Guided Meditations

Guided Meditation: Breathing a Four Part Breath (12 mins long)

The yogic four-part breath draws our attention to how we breathe in, pause, breathe, out, and pause.  It helps us discover the gap between inhalation and exhalation, the gap between stimulus and response.  When we settle into a breath that allows for a pause at the top and bottom of the breath cycle, our nervous system begins to calm and our resilience and forbearance strengthen. Find your four-part breath:

  • Inhalation

  • Pause at the top of breath

  • Exhalation

  • Pause at the bottom of breath

 

Guided Meditation: Breathing the Five Winds of Energy (30 mins long)

Yoga recognizes five types of energies, breaths, or winds (depending on translation), called prana vayus. These five winds have subtly different qualities and directions.  A balance of the winds or vayus increases awareness, health, and resilience. Briefly defined:

  • Prana vayu – draws breath and energy inward toward the heart and lungs; it is the seed of action

  • Vyana vayu – moves breath and energy outward to the extremities, it is enlivening  

  • Samana vayu – directs breath and energy to the center at the abdomen; it is stabilizing yet fiery

  • Apana vayu – drops breath and energy downward into the lower half of the body; it is cleansing and rejuvenating

  • Udana vayu – lifts energy and breath upward; it is inspiring and uplifting

 

Guided Meditation: Breathing into the Five Layers of Self (16 mins long)

Yoga recognizes four layers of self.  This calming and centering meditation uses the breath to explore these layers of self. The koshas briefly defined are:

  • Annamaya:  physical self as composed of muscle, tissue, bones, blood, and flesh; anatomy

  • Pranamaya:  energetic self that animates the body and processes sensations, including breath, translating them into feeling positive, negative, or neutral

  • Manomaya:  mental and emotional self; comprised thoughts, experiences that shape us, affects, emotions, and expressions of acquired personality

  • Vijnanamaya: intuition that links us to self and others; innate intelligence, talents, traits, and natural inclinations or temperament that brought to bear in relationship with self and others

  • Anandamaya: the connected self; our connection to pure joy or bliss, to each other, and to all there is; soul or spirit.

 

Guided Meditation: Breathing into Your Self (16 mins long)

This meditation invites self-exploration and awareness.  The breath is a recurring anchor as you are guide increasingly deeply into stillness and curiosity.  This meditation supports self-awareness and resilience in times in challenge.

 

Guided Meditation: Breathing Body Scan (20 mins long)

This mindfulness meditation focuses on the interaction of breath and body, guiding you through an exploration of your own interdependence and capacity for resilience. It calms and strengthens the nervous system inviting allostasis, the capacity to recover and cope.

 

Guided Meditation: Exploring the Layers of Self with Curiosity (9 mins long)

This meditation guides you through the five layers of self (koshas in Sanskrit), exploring and creating self-awareness of body, breath or emotion, mental fluctuations, inner wisdom, and joyful connection. 

For more information about the koshas, read our related blog or check out the breathing meditation that explores these layers of self.

 

Guided Meditation: Settling the Layers of Self with Compassion (16 mins long)

This meditation again guides you through the five layers of self (koshas in Sanskrit), creating self-awareness of body, breath or emotion, mental fluctuations, inner wisdom, and joyful connection. It focuses on finding ease in each layer of self, settling into its full experience and calmly getting to know your deeper, more subtle self/

For more information about the koshas, read our related article or check out the breathing meditation that explores these layers of self.

 

Guided Meditation: Exploring the Mind States (15 mins long)

Yoga recognizes five mind states and invites us to explore which ways of being are our defaults and how to increase capacity to find more settled and adaptive mind states.  This meditation, and yoga in general, supports our mental movement toward concentration and lucidity.  The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, in fact, suggest that this is a central purpose of the practice of yoga – the stilling or calming of the fluctuations of the mind. The five mind states, addressed in this meditation, are:

  • kshipta: disturbed, agitated, restless, troubled

  • mudha: dull, lethargic, heavy, forgetful, sleepy

  • vikshipta: distracted, with attention easily diverted to this or that

  • ekagra: one-pointed, focused, fully concentrated – not prone to distraction

  • niradhah: lucid, luminous; fluctuations and afflictions have been stilled

 

Guided Meditation: Remembering a Place of Safety (12 mins long)

After inducing a sense of relaxation and groundedness, this meditation guides you to a place of safety and comfort from your childhood.  It invites you to explore the features of this place that provided comfort and a sense of being held and supported. 

You are guided to investigate this place of safety with all of your senses: touch, taste, vision, hearing, smell.  This journey into your past will remind you of the kind of space that may have contribute to your inner peace. 

 

Guided Meditation: Exploring the Self (17 mins long)

After inducing a sense of grounding into your body, breath, and mind, this meditation guides you into an exploration of your many manifestations of self across your lifespan.  It invites you to remember yourself in ways of being in the past and then guides into ways of being in the future.    

The meditative journey through your life reminds you that you have many layers, many ways of being in the world, many ways of being relationship.  It also invites you to recognize that are not inherently any of those things.  In the end the meditation guides you to explore the emptiness of your Self, the transient nature of your existence. 

 

Guided Meditation: Finding Joyful Community (11 mins long)

A central healing aspect of yoga is the creation of community, of a sense of being connected to something greater and more enduring than our individual selves. 

This meditation invites you into clear awareness of your own connections and relationships in a joyous way that radiates gratitude.  Connection thus defined provides us stability and resilience during challenge.

 

Guided Meditation: Journey into the Body (10 mins long)

This meditation takes you through journey of your physical being, inviting you to explore inner sensations and to come into the present moment of your physical experience. 

Becoming mindful of the body in the present moment supports physical health and resilience, helps us cope with and manage pain, and allows us to move beyond either preoccupation with or denial of our physical needs.

 

Guided Meditation: Committing to Mature Emotions (13 mins long)

The Brahma Viharas are the four sublime attitudes or mature emotions that guide us to values-based choices, strengthen social relationships, and remind us of the interdependence of all beings. They are the antidotes to attachment, aversion, and delusion. This meditation guides you through these self-expressions of emotional wellness.  Briefly defined, four emotions are:

  • Maitri (or metta) lovingkindness, friendliness, and benevolence toward all sentient beings, including self

  • Karuna compassion, helpfulness, and the desire to end suffering for all sentient beings, including self

  • Mudita sympathetic joy, rejoicing, or delight in one’s own and others’ accomplishments and good fortune

  • Upeksha (or upekkah) equanimity, tranquility, and detachment in light of personal or others’ joy or suffering to support positive action on behalf  of self and others   

 

Guided Meditation: Feeling the Pulsations of Your Spiritual Imperative (8 mins long)

This meditation explores the pulsations of your body, breath, and mind to guide you toward a recognition how in every moment you are alive, you balance your biological imperative (the desire to be alive) and your spiritual imperative (the desire to contribute to the greater good).

This meditation supports you when you face crises that may want you to shrink back from the world to self-protect versus reaching out and supporting others through compassion, lovingkindness, and equanimity.  It allows you to find a balance between caring for your own wellbeing and that of others.  

 

Guided Meditation: Journeying through the Tree of Yoga (15 mins long)

This more philosophically-oriented meditation takes you on a journey through the eight limbs of yoga as exemplified by the image of a tree.  Read more about the 8 limbs in our blog.

  • roots: connect with your roots, grounding yourself in ethical practices   YAMAS

  • trunk: keep yourself strong and firm with spiritual practices NIYAMAS

  • limbs: keep limber through physical movement    ASANA

  • leaves: exchange prana with the world through your breath   PRANAYAMA

  • bark: protect yourself from overstimulation and over-excitement by calming the senses   PRATYAHARA

  • sap: nourish all aspects of you (all koshas) through focused concentration    DHARANA

  • flowers: radiate your essence and beauty through mindful, wise, meditative, and compassionate action   DHYANA

  • fruits: appreciate and share the fruit of your labor with lovingkindness, compassion, delight, and equanimity  SAMADHI

 

Additional Guided Meditations Are Available on our YouTube Channel

Here are a few samples of what is available in YouTube.

Take a few deep breaths to center yourself and then click on the meditation of your choice.  

  • Mind Trains explores how to work with a busy mind - neither getting attached nor averse to what is happening in the mind, making discerning choices about how to engage with thoughts, plans, memories, and perceptions that arise.  This practice is 12 minutes long. 

  • Grounding into Community is a meditative reflection on our interconnection with others.  It honors the support and grounding we receive from our community and mutuality in a brief 8-minute practice.

  • Guided Meditation: Tonglen The COVID-19 pandemic stretched our ability to cope.  In part this is due to the fact that coping is greatly facilitated by being in community and by being able to help, support, actively intervene in what is happening.  With the requirements for physical distance, it is challenging for us to reach out to loved ones who are suffering and to give them comfort and support. The ancient Tibetan Buddhist practice of tonglen is a wonderful way of providing comfort and support to others when we cannot share physical space with them.  Our YogaX offering today is a guided meditation of tonglen – of taking on another’s suffering and transforming it into comfort, peace, and healing.  With each inhalation, you are guided to draw in the suffering of another, transforming it in your heart.  With each outbreath, you are guided to send transformed suffering to another as healing energy, as wishes of comfort or peace. Tonglen can also be practiced in a single breath.  Any time, throughout your day, when you think of your loved one who is suffering, breath in to absorb their suffering.  Then transform this suffering with your own inner light.  Breathe out and send comfort to your loved one. My own practice today is dedicated to my dear friend KW.  May you have peace, comfort, and healing. This meditation is 10 minutes long.