Hello, my name is Ileana Perez, and I'm with Gigi Tonye' Arts and Fitness. Thank you for joining me today for meditation, Blue Door Neighborhood Center. This will be a 15 minute meditation. I'm excited to share this class with you today, because this is something that I do in my personal practice as well.
Meditation comes with many benefits, including being a coping strategy for stress and improving your breathing. For this course, you will need a mat, some water, and you can include a block if needed. So let's begin. So I would like for you to sit in a lotus position, standing up straight and tall, breathing in through your nose and
out through your mouth fully and thoroughly. Feeling your stomach, expanding as you exhale. And as you breathe, I want you to take notice of your legs and your back, your arms and your neck. Take notice if anything is out of the ordinary of every ache every tense feeling in your body.
And as you breathe, taking deeper awareness of your body as a whole and your being. as your breathing fast or slow? Continuing to breathe fully and thoroughly. And as you breathe, I want you to close your eyes now.
And visualize yourself waking up in the morning. But something is different when you wake up today. You notice a dark cloud over your head. Identify that dark cloud to be a difficult situation you have in your life. But you decide to defeat it today with powerful words of affirmation.
I am loved, I am strong. And I can handle anything that comes my way. Repeating those powerful words of affirmation in your head as you continue to breathe. Still visualizing yourself, saying these things as that dark cloud over your head begins to get smaller and smaller.
I am loved, I am strong, and I can handle anything that comes my way. Still breathing. Still visualizing. And still repeating these things to yourself in your visualization. The cloud gets even smaller until it eventually disappears into nothingness.
I am loved, I am strong, and I can handle anything that comes my way. And now you can slowly open your eyes. And we can move on, and so our breathing exercises. So for first breathing exercise, we can start with our four, seven, eight breathing exercise.
So the way that we do this is we will inhale for four counts, holds for seven and exhale for eight counts. So let's begin. Inhale two, three, four, hold two, three, four, five, six, seven. And exhale two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Great. Now we can do this two more times. Inhale two, three, four. Hold two, three, four, five, six, seven. And exhale two. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Inhale two, three, four, hold two, three, four, five, six, seven.
And exhale two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Great job. Now we can move on to our role breathing exercise. So for this exercise, I would like for you to take your left hand and place it on your stomach and take your right hand and place it on your chest.
We will inhale for three counts and exhale, making a whooshing sound for four counts. So you will inhale. And exhale, making a loud whooshing sound feeling your chest rising and your stomach rising and falling, feeling like waves.
So you inhale two, three and exhale. Two, three, four. Three more times. Inhale two, three. And exhale two, three, four. Inhale two, three. And exhale two, three. four. Inhale two, Three and exhale two, three, four. Great job. Now we can move on to our movement meditation, which is my favorite part, so we can start with our lotus position
and we will bring our hands above our head, connecting our palm. So go ahead and raise your arms up and connect your palms above your head. Continuing to breathe into this pose, and we can hold for 30 seconds.
From here, we can move on to our hearts to hands pose so slowly, bringing your palms down into your heart center, keeping those elbows raised and continuing to breathe in and out. Posing this pose for 30 seconds as well, releasing all of your worries that you have releasing everything that you can't control.
And from here, we can move on to our lateral side bend. So you would just place your left hand and forearm onto the mat, bringing your right arm up and over your head, feeling that stretch on your side. Still breathing.
Holding this pose for 30 seconds. And release. And now we can move on to our other side. Bringing your right forearm and hand onto the mat and bringing your left hand up and over. Breathing in and out. And release that. And from here, we can go on to our spinal twists, bringing our right hand to our left knee and our left
hand directly behind us, and twisting making sure we're bringing our chest upwards. and holding for 30 seconds. And release now we can move on to our other side, bring our left hand to our right knee and our right hand directly behind us.
Twisting and making sure we're standing tall while breathing. And release, we are done with our 15 minute meditation. Once again, I am Ileana Perez and I'm with Gigi Tonye' Arts and Fitness. Thank you again for joining me today at Blue Door Neighborhood Center, for this 15 minute meditation.
And make sure to check out their website at bluedoorcenterIL.com
