A Mindful Breathing Exercise - visualization, energy work, & colour magic.
I’ve been doing mindful breathing and visualization during my oxygen therapy. It’s inspired by meditation instruction and therapy programs I’ve done, and I’ve added my own personal touches. It incorporates energy work, colour magic, is meant to be adjusted to your specific needs. Here it is!
- We use the labels of “positive” and “negative” symbolically, knowing that emotions are not inherently good or bad, and that using more accurate descriptions is healthier for you.
- For this exercise you choose two colours, one to represent your positive energy and one to represent your negative energy. This is a good time to use either your intuition or colour magic correspondences.
- This practise should be done to the best of your abilities. These steps are what I do, but everyone is different. While stepping outside your comfort zone is helpful, pushing yourself too much is not! It’s okay to change things or stop if you need to.
Step 1. Lie or sit in a comfortable position that will enable your body to take full, belly breaths. I find lying down helps me the most.
Step 2. Begin to slow your breathing, taking long, deep breaths. Don’t use the momentum of your chest to breathe for you, feel your body relax.
Step 3. Once you are feeling calm, picture your body as if it were made of glass. As crystal clear as a cup of water, completely translucent.
Step 4. Inside your body you can see your energy swirling around. Right now it’s murky, maybe dark at points like storm clouds before it rains.
Step 5. This murkiness is made up of two energies, two colours. The first colour is positive energy, the second is negative energy. You can choose any colours you’d like, I chose a sunny yellow for positive and a muddy brown for negative.
Step 6. As you continue to take your calming breaths, imagine breathing in the positive energy. See the energy swirl around inside your body, starting at your head and slowly filling your chest, arms, stomach, and legs.
Step 7. As you exhale, imagine the negative energy blowing out on your breath. It disappears into the air as it exits your body, and you can see your energy starting to change. It’s no longer muddled, but shifting colours, becoming positive.
Step 8. Continue to breathe in positive energy and exhale negative energy. Do this until your clear glass body is full of positivity, calm and safe and happy. Feel that energy, and see it radiating out of you and into your surroundings. It touches the space and people around you, giving them a calm, safe, happy energy too.
Step 9. When you feel ready, slowly bring yourself back into the present moment. If you can, wiggle your fingers and toes, stretch, open your eyes, and slowly sit up if you’ve been lying down. Keep taking deep breaths and carry this positive energy with you to the rest of your day.
Step 10. Know that feelings of fear, or sadness, or anger are normal, and can even be important. But, if they do get overwhelming it’s okay to center yourself in your own basic goodness.
If you’ve read this far, congrats you just learned a portable calming tool! All you need is your breath (and a note or phone, if you’re forgetful like me). You are in control. You got this.
Please feel free to save/copy this post to use it later, but please don’t repost it without my permission!
