We asked insightful psychotherapist, Ruth Price, to create a mindful, Christmas reflection. This simple exercise will help to root you, body and soul, in the moment. Shifting your posture towards calm and helping you to soak up the festive season without being overwhelmed by it.
Press Pause With This Mindful Exercise
Are you sitting or standing? Either position is fine, whichever feels right for this moment. Relax your shoulders, loosen your hands, breathe deeply, gently.
Imagine yourself for the next few minutes transported to the landscape of this image.
Whichever position you find yourself in, imagine what that feels like: are you perched on a rock or on the grass?
Are you close enough to the water to reach out and touch it?
Allow yourself to savour the sensations that this image brings back to you: the solidity of ancient rocks, cracked and scarred by the impact of tide after tide; the sparkle of the silver pathway inviting you to step beyond; the sun’s dazzling embrace across earth, sea, skies. A light breeze touches your face, carries the fragrance of the waves, conjures memories of other days…
Returning to the present moment, allow yourself to take stock of your current sensations. The floor beneath you, the sounds that surround you, the body that continues to serve you.
Bring your arms up and out into an open stretch, a welcoming.
Then slowly bring one hand back to rest over your heart, the other to rest over your deep core and breathe deeply, slowly.
A recognition of having paused in these moments to savour the life within you, the life around you: an honouring, a thanksgiving.