Releasing Negativity: Guided Meditation

Nayaswami Anandi leads us in a guided meditation for releasing negativity. You are guided to relax your body, bring a negative feeling or tension to mind, accept the feeling completely without judgment, visualize the tension melting and evaporating away, continue to relax and accept the feeling, and offer it up to the Divine so that it can be released.

The process may be repeated multiple times. The goal is to sit in freedom, bathed in light, once the negative feeling has been fully accepted, relaxed into, and released.

Transcript

Nayaswami Anandi Cornell:

Hi my name is Nayaswami Anandi. I'm an Ananda meditation teacher with the Ananda School of Yoga and Meditation.

Exercise in Releasing a Bad Feeling

Today we're going to do a meditation to help us release bad feelings. Bad feelings can come from interactions with other people, or they can come from some quality within ourselves that we wish we didn't have. For today's exercise, you'll be choosing a bad feeling to work on. Choose something from the day-to-day misunderstandings and frustrations that we all run into.

The exercise we're going to do today is based on an excerpt from the book, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda. The passage is 3:33, and the translation is, “Of what avail is mere suppression?” In other words, "What good does suppression do?"

Our human tendency is often to try to squelch bad feelings or to deny that they exist. Some people think they shouldn't have negative emotions. On the other hand, we might also try to defend those feelings or justify to ourselves why we're feeling them. Neither way is effective in helping us to get rid of those negative feelings.

Today, we're going to try the approach recommended in the Gita of accepting, relaxing, and releasing.

Relaxing the Body

We'll start first with a simple exercise to help us get relaxed and focused. So to do this sit up straight in a comfortable position, you can put your hands on your lap, the palms facing upward, your feet set flat on the floor, you can gaze upward slightly, just a gentle upward gaze, and close your eyes. Keeping that upward gaze.

And now we're going to relax the body by first tensing it. So we'll inhale with a short and a long breath through the nose as we squeeze all the muscles of the body. Throw the breath out through the mouth with a double breath and relax completely.

So let's do that together.

Inhale, tense.

Throw the breath out and relax.

Again, inhale, tense.

Exhale, relax.

And one last time, inhale, tense.

And relax.

Now let's relax a little bit more deeply. By doing an even count breathe, slowly inhaling through the nose to a count of four. Hold your breath to a count of four. And slowly exhale to count to four.

Let's do that together.

Inhale 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold 1, 2, 3, 4. Exhale 1, 2, 3, 4

Inhale, Hold, Exhale.

Inhale, Hold, Exhale.

Inhale, Hold, Exhale.

Now just take a deep breath in and let that breath exhale completely.

And begin now to watch the natural flow of breath in the nose. Actually feeling the breath flow in and out. You can imagine that would just be like watching waves at the ocean come in and recede back flowing in and out. The breath is just flowing into your body and out without any control on your part. You're just watching it happen [long pause] Use this movement of breath to help you relax your mind, and relax your body.

Bring to Mind a Feeling to Let Go of Today

And now bring to mind the feeling that you would like to let go of today. Just bring that feeling to mind, perhaps an event or a person that makes you think of it. But don't begin to analyze the feeling, don't begin to defend it or to deny it.

Just notice, when you bring this feeling to mind, where do you feel it. You might begin to feel a tension or a discomfort somewhere in your body. You might feel tension in your stomach or your heart. Or you might feel something in your throat or your jaw. Perhaps you're feeling it in your shoulders or your back or somewhere else in the body. Just notice that feeling. [pause]

Affirm Acceptance

As you notice it, try to go into the heart of it. Try to go into the center of it and accept completely, that it's there. You may even want to speak to it and say "I accept you completely. You're a perfectly valid feeling. I accept you." Just continue to practice this, accept the feeling and relax around it [long pause]

You'll need to continue to practice the two of these together, relaxation of that area where you feel the tension and complete acceptance of it. [pause] This will not always be easy to do. The tension may have been within you for quite a while. So don't be dismayed. Just continue to view it, to go into the heart of it and accept it completely. And release it. Relax around it. [long pause]

"I accept you. I create a relaxed space all around you so that you can open up." [pause] Don't be afraid of this feeling. It just needs to be accepted. [long pause]

Melt and Evaporate Tension

You might even view this tense feeling in some part of your body—the response to some event or person in your life—as a little ice cube. It's hard. But as you accept it, it starts to soften and it begins to melt, and what was hard begins to melt into a thin film of water. And now imagine that water vaporizing, evaporating.

You can think of yourself as offering that feeling upward toward God, if that is comfortable for you. Or you can imagine a warm sun of love shining on you, causing that old feeling to simply evaporate slowly and gently with no pressure from you.

Relax and Release for Freedom

Your job is completely to continue to relax to the best of your ability, to continue to accept what's there to the best of your ability, and then offer it upward. You're free to go in the acceptance, in the relaxation. That old energy is free to be released upward. [long pause]

You may discover that as you do this process, you find the tension has come back to the same place. Don't worry about that. Just go back and repeat the process. Know that you can spend a long time on this visualization. You may need to repeat it a number of times. But it will work. It's based on universal principles of truth that will lead you to freedom. [long pause]

Relax that area, except that it's perfectly fine that it was there. But now it's ready to be released. And just imagine it flowing upward. Offering upward, to the light, to the Divine. [long pause]

Inhale deeply and as you exhale deeply feel that energy flowing away from you, being offered upward.

Take another deep breath. Inhale. Deep breath of freedom. And exhale that quality again. [long pause] And one final time inhale, and as you exhale feel as you sit, you're sitting in freedom and you're being bathed in the light of perfect acceptance and perfect love.

AUM, Peace, Amen.

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Learn more at www.ananda.org/meditation