10-Minute Guided Meditation to Open Your Heart

Hi, my name is Chloe Freytag and welcome to Get Healthy U TV Meditations. Today, we're doing a 10-minute guided meditation to open the heart. So we all want to live a more heart-centered life, we wanna feel connected to ourselves, connected to our family, to our friends, and be more compassionate and understanding and all of this lies in the emotions of the heart, lies in that connection. So we'll work today on opening that sensor up so that we can express compassion, love, kindness, all these uplifting emotions to ourselves and to each other more naturally. So go ahead and find your way into a comfortable seat, if you'd like to sit cross-legged on the floor like me that works, or maybe sitting in a chair, whatever's comfortable, you can also take a pillow or blankets underneath your hips to kinda elevate your seats a little bit, and once you choose the position that you'll sit in if your arms, wanna rest comfortably on your knees or in your lap, and then gently choose to either close your eyes or softly gaze down towards the floor. And just start with long deep breaths in and out through the nose, using our breath just to start to calm the body down, calm the mind down, slowing down our breath also calms the heart down, it slows the heart rate, gets us into a more relaxed state, so just take a few more deep breaths on your own. Try to make them as slow and full as you possibly can. We'll start to bring our attention into our hearts, so as you breathe just have your awareness connected into the center of your chest, into your heart and visualize as if you're breathing directly into that space. So every breath in, the oxygen is going straight into your heart, and then gently relaxing on the exhalation. So just simply breathing with your attention awareness on your heart, on your chest, and you'll notice that, as you bring attention into this part of your body, you might start to have some different emotions or things come up. The center is where we hold our loved ones, but also where we hold our grief. So whatever emotions come up as you bring your attention into the heart space just let them come and go, try not to attach onto them quite yet, just notice what's naturally lying in your heart. A few more breaths, directing all that breath into the heart space. The true wisdom that our hearts give us is compassion, understanding, so start to bring that idea of compassion into the heart and let that compassion start to heal and work out all those other emotions we have in the heart, all that grief, all that love that came up before, let compassion be the underlying emotion of them all. So finding how this emotion of compassion starts to soften you, starts to soften that grief or whatever other heavier emotions are in the heart, as you empathize with yourself through compassion, recognizing that your grief is also in the hearts of other humans, that we all experience these emotions and it's through them that we learn how to help each other, how to help ourselves, how to be more compassionate and understanding human beings. And as this compassion starts to soften the heavier emotions, it also starts to lift up the elevating ones, so that love, that unconditional love and kindness starts to shine through. You can feel how in the same way that others feel our sorrows, they also feel our joy, that all beings have these uplifting experiences that they hold in their hearts just like you do. Taking a moment to just embrace that compassion for yourself, for others recognizing that, all of these incredible inner workings of the heart happen inside each and every one us. When we understand that we can have a more honest and authentic relationship with ourselves but also with each other, because the underlying emotion that we relate on is compassion, is that understanding that we all feel. You can even allow your hands if you'd like to bring onto your heart, onto your chest. And just take long, deep breaths connecting into that compassion that you have inside, connecting into all the emotions and energy and wisdom that your heart holds, that passion, that seat of inspiration. Recognizing that the full spectrum of these emotions are what make us human. And it's how we relate with our hearts to ourselves and each others that builds humanity. Take about three more long deep breaths here with the hands on the heart, just connecting. Maybe you even feel that heartbeat underneath the hands. Take a full deep inhale in, exhale gently, relax the hands back onto the knees or in the lap. We'll finish this guided meditation with a simple breathing exercise that can be done at any point in your day when you feel you want to connect more into your heart. This breathing exercise is called the flower of the heart and it includes a visualization. What we'll do at our own pace when I tell you to begin is you'll breathe in comfortably, you'll exhale all your air all the way out and you'll hold your air out for as long as it's sustainable for you, when you feel you're ready to take another breath in, you'll take a deep, full inhale into your heart, and imagine like you have, a little flower bud, right at the center of the heart and it blooms open about a third of the way on that first big inhale. And you'll repeat that two more times, you'll exhale, again, holding for as long as it's sustainable and then deeply inhaling, that flower blooms another third of the way so it's 2/3 opened, and our last time the flower will completely bloom and it can be whatever flower you want, you can get very imaginative with this visualization. So there'll be three times where we hold the breath out, three times where we deeply inhale and allow that visualization of the flower bud to open up on each breath. So by the end you've got a nice, full, completely bloomed flower. So we'll do this at our own pace, we'll begin now take an inhale, exhale all the way out. Hold your breath as long as it's sustainable and comfortable for you, breathing in when you're ready and letting that little flower bud bloom a third of the way, continuing two more times, holding the breath out, breathing in when you're ready for that flower to bloom it's second third of the way, go at your pace. Keep working until you've got a fully bloomed visualization of that flower in your heart. And once you do, you just return back into a comfortable regular breath. Keep working until you've finished this visualization, this simple exercise. Remember this is a tool, a breathing pattern that you can use at any point in your day, it takes about 30 seconds very, very simple, but you can feel that shift in the heart that energy that opens up just through that simple breath, that compassion, that understanding, take a couple more breaths, letting that soak in. And gently starts to blink your eyes back open, coming back into the space that you're sitting in. Thank you so much for meditating with us here today at Get Healthy U TV. Be sure to check out all of our other meditations as well, and remember meditation is something very useful and only takes a few minutes, it's not a super long, lengthy practice, it can be very attainable and very sustainable in your life and have a profound effect. Thank you so much, have a great rest of your day or evening and we'll see you here next time.