Your mini virtual retreat is here

Hi there! 💛

If you missed last week's mini virtual retreat or want to experience again, you can watch here. I've also included the written companion guide for you below, yours to revisit whenever you need.

We are going to spend some really intentional time together to just slow down, take a few deep breaths, and get to chill a little bit. We are going to breathe, meditate for a moment, journal, do some reflection questions, and have an opportunity to simply feel our own breath and body and hear our own inner thoughts.

Grab something you can write with. Preferably you have a journal, but a piece of paper and a pen works really well too. Ideally, you are in a cozy, calm place, and if that is not possible, that is completely okay. We do the best that we can.

All of the prompts in this guide are optional. Write down what pulls at you. If you feel an immediate pull to something, stay with it, take a moment, answer it, and stay there. You can also simply write down the question and come back to it another time.

Before you begin ⏸️

Silence your notifications, get cozy, and give yourself permission to be exactly where you are today.

Start to slow your breath and elongate it, inviting it to gently soften for you and become your own personal metronome of ease, peace, space, lightness, and support. If you are safe and able to do so, close your eyes and start to come more fully into your body, your breath, and this present moment.

Deepen and lengthen your inhales, then deepen and lengthen your exhales. On the exhales, try to really get to the end of them. We do not empty our lungs at their full capacity enough, and we can end up with old air, old oxygen, and old life inhabiting them. Allow yourself to come to a full and complete exhale.

As your breath softens and lengthens, invite your body to follow. Bring ease to your forehead, eyebrows, and face, softness to your jaw, chest, and throat, and breathe your shoulders down your back and body. Follow your spine to your seat, your hips, your legs, your knees, your ankles, and all the way down to your toes. Think about your hair softening, your smile softening, and absolutely your belly softening and letting go.

Picture yourself at whatever age, place, or moment you last felt your best. This is the before everything shifted age, place, or moment in time. You do not have to know exactly why you are choosing it; just let 1 thing show up and give yourself permission to be honest here.

Really be with the you before. See yourself there with no rushing to fix and no giving her advice, just seeing her. Then bring in whoever you might have needed back in that moment. It could be a version of you now or of your future self, someone who could sit next to her and say:

“You don’t have to fix this today. I’ve got you.”

Take a breath in and take a breath out.

Now picture yourself right now, today, exactly as you are in this very moment. Whatever your body looks like, whatever your softened belly feels like, whatever your hormones are doing, or whatever moment you are in the messy middle of, silently say to yourself: This Is Who I Am Now.

Take a moment to remember what that phrase means: to be exactly as you are, to dance with this beautiful version of you, and to live out loud instead of waiting for some future version to arrive. It is not “this is who I will be once I fix this,” and it is not “this is who I am once I have earned it.” It is who you are right now, mid story, unresolved ending and all.

It is full permission for you to be with your most beautiful self in this very moment without fixing, editing, striving, or wishing anything were different. Breathe that all in, and breathe that all out.