Warm Light Guided Meditation Series: Stress Relief and Whole Body Relaxation
Meditation has many, many benefits.
And a big one that we focus on here at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is stress reduction.
When meditation is used as a relaxation tool, we want to focus on our physical clues that our body is relaxed.
This warm light guided meditation is great for anxious kids and overwhelmed adults.
And like many meditations, it can apply to anyone who is really noticing a lot of stress being held in their body.
How do I know I’m stressed?
All of our bodies hold onto certain clues of how we’re feeling. It’s up to us to pay attention to what our bodies are telling us. It can be really easy to ignore, if we’re not attuned to what’s going on.
It may be helpful to explore our Body Clues Activity to really identify your specific emotional experience of all of these different emotions, but here’s a quick overview of how your body responds to stress:
Stress hormones get released.
Your muscles become tense.
Blood flow increases.
Breathing speeds up.
Your attention narrows, making your mind feel super focused on whatever is causing your anxiety, or making your mind feel like it’s totally blank.
Stress and Fight, Flight, Freeze:
For some, this stress leads to an angry outburst, like yelling and screaming and FIGHTING. For others, this stress leads to an anxious outburst, like freaking out and wanting to run away. And for the last group of people, this stress can lead to a frozen response, where they just feel totally overwhelmed, and unable to come up with anything to do next.
Proactive relaxation is key to stress management.
You want to start dealing with those stress clues before they reach the overwhelm point, which is why it’s crucial to:
Check in with your stress levels throughout the day
and
Relax before you really feel like you need it
Photo by Wesley Eland on Unsplash
Warm Light Guided Meditation Walkthrough:
Read through this meditation before practicing it, or find someone to read it to you, in a calm and gentle voice. If you’re by yourself, set a timer for five minutes, and even turn on some gentle music. If someone is reading it to you, make sure that they can talk in a slow, soft voice.
When you’re ready, find a comfortable seat, or lay down on your bed.
Making sure that arms and legs are uncrossed, and that everything feels comfortable.
Take a few deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Imagine a warm light, gently floating in front of your face.
Notice the color of this light.
Maybe it’s even your favorite color.
When you look at this light, notice how it makes you feel.
Maybe it makes you feel happy.
Maybe it just makes you feel calm and at peace.
With your next breath in and out, I want you to imagine just a little bit of this color traveling into your body.
Imagine that nice, warm color filling up all the muscles in your face and letting all of them relax. Notice your eyebrows softening. Notice your jaw loosen. Even notice your tongue releasing from the roof of your mouth.
As you breathe deeper…
That warm light slowly fills up your body, starting to travel to your neck and letting your neck relax. Then traveling across your shoulders, letting your shoulders soften away from your ears and gently down your back.
And then that warm light slowly, gently fills in all the muscles in your back, softening anything tense. l
Imagine that warm light filling up your arms, your elbows, your forearms, all the way into the palms of your hands and each finger, one by one.
Next, that warm light travel into the base of your throat, swirling around.
Let that warm gentle light travel down to your heart, and into your belly, letting all the muscles around your belly relax.
With your next breath in and out…
Notice the light traveling down your legs, your knees, your calves and shins, all the way into your feet and your toes.
Feel that warm light throughout your body, letting everything relax and smooth out.
Remembering you can come back to this warm space any time you need to.
Want more meditation scripts?
When to get more support.
Meditation is a great tool for anxiety management, but it doesn’t mean you have to just deal with anxiety on your own. You can always reach out to a therapist or counselor to talk more about your anxiety, figure out what else is going on underneath it, and build a really robust coping skills tool box, including meditation.
Kelsey Torgerson Dunn, MSW, LCSW is the owner of Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
Curious to learn more about how we use meditation to help with stress, overwhelm, and anxiety? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anxiety and anger management therapy for kids, teens, and college students. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website
Image credit: Wesley Eland