Listener Survey & Guided Meditation (Season 7, Episode 25)

In today’s episode, I have two things for you: (1) A listener survey that I would SO love you to complete as it’s going to help me shape the vision for our next season, and (2) A guided meditation! The meditation is about connecting with your inner compass and noticing how you feel it in your unique body.

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Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to Love, Curvy Yoga, the podcast where we think your inner compass is so very wise. Now let’s get into it.

(00:20):
Hi, Anna here. Let’s do our check in, how are you feeling? And what do you need in your body?

(00:36):
Thank you to those of you who checked in with me while I was off for a couple of weeks. I was off unexpectedly the first week because I had a migraine that lasted several days. I haven’t had one of those in a while, and it was a doozy! And I just did not have the energy or bandwidth to do much. And then the second week I had planned to be off, but I wasn’t able to tell you, because Nic and I were celebrating our 15 year anniversary.

(01:07):
But now I am back with two things for you. So one is a listener survey and I would really love to know what you’d like to hear from this podcast for the rest of the year. So what resonates with you the most, what you would like to here more of? Maybe what you’d like to hear less of? Uh, I do not get a ton of feedback on this podcast, which is totally fine, but that means that it’s important for me to check in with you in this way, from time to time to see what is working for you. So if you wouldn’t mind taking a few minutes to fill it out, it’s pretty short, I would really appreciate it. It’s also anonymous.

(01:52):
So the link is in the show notes, and I’m going to leave it up through Thursday, July 2nd. But if you have a minute right now, you can just pause and go do that real quick or right when you’re done listening, I would be very grateful. And as a thank you for doing that and just to support you, I have got a guided meditation for you today, and it’s all about connecting with your inner wisdom. So noticing where it arises in your own body, because it may well be different from someone else’s, and then taking some time to listen. So that is coming up right now.

(02:32):
[MUSIC]

(02:37):
So for this guided meditation, come into a comfortable position sitting or lying down, you don’t need to do or change anything. We’re just going to start with whatever is here, which is now. So you can begin here breathing at your own pace. Sometimes it can be helpful to connect with the breath, to feel the breath in the body. So maybe feeling the air entering or exiting the nostrils, the rise and fall of your chest or belly or somewhere else that you connect with the sensation of breath in your body and noticing the effect of your attention on your body as you breathe.

(03:59):
So what shifts or changes if any, do you notice as you let your attention start to sync up, ride the rhythm of the breath?

(04:19):
As you do this, you can begin to lengthen the inhale and the exhale just a bit with each breath until you arrive at a full deep breath for you. And whenever you arrive at those full deep breaths, you can just stay there with them for a while.

(04:47):
You’ll know when you feel complete with those deep breaths. And when you do, you can return to your breath’s own pace and start to expand your awareness to notice what is happening in your body and name it to yourself.

(05:37):
So I’ll share some of mine as an example: just in this moment, toes are curled and clenched. Forehead is furrowed. Tension in the cheeks. Belly is soft. Breath is shallow. Shoulders are relaxed. Thighs and glutes are tensed.

(06:43):
So those are just some examples of naming anything you notice that’s happening in the moment. And you don’t need any correct language, deep analysis. You might be noticing similar things to what I noticed. They might be totally different. It doesn’t really matter. It’s about what is true for you. And if you’re not sure what you’re feeling or noticing, then it’s an opportunity to say that. So not sure, maybe curious or listening.

(07:24):
So we’ll just spend a little more time here with that process of noticing and naming.

(07:47):
And from here, you can start to drop your roots. So maybe wherever you’re in contact with whatever you’re sitting or lying on. So this could be from the sit bones, the feet, the back body. If you’re laying down, start to let those points of contact drop more into the support of the floor, be held more by the support of the floor, support of the earth. And there’s nothing you have to make happen here. It’s really a letting go process of being with what is, and not what we hope there is, or isn’t letting those roots settle and establish.

(09:02):
Now beginning to ask yourself, asking your body, how do I know what is true? Because you do know. Even if you think you’re not good at knowing, or you don’t do it reliably, I’m sure you can think of at least one time in your life when you knew something was true and can feel it in your body. So where do you feel that truth in your body? Again, you might not be sure; you might be questioning and noticing. And that is a wonderful place to be, which is open to whatever might arise. And if you can stay with the inquiry, I bet you have a better sense of it in your body. Then your mind might think you do.

(10:10):
So connecting up with this time when you knew that something was true, start to feel back into how it felt in your body – could be a color, a sensation, temperature. Maybe you notice a particular tension or relaxing, a shift in energy or mood. There may be a mix of some or all of those things or something else entirely. Again, this is about your personal embodied experience. When you have a sense of it, which is not necessarily the same as a certainty of it, you can place one or both hands on where you feel the truth in your body. Most strongly, this area, these sensations are part of your inner compass. For me, it’s concentrated around my heart and solar plexus, though I have different clues throughout my whole body. So breathe here, bow your head to your heart in a gesture of thanks and listening.

(11:54):
We’ll stay here for a bit and just see what unfolds. You might receive a message, a knowing, a sensation, or it might just feel sweet to soak up this connection and remind yourself that it’s always here and you can return to it whenever you want.

(12:52):
If you haven’t already, you can lift your head, remove your hands from your body if you’d like. We’ll continue to just be in this moment in silence together and in collaboration with the body just a little bit longer

(14:25):
You can begin to lengthen your inhale and exhale a bit. Again, working to that deep breath, if you’d like bringing your hands back to the area of the body where you felt your inner compass. Let’s take five deep breaths here. Really letting the touch of the hands on the body be a reminder and anchor into what’s already and always here.

(15:07):
After your fifth exhale, whenever that comes, you can leave the hands where they are or fold them in front of the heart. We’re going to take one breath together to close. We’ll inhale and exhale. The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste.

(15:53):
[MUSIC]