💗 Meditation Monday 🧘‍♀️ Slow Down to Speed Up: A Meditation for Restoration
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Welcome to Meditation for Anxiety. I'm Katie Kramitzos. I'm the creator of the Women's Meditation Network and your guide here. I am so grateful you've taken the time to be here with me right now. This episode is made possible thanks to the generosity of our sponsors. And after a message from them, we'll begin today's episode. If you'd like to listen ad-free, become a premium member by following the link in the show notes.

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I hope next Monday, perhaps you can join me live at 1130 a.m. Eastern on our Facebook page. That link is here in the show notes. And today I did a meditation talking about how important it is to slow down so we can speed up. So if you are feeling a little fried, a little overwhelmed, a little stretched, and you still have things you quote unquote need to do,

This meditation is for you. I love you. Namaste. Good morning, beautiful. Welcome to Meditation Monday. I'm so grateful that you're here with me. Take a deep breath with me right now as we get started and come into this moment with me. Today's meditation is called Slow Down to Speed Up. And I'm sure you're familiar with that saying,

I'm feeling it especially today because we just finished spring break. We had spring break all last week, which was about, what, nine or ten days of just full-on family time.

And it was wonderful and it was amazing and it was, we made a lot of great memories and it was also really intense. If you haven't noticed by now, I'm somebody who pours all of myself into whatever the heck I'm focusing on. And so spring break was no different than that.

Had all sorts of adventures with the kids, with friends that were over. I built a chicken coop. I'm going to be showing the video of it later on. I made homemade bread. I just, I made meals for everyone. I played with everyone. We just had a great time.

So usually on Mondays, I come into the work week really energized and excited and just like ready to go. This morning, I did not feel that way. This morning, I felt fried, I felt depleted, and just felt really low energy. So in these moments, we have two choices. We can either

choose to push ahead and be in the hustle and just like push through push through push through and I'm not against that choice There are times that that feels like the right thing to do and you know that you need to do that or the second choice is to Slow down to actually do the opposite of what feels necessary

to completely just let go and not be efficient with your time, not stick to your schedule, just to opt out of all of the tasks, all of the responsibilities for a little while in order to restore yourself, in order to nourish yourself, in order to renew yourself so that you can go back into life, go back to those things that are important for you to do and

and be all of you and be full. So today's meditation is going to be just a quick little opportunity for you to slow down so that you can speed up. You can use this meditation in times when you feel fried, when you feel stretched, when you feel like you can't do one more thing so that you can really come back into yourself. Now,

Whatever thoughts in your mind are telling you, I don't have time for this meditation. I don't have time to slow down. I really need to get things moving.

I want you to just observe those thoughts, move them aside for a little bit and just trust. So much about living our lives is just trusting our cycles, trusting our energy, trusting that when we truly feel on the verge of burnout, if we take some moments to restore, we will come back full of energy, full of efficiency.

and get the things done that we wanna get done in the energy with which we really wanna get them done, okay? So go ahead, be here with me. If you're in a place where you can close your eyes, go ahead and do so. Take a moment just to feel your body, maybe straighten your back a little bit, not too much to where it's rigid and painful, but just a little bit to where you feel erect and alive, your chest and your heart feel open.

and see if we can just take a quick inventory of your body from head to toe, letting our breath melt our muscles and soften us into this moment. Let your face soften, let your jaw release, let your tongue fall from the roof of your mouth and just rest. Let your shoulders drop and your arms get heavy. Let your heart open.

and your belly relax. Let any pressure in your hips and your back release and soften. And let your legs from your hips to your thighs to your knees to your calves all the way down to your feet just melt and come into your breath. And perhaps you may find here the voices of your mind telling you all the things to do

creating an energy of worry, of hurry, of anxiety, of unsettledness. See if you can imagine just scooping up those emotions and scooping up those thoughts, just letting them go into the air around you as you watch them dissolve and just breathe. Sometimes it can feel like the list of all the tasks becomes a race that we always have to be running for.

But the truth is, we always need a break. Any athlete or racer will tell you that the break, the stop, is equally necessary to the velocity with which we move. So let yourself pause, concentrating only on your breath, continuing to release any thoughts and any emotions that arise with every exhale.

See if you can imagine yourself as a bucket whose water line is very, very low. And with every moment that passes here in stillness, with every breath in that you take, the water begins to rise bit by bit, filling you up, reminding you you're whole. Just breathe and imagine each breath adding more water to your bucket.

Letting it be okay wherever your level is. Letting go of any judgments of why your energy is depleted. Letting go of any shoulds that tell you you should be feeling X, Y, or Z. You should get these tasks done. Let all of it go. Now we're going to take a couple of really deep breaths here. And you're welcome to place your hand down.

on your chest and maybe one hand on your belly so you could feel the air coming in and out. Go ahead and take a deep breath in and let the air fill up your chest and belly like a balloon. And when you can't breathe in anymore, just hold it there for four seconds. One, two, three, four. And then exhale all the way. Deep breath in again.

This time feeling the air travel down into your arms and into your legs. Holding it again at the top. One, two, three, four. And then letting all that air out. Last deep breath in. Breathing in all that fresh air. All of your concentration on it filling you up. Hold it. One, two, three.

Three, four, and exhale as you drop your arms and feel the calm running through you. Now, perhaps there is more water to fill in your bucket for today, and that's okay. In this moment, the important thing is you are here and present with yourself and what you need. See if you can just surrender to what is right now.

And if you need more moments of restoration, more water to fill up your bucket, give yourself that time today in whatever way you need it. And trust everything will get done when you are able to show up with clear energy. Take one last deep breath in as we come to a close. And go ahead and open your eyes for me. Thank you so much for being here with me.

"How do you feel? Let me know." Give me a little comment on how that made you feel, if you feel a little more calm, if you still have thoughts running through your head about all the things that you need to do, and that's okay. This morning I did this meditation and what I thought would be a quick five minutes on the couch in deep conscious breaths, coming back into stillness,

so that I could hurry up and like get stuff done ended up being a full hour of me just needing more space. And that's okay. And this giant to-do list that exists right here, kind of covered in this layer of fear, like I'm not gonna get it all done and all of these bad things are gonna happen 'cause I'm not gonna get it done. Like, let it just be there. Let it drift away. It has no place here.

Allison, I'm glad you're feeling so calm. Let me know how you guys are feeling. I hope that this was really helpful for you today. And in moments when you are just feeling a little frazzed and feeling like you can't do just one more thing or you can't hustle your way through the next task, trust. It's all going to be okay.

If you guys want more of this, I put a link above in the description here for another meditation that I created a while ago called Slow Down to Speed Up. And it's on our Meditation for Anxiety podcast.

And I want to make sure you know about that podcast because it is very special for moments when you are feeling anxious and worried and stressed out. There's so many beautiful meditations there that you can easily scroll through and find one that is healing for you. Okay. I love you. I hope you have the most amazing day of trust and of calm and coming back home to yourself. Namaste, beautiful.