Relaxation Sequence

This relaxation sequence is a preparation for longer meditations. By relaxing your body and your mind first it helps you to go into a deeper meditation more quickly and easily.

The more you practice this relaxation sequence the easier it will be to remember. Soon you will find you can fall into a relaxed state pretty quickly.

Make yourself comfortable, have a glass of water and a blanket handy for added comfort and of course turn off anything that is likely to make noise.

• Close your eyes. Let your hands lay open on your lap and set your feet a comfortable distance apart.
• Take a deep breath, filling your lungs and belly. Let it out with a sigh.
• Breath deep, feeling your lungs and belly expand and breath out with a sigh.
• Breath in again. Sigh out again.

Go back to your normal breathing and as you breath in imagine you are breathing in calmness. As you breath out imagine your mind and your body are relaxing and releasing tension. With every breath allow your muscles to become more relaxed, calm and heavy.

• Feel your feet relaxed against the floor.
• Feel that relaxation traveling up through your ankles and into your calves. Allow the muscles in your calves to become soft.
• Bring your attention to your thighs, feel them relaxing down towards the chair.
• Notice your buttocks and lower back are comfortably relaxed.
• Feel this total relaxation spreading through your abdominal muscles. Any tension you were holding in your stomach melts away. Feel all the organs in your abdomen relax.
• This quiet relaxation travels up to your chest and through the organs in your chest and into your upper back.

You feel calm relaxed and healthy.

• That calmness spreads across your shoulders and down your arms into your hands and your fingers. Your fingers relax open.
• Feel relaxation traveling up your neck and through your jaw. Your jaw may relax open a bit.
• Relaxation spreads across your face with the muscles around your eyes softening and releasing tension.
• You find yourself feeling so relaxed that even the skin on your forehead becomes smooth and quiet.
• Take a moment to enjoy this physical relaxation. If you notice any areas of your body still feel tense spend a moment on that area – breathing in relaxation breathing out tension.

Your body is now in a quiet, calm and relaxed state as you bring your attention inside your head.

• Allow any thoughts that come into your mind to disappear.
• There is no need to try to stop thinking, simply release thoughts as they come up.
  • There is no need to hold onto a thought, if it is important you can come back to it later.
  • With practice you may become so quick at this that you can release a thought before you finish thinking it.
• Now bring your attention to the quiet gap that happens between thoughts
• Allow that sliver of time to expand in between thoughts.
• Take a minute or two now, paying attention to the quietness between thoughts.

Use this relaxation practice on it’s own or as a preparation for a longer meditation. You will find I refer back to this page for many meditations.

To your health!