but there's kind of a bell curve.

You're speeding up and slowing down. And just kind of keep that rhythm. And as you're focusing on your deep breaths and you're starting to go into that rhythm, I want you to imagine that there's a point of light in the room with you, like a laser pointer, or the reflection of a watch in the sunlight. The watch face is reflecting the sunlight into a spot in the room. And just kind of notice the light and what it looks like as it's shining.

And let everything else get darker. And let that point of light become your whole awareness as it moves around the room. And just move it back and forth as you watch it. And then imagine that the point of light begins to brush against the tips of your toes on both of your feet. And it starts to move back and forth across the skin on the tips of your toes, making you aware of the sensations that your toes are feeling all the time. And just staying with the tips of your toes,

notice if the skin on the outside of them is warmer or colder than the rest of your toes. Notice if the skin on the outside of them is warmer or colder than the rest of your body. And if it's damp or if it's dry, if you're wearing socks or shoes, notice the experience of what your feet are feeling. What does it feel like right now? And notice places where they're touching fabric. Notice the places where they may be touching open air.

And notice the places where there's pressure on your toes and places where there's none. Notice the places in between your toes where they're touching one another. And now take the ball of light and roll it back and forth from the tips of your toes down to the ball on the back of your heel. And start to notice how the sensation of all of those things is different, where your skin is thick instead of where it's thin. And notice as you're sitting down how the bottom of your foot feels different in places where the foot is pushing pressure down into the ground and weight and in places where

there's no weight. And just be with the awareness of that sensation for a second. And now take the ball of light and roll it down into the bone that goes inside of the skin here. Be aware of that hard structure. And notice the ball of your ankle and how it sits in a womb of fluid here so that it can move

back and forth. And don't move it. Just kind of experience the flexibility of that joint and the potential there for movement. And then take the ball of light and bounce it up and down from your ankle to the cap of your knee along your leg bone.

And just start to notice as you do that how the bone of your leg feels strong. It can hold you up as you run and as you jump. And then take the ball of light and move it off of the leg bone and move it around the fibers of muscle that hang off of that leg bone and become your calf.

And feel that web of strong fibers that are hanging loose now, but they could be tense. And if you notice any places where you're keeping them tense now, go ahead and let go of that. Let them go. And just be aware of the weight of your calf muscle as it hangs off of that leg bone. And feel that there. And be with the awareness of it for a minute. And while you're with the awareness of it, notice how when we relax a muscle that we use a lot, there are little switches and jerks and involuntary movements as enzymes discharge. Not all the time, but sometimes there are.

So notice where you feel that in your calf muscle now. Places where you feel movement that you're not in control of. Maybe in your thigh also. Relax your thigh and feel the movement inside of the muscle and just feel that web of muscle fiber with the potential to jump and run but right now it's hanging loose and hanging down now take the ball of light and roll it up into your tailbone

and bounce it from your tailbone up onto the base of your neck across your spine and just kind of feel as it moves up and down across your spine how your spine is a series of discs that rest on one another kind of like a slinky that you used to play with as a child and And as you take breaths and your lungs fill, it opens and closes. All of those discs spread open and apart. And just be with the awareness of that for a minute.

And then take the ball of light and move it in a V shape from the middle of your shoulder down into the middle of your spine and then back up to the middle of your other shoulder now we store tension in this V and a lot of the time that tension feels like a sharp pain, or a dull ache, or a cold feeling, or a numbness, or a tightness. And it's where we've stored

such a steady tension that our muscle fibers have not allowed blood to oxygenate them and oxygenate the muscle. And so, on a deep breath, be with the awareness of how you're experiencing that pain. And on the out breath, push some of it out away from you into the room and feel it leave and feel the muscle get warmer and feel the muscle get looser and feel the dull ache or the sharp pain start to reduce. Now notice the places where the dull ache, the sharp pain, the coldness, or the numbness is still there. And roll the ball of light around each spot where you feel that tension. And notice how you're experiencing it. And on a big in-breath, be with the awareness of that tension. And on the out-breath, push it out away from you into the room

and feel it leave and feel the muscle get warmer and looser and less painful. Now notice the places that are still there where you still feel tension. Be with the awareness of them and take a big in-breath. Head on the out-breath. Push them out away from you into the room and feel the experience leave and feel the muscle relax and feel warmth and feel oxygenating blood come back in, making your body whole. Now, take the ball of light and roll it up onto the top of your head. And on the top of your head, notice how there's places where your hair is loose and tight

and places where you can feel open air moving in the room against your bare skin, being the temperature that the open air is. And places where your hair is holding air tight and making the temperature underneath it warmer. and just feel that experience for a minute of those thousands of hair follicles and air moving in the room and what your skin is feeling around your ears and your neck

and the top of your head and your face and just be with the experience but don't judge it. And then I want you to take a deep breath and imagine the ball of light turning into a triangle shape on the middle of your forehead. And we store tension inside of this triangle. And a lot of the time the tension feels like a rubber band that's stretched across the middle of our forehead. And a lot of time it feels like a dull, painful tapping on the inside of the skull.

Or a tightness that's around the tips of our eyebrows. So just notice how you're feeling that tension right now. And as you notice how you're feeling the experience, on a big in-breath, just be with the awareness of it. And on the out-breath, just push a little bit out of it, away from you into the room.

And feel it reduce slightly, and your forehead become warmer in this triangle. The tapping reduce, the rubber band reduce, the tips of your eyebrows start to ease and concentrate on how you're still feeling this pain, numb, tight, hot, cold. What does it feel like? and on a big in breath be with the experience of that tension and on an out breath push it out away from you into the room

and feel it go out like a black mist and leave your body and feel warmth flood your forehead and the pain start to reduce. Now notice the spots of pain that are still there, or the spots of tightness, or coldness, or numbness. Notice how you are experiencing right now in this moment.

And on a big in-breath, be with the awareness of it and on an out breath push it out away from you into the room and feel it leave now as that tension leaves notice that your face no longer holds micro tension and the muscles around your eyes

or your nose or your lips or at the base of your neck. And just feel how your whole face hangs completely slack and smooth off your skull. With that tension having been dissipated, and those muscles having been relaxed. And just feel the weight of the muscle fiber and the skin as it hangs off your skull there. Your face is limp and smooth. And now take the ball of light and roll it down into the middle of your chest

and find your heartbeat. And on each heartbeat, imagine that someone has thrown a rock into a still pond, and there's a ripple that goes out from your heart across your whole body. As your heart pumps blood, and the blood goes out to all your extremities making them warm and relaxed and calm. Now let all of your muscle tension and all of your joints have started to open up and let it flow. Now imagine the ripple when you feel your heartbeat going all the way up your neck and your chin and your ears and your lips and your nose and your eyes

and out through the top of your head, making you warm and relaxed and calm. And now notice the ripple as it goes out across your shoulders and your elbows and your wrists and the tips of your foot and the tips of your toes, making you warm and relaxed and calm. And just kind of be with the awareness of that feeling for a minute. Feel the ripple for a few minutes, making you warm and relaxed and calm. Thank you.