Guided Imagery Meditation

Quick Stress Relief Tips…

March 1, 2020 by Carol Leave a Comment

Trying to find the time to implement stress relief techniques can be stressful itself, so I wanted to share with you some quick stress releasing ideas. It really doesn’t take long to shift your energy and calm your nervous system and access a sense of relaxation and peacefulness. Here are a few of my favorite, very quick stress releasing tricks.

#1 – EXHALE… A few focused, deep breaths can shift your mood in a moment. Exhaling slowly stimulates the Parasympathetic part of the nervous system, the part that calms and nourishes our system. Inhaling stimulates the Sympathetic part, the part that controls the Fight or Flight response. Think about the difference between a quick gasp and adrenalin surge when you are startled, vs. a long, slow sigh of relief…

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What Does it Mean to Be Centered?

July 22, 2019 by Carol 1 Comment

Being centered means having a reference point, a place to come back to when life and emotions and stress push you off balance. Think about those wobbly toys that kids play with; you knock them down and they bounce right back. They have the kind of balance that we wobbly humans often wish we possessed! They have such a strong sense of what their “center” is, that they effortlessly go right back to it, no matter how many times or which direction you push them.

Being ‘centered’ is that kind of dynamic balance point. It doesn’t mean we are always there, it means we always know where to go back to. Kind of like knowing where your home is. Meditation is one very effective way to get more familiar with your center. Regular meditation teaches you where it is, what it feels like and how to get back there when you get temporarily lost.

How else do you get centered?

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Choices…

October 19, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

So many people seem to be stressed about making choices these days. Whether it is a major life change or decision – health issues or decisions about treatments, divorce or separation, career changes or simply the myriad of lifestyle choices we face on a daily basis – it is so common to feel unsettled and stressed and keep second guessing ourselves. When we make a choice, we want to feel a sense of peace and resolution.

But that’s not always easy… And the more distant or dis-connected we feel from our intuition and inner guidance the harder it is to be relaxed and at peace with our choices. Connecting with our deepest inner selves is often hardest at the times when we need it most.

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Letting Go of Our Old Stuff with Guided Imagery…

May 6, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

We talk about letting go in a lot of different contexts, but what does it really mean? We take stress and trauma into our body and energy field, and that’s fine, it is how we function as physical beings. Where it becomes a problem is when we keep it and carry it with us for the rest of our lives. Our traumas and experiences and beliefs – whether they are conscious, or buried deep in our unconscious – continually impact how we function in the present.

Tapping and imagery work give us simple and elegant tools to bring this stuff into our awareness and truly let it go. Not just mentally, by talking about and analyzing it, but by actually physically releasing it from our body and most importantly, from our energy field.

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Where Does the “Four Steps to Center” Meditation Come From?

February 16, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

People have asked me how I came up with the Four Steps to Center™ process that I use in many of my guided imagery meditation CDs and mp3s. It evolved out of my belief of who we really are; not just physical beings, but beings of multiple levels, of heart and mind and spirit as well as body. I try to incorporate this understanding into all aspects of my life and my work, though of course, like everyone else, I frequently forget!

I call my blog and my newsletter “Living in Your Body” because I think that’s what we are really here to do; to learn how – as limitless beings of spirit – to live in the confines and confusions and endless possibilities of a physical body. So I developed the Four Steps process as two things.

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Every problem has a gift for you in it’s hands…

October 17, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

Health and healing are like life – filled with mystery and complexity and change. It makes the whole question of analyzing symptoms, getting diagnoses, of fixing and curing things quite complicated.

Richard Bach wrote, in his remarkable book Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah “Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.” I add to that “and every illness and symptom has a lesson.”

So when we look at our health, what do we see? A bunch of random symptoms and complaints, sent by a random and perhaps not very kind Universe to bug us and make our lives more difficult?

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Being at peace with choices…

July 20, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

Many of my clients are dealing with a major life change or decision, such as serious health issues and decisions about treatments, divorce or separation, relationships and marriage, decisions about having children, abortion, or adoption. It is so common to experience many different and often conflicting feelings, like anxiety, fear, anger or guilt, as well as excitement, hope, joy, relief.

Acknowledging, validating and empowering all your feelings, your inner wisdom, and ultimately your choices, allows you to find peace and healing with your decisions and with your self. But that’s not always easy. In highly personal life choices, you may often feel unsupported or invalidated by those around you who have different perspectives, and may find it difficult to talk openly about your feelings. Guided imagery meditation can be a helpful tool to give you a safe space to experience the support and validation you need and deserve.

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Opening and completing your day…

July 2, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

“Opening and Completing Your Day,” is a set of morning and evening guided imagery meditations that I created and recorded to give you a way to frame your day, that give you an energetic container for your day. In our busy lives, with electric lighting and 24/7 access to everything we have lost our connection to sunrise and sunset, lost the sense of a real container that frames our work lives, personal lives, and our time for rest and turning inward.

To me, containers are sacred vessels that give necessary form. It becomes so easy to just keep moving from one thing to the next without that delineation…now I am beginning my work, now I am completing it, now I am feeding myself, now I am resting…

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Imagery, meditation and the inner dog…

November 15, 2016 by Carol 7 Comments

What do imagery and meditation have to do with dogs? I share my home and my office with 2 wonderful large dogs, who as I write this are lying in front of the woodstove, basking in the warmth and feeling safe and content. But I also have an inner dog, who lives deep in my brain, in that ancient mysterious part of the nervous system that we humans share with all mammals.

My inner dog has a lot in common with my two relaxed friends; it is protective of me and it wants me to be safe and happy. It can go from tail-wagging pleasure to a growl in a nanosecond. And it can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined – whether a dangerous intruder is ringing my doorbell, or the ring is happening in the movie playing on my TV.

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Tossing and turning…

May 29, 2016 by Carol 2 Comments

I can’t sleep, I just toss and turn for hours” is such a common complaint in my office these days. Thirty five years ago, when I began my private practice, I was working in New York City, and seeing a lot of people in high stress jobs. But curiously, people slept OK. Now I work in a peaceful rural setting in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, and insomnia or other sleep disturbances are disturbingly common. What’s happening?

STRESS! That’s what’s happening. We live with a level of chronic, unremitting stress that our bodies were never designed for, and we are paying the price with stressed adrenals and elevated cortisol levels that keep us wakeful when we should be sleepy. Stress hormones were supposed to be released when the proverbial tiger was jumping out of the tree to eat us, not when we sit in traffic, worry about the economy or stress about our work, relationships or the state of the environment. Now, so many of us have constantly elevated stress hormones, and that is a real problem (for many reasons!) but especially when it’s time to wind down and relax for sleep.

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