When you're feeling lost or losing perspective of the bigger picture, take the time to nurture your relationship with yourself and reconnect with the person you truly are at your core.
Following our most recent two-part blog post on using self-connection to self-direct when you feel lost (see Part I and Part II here), we now bring you a practical mindfulness exercise to take things out of concept and into experience. This is a self-embodiment exercise to build your self-connection.
Self-embodiment is the practice of being fully in your skin with your attention on your body. When you align your mind with your physical body to connect with what’s inside, you allow yourself to expand into a state of both physical and mental openness and alignment.
Here is an exercise you can use to drop into deeper alignment and become more fully self-embodied.
Exercise: Self-Embodiment for Self-Connection
Take a moment to close your eyes and feel the presence of connection inside of yourself.
Allow your body to drop into the earth as you uplift yourself by reaching through the top of your head, opening your chest, head, neck and shoulders.
Let go a little more, and imagine the energy inside of you is travelling up from the base of your spine to the top of your head.
Let go, unwind and relax. Allow your energy to move throughout your body.
Feel your inner wisdom within, where you know what you want. Choose to follow your inner guidance as you find your way into the direction that is right for you.
You can even reach your arms out all the way to the side to open up space around your center (the solar plexus and heart).
Continue breathing and allowing your breath and energy to circulate through the space within your body. Keep bringing your attention back to being present within yourself.
When you expand the body in every direction, you come into the present moment where you can feel your organic value, separate from performance. You can feel where you matter just because you are alive and are a part of the bigger picture, which is always perfect -- even in moments when you struggle to see that.
In the present moment, when you are self-connected, there is self-acceptance, non-judgment, and clarity. When you learn to live in the present, you connect with yourself and return to your original nature. As soon as you come into alignment with the self, you begin to go on a journey of self-fulfillment.
In this sense, nurturing your self-connection is the easiest way to get centered and rediscover your purpose, because everything will flow organically and become apparent from your self-awareness and higher sense of self.
With this, we wish you good luck in your home practice! Check back here for more exercises like this in the future.
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