Grounding into heart
Breath meditation for your greatest alignment
Let’s begin with a little practice:
Breathe in, taking a moment to feel into the expansion in your chest. Bring your full attention to the expansion of your ribs, expanding in 3 dimensions: front ribs, side ribs, back ribs.
On your exhale, allow the release in your chest, your lungs, your shoulders, your face muscles. Let your exhale help you to release any tension that you are holding in your muscles that you don’t need to hold in this moment.
Continue to breathe, inviting in slow, ease-filled breath. You may want to remain your chest, or it may feel grounding and nourishing to drop your attention down into your belly. Same idea here: breathe slowly and with ease as you feel into the physical expansion of your abdomen. Exhale, letting go of any tension or holding that doesn’t serve you and your body in this moment.
I invite you to bring in some curiosity. Become a bit of an explorer as you call upon your breath as your guide into your own internal world. Invite in curiosity as you continue to breathe these deep, nourishing, grounding breaths.
Sometimes 3-5 breaths is all we get.
Sometimes, the practice offers itself as a deep meditation practice as we sit with the breath for 5, 10, 20 minutes!
Your choice. What serves you today? How long do you need/have to breathe deeply and ground, and nourish, before you move on with your day?
Slowing down, grounding in
These deep, grounding breaths have been my bread and butter this week. They showed up from my vast toolkit of breath and meditation techniques and have rooted themselves into my daily routine.
More like, they are begging that they become the foundation of my new routine.
So here’s something about this current version of Katie: She doesn’t like routine. In fact, I almost have to rebel against it as I call in infinite freedom and possibility for what may arise in future moments.
But I am tired. I am yearning for a root system that grounds me in.
I wasn’t always like this. Back in my days as a student who took on wayyyy too much at once - and, later as a corporate engineer - routine was everything! My “work hard, get it done, and pack in as much as possible” mentality could only unfold with the most grounded routine I could call upon. It worked for me then. Sort of…
When my world and life and body went to hell in 2020, this all fell away. I couldn’t ground in anymore. I needed to be taken away into the chaos that brings infinite uncertainty. I needed it to shake me up and shift me into I am today. Because, well, that routine of mine - yea, it kept me grounded. It kept me focused. But it also kept me stuck in a world out of alignment.
Today is a new day. And with years of healing and shifting and changing my own nervous system and my own mental patterns and my life and my career and everything else…. I am a different person. No, more like, I am the same me, but it is a me who now knows who I truly am when I live and breathe in alignment with what serves my own self, and this world I am part of.
And, it’s in these moments recently, that it has become quite clear that I am ready for some routine!
One that is grounded, yet nourishing.
One that keeps me in the alignment that I have worked so hard to call in.
Alignment: I keep using this term. What does it mean?
You know that feeling: the one where you step into a room and you get that sensation (perhaps in your gut, or maybe tingling through your body) combined with a knowing that you shouldn’t be here. We all know this one when it shows up in the extreme case.
How many of us walk through our lives with some level of this feeling at a constant?
We live these wild lives here in the modern world where it is demanded that we play our parts as spokes on the great wheel that turns. It is demanded that we fit ourselves into a framework that was created by those who, you know, just don’t actually have your best interest at heart.
But, you know, I really think it’s time that we have our own best interest at heart: that is, that we take the time to get to know what aligns with the highest interest of our hearts!
Yes, your heart! That space that we spent several breaths breathing deeply into, lighting up, connecting with.
Your heart - the place in your body and as your being which, in my new understanding, holds the highest ability for discerning:
Discerning: what is in your best interest in your highest alignment; knowing that, if it’s in alignment for you, it is also in alignment for the world we are all part of.
Your heart’s discernment only works if you get out of your head
So here’s the thing, this scrambles our minds! Because your mind can’t figure this all out! How could you know how to piece together life in a way that is in alignment for you and the people and other life forms around you?
Your mind can’t do that!
But when we take the time to settle into our bodies, connecting in with our hearts and guts and wombs and all these places of wisdom deeper within - it’s from here that we become grounded in a path unfolding that dissolves me vs. you and self sacrifice and selfishiness.
It’s here, grounded and embodied, that we are able to discern: is this in alignment? Will this support/nourish/fulfill me, in this moment?
And, if so (as the theory goes), then it, too, is in alignment for what best serves this world that we are all part of.
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So, about that routine piece
I remember back in the days of that dark and chaotic whirlwind that picked me up out of my old routine and sent me spinning around and around and around….
I remember spending an awful lot of time meditating and reflecting on the short comings of my mind.
Please understand that this is a girl who had devoted her life to the powers of the human mind! I studied neuroscience and had literally spent countless hours in research labs studying pathways of the mind! The mind held my devotion! I believed fully in its wondrous powers!
And, I still do, but given these reflections, I now understand its extreme limitations. And, I see how, when cut off from the rest of the intelligent parts of self, gets us into trouble.
Our minds, in meager connection to our hearts - it’s here that we cling. We attach ourselves to that which we think is best for us. Yea, my heart tells me I want this, now let me attach myself into it and stir up chaos as I battle my way to what I believe is mine!
Recognize the other side of the coin as well: this is also the space from which we may cling to that which we think is best for the world at the sacrifice of our own selves: Yea, I believe that I have to overwork myself for this job/task that someone else told me is oh-so-important so I am going to burn myself out and not take care of my body and…..
This is unskillful.
It’s a pattern that makes our lives, and our greater world, turn with a darkness that is so ready to die out.
Let us work to let this way of being dissolve; and, to replace it with something far more skillful.
How about those deep breaths?
Those breaths - the ones that bring us into connection with the great wealth of wisdom that is held within our bodies!
Those breaths - the ones that ground us into the present and allow us to sense/perceive/feel/know what is truly alive and real in the here and now.
Those breaths - providing the nourishment that is needed for our bodies and minds and nervous systems while simultaneously inviting all that doesn’t serve to dissolve away.
For me, I am currently in practice of making these grounded breaths the foundation of my routine. I am doing them in the morning. I am doing them throughout my day whenever I get that nudge that I am becoming mis-aligned (for example, when anxiety arises and I start to act from clinging or fear).
I invite you, too, to adopt this practice. Maybe it’s just for today or this week. Try it out. As always, if you want more individualized guidance (breath and meditation can be tricky as we navigate our own patterns), please reach out to me directly.