BONUS: Meditation for Overwhelm

Hi friends. Welcome to a bonus Thursday meditation. This was going to be a morning meditation and I actually did it. I recorded it live on Facebook, but you know what? The mute was on my microphone. So we are doing it again. This time it's the afternoon, but you can do this any time of day you feel overwhelmed. My goal with this practice is really to support some of my clients who are experiencing overwhelm right now and Everyone else you know who you are if you're experiencing overwhelm in your life Having just a few minutes to meditate, to let everything kind of settle down is one of the most powerful things you can do. And I'll explore, I'll share more about this after the meditation, but let's just go ahead and get started. So if you can, I encourage you to lie on the floor and put your legs above your head. And, um, Rather, put them up a wall or with knees bent and up on a sofa, so legs higher than your head. Uh, and of course, if you have any like pressure or like glaucoma in your eyes, don't do that. Even just lying flat on the floor can be helpful. If you do need to be seated, you can be aware about placing your palms onto your Legs or onto your torso. This will give a similar sense of grounding. So choose your option for your body. And then go ahead and settle in. Taking a few moments to start to let everything relax. Unless you're seated, maintain your tall spine. But let the rest of the muscles begin to soften. Maybe the eyes lower or close. And really tune in to the sensation of the floor beneath you, whether that's beneath your back, your feet, if you're in a chair, feeling the chair underneath your seat, up against your back, if your palms are on your body, feeling the contact. Now, in this practice, I'm going to offer a counted breath and then a visualization, knowing that you can make this practice whatever you need right now. Our primary goal is to shift your thinking, the focus on what might be feeling sticky, what you might be worried about. ruminating on and move your attention into your body, onto your breath, onto the contact of the palms with your body. So let's do that now. We'll start with simply inviting a deeper belly breath in, filling up the belly. And then gently exhaling out the mouth. Again, letting the belly gently fill with breath. So that's the base of the belly, the sides of the ribs, and all the way up into the chest. And then letting it out through your mouth. Two more times. Breathing in through the nose, down to the base of the belly. Filling up, up, up with breath And then releasing through the mouth one last time. Filling up with breath and exhaling out the mouth. Noticing how it feels to be in your body right now. Noticing the sensation of overwhelm and how it manifests. This might feel like anxiety. Really active thoughts. A difficulty in sitting still. Just allowing yourself to be exactly as you are. Even if it's uncomfortable. We're going to begin our counted breath. You're welcome to follow exactly, modify the count, or just do your own thing. Whatever you choose to do, try to be aware of focusing your thinking onto your body. So we'll do one cycle of breath together with no count. Inhaling. And exhaling. And then inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Inhale. One, two, three, four, exhale, one, two, three, four, inhale, one, two, three, four, exhale, one, two, three, four, inhale, one, two, three, four, exhale. Exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4. Exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Inhale, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, inhale 1, 2, 3, 4, exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Inhale 1, 2, 3, 4. Exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Inhale 1, 2, 3, 4. Exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 6, 7, 8, Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause, Exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Pause, Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, pause. Exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, pause. Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, pause. Exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Eight. Pause. Continue now, following my count from before, or finding your own. We'll do this for three cycles of breath. Keeping your awareness on the breath, on your count. Perhaps extending the pauses. Perhaps slowing the breath down, doing one final counted breath, whatever feels best to you, and then returning to your natural breathing pattern, noticing how you feel in your body, noticing the rhythm of thoughts in your mind. And then bringing your awareness to your heart center, the middle of the chest. And imagining connecting to your heart, the heart space within. This place of stillness, of peace, of safety. Beginning to tune in or cultivate this space. You might... Bring up a memory of when you felt deeply at peace, calm, and centered. Maybe this is a childhood memory of being at home. Maybe it's a memory of shavasana in the yoga practice, or spending time in nature. Or attempt to awaken. That feeling inside that helps you to feel grounded. You might call it peace, relief, support, safety. Take a couple cycles of breath to really feel that feeling. If it's not accessible, then simply breathe and invite, invite peace, invite groundedness, create space for it. Then as we begin to move out of this visualization, just imprinting that intention or that experience right there in your heart space. And knowing that you can come back here anytime to close, we'll take one final gentle deep belly breath in, exhaling out the mouth, and then we'll come back, stretching, wiggling, whatever you feel called to do. And just notice how you feel. I definitely feel more grounded. Um, if you're laying on the floor, just take it slow. Come back up to seated to continue with your day. So, overwhelm is often an experience that happens when we have a lot going on. I call it, in Ayurveda, it's called being, having a vata imbalance. It's like having a lot of wind, like a hurricane brain is what I like to call it. And, a hurricane, there's a lot of movement. In order to balance, we want to reduce movement. And, which is what we just did. And so internally, our nervous system, when we come to stillness, especially when we're in a position like having our legs up the wall, um, our body interprets that as we must be safe. And so, And then it can turn the stress response down and reduce the fuel that is going towards the ruminating thinking, right? The need to act, the need to get things done is often an overwhelm. It's a form of stress. So we move into a stress response, which can be like trying to figure things out. Like, I can't relax until I figure out this problem. We're trying to do all of the things, you know, once I do all the things, I will relax. But the problem is that when we're approaching it from a place of overwhelm, we can, we can end up really just, um, what's the word, like just running in place, not getting very far. Not solving the overwhelm because even if we check things off the list the next day we find ourselves in overwhelm because the list is a little bit different. So, um, Really having a tool like meditation is going to be very helpful in reducing overwhelm. Also, so in that same vein, reducing movement. So reducing the amount of things that you're doing, the velocity of the things that you're doing, instead of trying to get, squeeze as much as you can into an afternoon. Instead, doing one or two things. with more time focused so you actually get, um, you get it done to completion and you can truly check it off your list and it's done to a better quality. And oftentimes, um, especially if you are, if you have Your own hustle or your own business like there are a lot of activities that you're doing that you can delegate You can find someone else to do and you can say no to so all of that will help to reduce the amount of things that you're doing and then also just reducing your input in any way possible and Producing news, podcasts, giving yourself breaks, a space where, like at lunch, instead of running around doing errands, you take a half an hour to sit outside and eat your lunch. Maybe you can't do that every day, but doing that some days, it's going to help when you are operating in your life. Without overwhelm, you are so much more effective, you feel better, you feel more powerful, and you can really take your, your life, you, whatever you're doing to the next level. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, it's an invitation to create a strategy around it. And once you do, you're going to see awesome results in your life. All right, that's what I have for you today. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you would like to talk with me about reducing overwhelm and creating a life that you love, you can sign up for a free tea date on my website where we can chat about where you're at, what you'd like to create, and how you'd like to get there, or really anything at all. These tea dates. are unstructured ways for us to connect and um, they're available to sign up. So take a look at my website, Heidi Jandel. com. All right, friends, have a great rest of your day. Take care and I'll see you next time.