Discovering Compassionate Centering: A Guided Meditation

Welcome to The One Podcast, hosted by Gina Catherine, a coach, writer, and speaker dedicated to helping you connect deeply with your body, heart, mind, and soul through curiosity, compassion, and play. In this episode, Gina explores the overwhelming feelings many are experiencing in today's world and offers a meditative practice to find strength and love at your center.

Gina guides you through a meditation, encouraging you to maintain a straight spine and bring awareness to your natural breath. Throughout the meditation, she invites you to connect with upsetting experiences and practice returning to a centered place of loving presence, allowing you to process emotions without repression or disconnection.

This episode emphasizes the importance of choosing presence, love, and compassion, even when faced with discomfort. Gina encourages you to practice this meditative technique regularly, strengthening your ability to return to your center whenever needed. Join her in this transformative practice and discover the power of compassionate centering.

 

**This meditation is an adaptation of one I learned when I studied with Layla Martin in her VITA program***

 

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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(00:06):
Welcome to The One Podcast, the podcast for living from your most vibrant and
authentic self. My name is Gina Catherine.
I am a coach, a writer, and a speaker.
My mission is to help you deeply connect to your body, heart,
mind, and soul with curiosity, compassion, and play.
While I offer these words from the perspective of a usually straight,

(00:27):
cisgendered, able-bodied white woman, it is my heartfelt hope that this podcast
holds nuggets of inspiration for anyone who feels like they could step more
fully into their own life.
Music.
If you want more love, more intimacy, and more play in your life,
you're in the right spot.
The one exists, and they are you.

(00:54):
I'm coming across so many people who are feeling overwhelmed and shutting down.
I get it. There's so much going on in the world. It's horrifying to keep up
and horrifying to check out.
The feelings can really be unbearable at times.
I feel like we have two choices to be angrily engaged or or sorrowfully checked out.

(01:17):
But if you take a moment to think about your life and how many things that you've
overcome, then you really have proof that there's absolutely nothing too terrible for you to bear.
I really love that cutesy phrase, my track record for getting through bad days
is 100% and that's pretty good.
The thing that strengthens me is compassion, not as an intellectual practice,

(01:42):
but as a meditative practice.
I would like to use this episode to invite you into a practice that will help
you remember that at your center is strength and love.
At your center, compassion is possible.
This practice will help you not only to think about centering and compassion, but experience it.
And experiencing things is how they become real.

(02:04):
You can begin in a seated meditation with
your spine straight you can also stand or lie down but in a position that keeps
your spine straight if you are a person who's not able to be in a straight spine
position just take a moment to simply imagine the energy of a straight spine spine.

(02:25):
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Bring awareness to your natural breath, noticing the sensation of breath entering
through the nose, how it fills the chest.
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(03:46):
And throughout this meditation, I'm going to invite you to connect with upsetting
experiences, and then to practice coming back into this centered place of loving presence.
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Not repressing your feelings, not disconnecting, but just noticing how you can.

(04:09):
Feel some pretty strong things.
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Maybe straightening your spine. Keep coming back into a centered loving presence.
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(07:46):
And now thinking about a part of your body that you just hate,
a part of your body you reject or you just don't like.
Really experience that feeling.

(08:21):
And just allowing that dislike to come up.

(08:43):
That part of your body and just allowing that dislike to come up And now bringing
yourself back to a centered presence with loving compassion.
No matter what you just felt, allowing it to be there.
Not repressing, not disconnecting, just re-centering.

(09:06):
Coming back home to your center and choosing presence, love and compassion.

(09:32):
And now remembering the last time you felt super ashamed, like you wanted to
crawl into a hole and die, just overwhelmed.
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(18:34):
Notice any emotional residue that's left over in your body. It is perfectly okay.
Some of these pain points cause you to experience uncomfortable emotions,
strong sensations in your body.
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And even if you choose presence and love, you'll still need to process some

(18:58):
of these feelings afterwards.
But you are able to create and strengthen this ability to always come home to
present loving compassion.
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If you do feel any of that residue now, go ahead and get up,
shake, pillow punch, do any cathartic movement that feels good to you,

(19:23):
and then come back to your center,
come back to sitting in this loving
presence and just know that you're gonna keep developing this level of mastery
over and over again until you feel that you can always make this choice to return

(19:49):
to your center whenever and wherever you need it.
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Thank you for practicing with me.
Heartfelt thank you for listening. I am honored every time you choose The One Podcast.

(20:12):
Intimacy does not require perfection. Big, juicy love requires us to get curious,
to offer ourselves what we are searching for in others.
From that place, relationships feel easier.
If you feel like someone you know would really like this episode,
send them the link right now. Let's courageously practice love together.

(20:33):
Life is an absolute blast.
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