Transcript:

I want to lead you through a centering activity as we close out today. And I will clip this out separately as well so that you have it available to you whenever you might need it.

So what I want you to do is whatever posture you are in currently,

whether you're standing or sitting, choose how you want to be and start taking a couple of breaths. Tune into that breath and follow it.

Follow it into your nose,

into your chest,

into your belly.

Then back out your belly, out your chest, and out your nose or mouth.

Settle in

we're gonna settle around.

Length, width and depth.

So if you're standing

find your feet

below you shoulder width apart.

Feel your feet, feel your connection to the ground.

If you're sitting find your sit bones

feel the chair supporting you

from your sit bones, but also probably from your back if you're leaning against the back of a chair.

Now settle into those feet or those sit bones

really drop into

your feet

or your sit bones

feel the ground supporting you or your chair

now imagine a string from between your feet up your spine and out the crown of your head

and find the space between your vertebrae particularly in your neck and in your spine as your crown lifts to the heavens.

center around your length or your height right now.

How tall can you get

how close to the sky can you get

how much height can you take up right now

typically speaking, for humans, our center of gravity is a little bit below our belly button so that lower belly area. So think about extending from that belly area up to the heavens and down to the ground.

Can you center from that place up and down

now let's center around our width. So again, that kind of center of gravity a little bit below your belly button.

Think about

grounding in that place.

And then

sensing the width of yourself.

So this means your like literal skin. So the edges of your shoulders, the edges of your hips. You can reach your hands out and thinking about the edges of your fingertips and how far they reach out in either direction.

The outside of your feet as you're standing a little bit more than hip width apart.

What is the width of the space that you take up

in the world

and center that around

that lower belly center of gravity place

now we're going to center in depth.

So again, center of gravity belly

if you're seated, feel your back against the chair. If you're standing, pay attention to your bank bring attention to your back.

What do you feel? Is there a breeze is there anything happening? What can

You feel at your back.

metaphorically as we center in our depth, you can also think about this as a timeline. So our place on the timeline, and behind us is everything that got us to this place. So you can think about ancestors, you can think about experiences, you can think about places that have formed and shaped who you are today. And those are all coming at your back and coming out your back in a supportive way.

Now bring your attention to the front of your body.

Again, if you think about a timeline, this is us moving forward into the future, and CO creating this place, this space that we're going to be in

and can you center in that depth

of time and then also just physical, front and back balanced?

Around your center of gravity.

The last piece of this centering practice has to do with centering ourselves or organizing ourselves around a principle or a value.

So physically in space, we have centered ourselves, length, width, and depth. Now internally, are we centered around or organized around a value,

a principle

a care?

What is it that brings us to this place today?

And are we activated to inhabit or center ourselves around that concept, value, belief, principle.

So take a couple more breaths

and go about your day.

You can use this centering practice before assignments. You can use it as just a regular practice that you do on a daily basis. You can use it in times of stress or anxiety.

It's a great reminder to get in your body and center yourself in the space in the time and around the values that are important to you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai