Season 3 Welcome to Body Land Metaphor Medicine Guided Meditations

Keeping it real, keeping it surreal, and keeping it brief. Let’s do more with less with a season of extra shorty visualizations for the now. Wishing you good health, good luck, and composure for the continued intensity of 2020. I’m your host, Liz Asch Greenhill, and I’ve been using this method in my acupuncture clinic for nearly 20 years, helping people integrate salutary storytelling into their self-care practices, to alleviate physical and emotional pain, restore, rejuventate, and recharge. Try a few of these eco-art guided meditations that apply various somatic techniques and principles of Chinese Medicine to concepts from Surrealist art — and see how you feel after. Let mw know how it lands with you. And stay tuned for lots more visualizations! Cheers!

The Down Dial: A Guided Meditation for Stress Relief, Relaxation, and Nervous System Support (14 min)

Turn the dial down on your nervous system to catch some solid sleep and bring your body into repose. When we invite the deep yin into our being, we can surrender our nervous energy and find a sense of peace.

A Room of Their Own: A Guided Meditation for Teens to Help with Anxiety, Stress, and Connection (22 min)

Tune in to my first visualization for teens wherein we do several somatic exercises with visualization to move energy in the ribcage and diaphragm, to land in our bodies with a sense of belonging and connection. Adults are welcome to do this too, of course. It’s really for anyone. Let me know how it goes for you! You can find me at Night Sky Acupuncture or on Instagram at Metaphor_Medicine.

Love Nest: A Guided Meditation to help children feel safe and loved (11 min)

Our first visualization for kids! This exercise is designed to help kids feel surrounded by safety and tenderness as an experiential antidote to anxiety, worries, and fear. I recommend that adults do the exercise alongside the kids so that they can share their experiences afterwards. Let me know how it goes!

What is Metaphor Medicine? An Explanation of my Method of Guided Meditation

This episode is not a guided visualization, but rather it’s a talk about doing this work on one’s own. I walk you through the way I use guided visualization as a practice in my self care. If you listen and give it a try for yourself, I’d love to hear how it works out for you.

Play that Song: a Guided Meditation to Relieve Stress and Practice Embodiment (10 min)

There’s music coming from the ribcage when we use the superpowers of our imagination to turn the diaphragm into a DJ. Sound weird? Give it a try and let me know if you feel different after.

Clear the Lungs: A Guided Meditation to Support your Immune System and Reduce Stress and Tension (25 min)

Using metaphor medicine we clear the lungs with a series of varied images and acts of tenderness, practicing how to move energy in the body.

Viral Combat: A Pop Culture Guided Meditation to Fight Viruses and Feel Strong! (30 min)

Together we look to the movies to inspire our immune system to fight with swords. Then we clean up and take a long qi shower. We are using our imaginations to help us feel better.

Season 2 Welcome: More Guided Meditations from Body Land Metaphor Medicine

It’s March 17th and we are starting Season Two together. We are in a topsy-turvy time of great uncertainty and we have — each other. We have our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits. We have our connection uniting us and the commonality of care among us. We have that between us and inside each of us. That’s our spark. We are going to work with that on all levels. I got a big lesson in viruses last week when I was sick and I will pass along what I learned from my body’s various responses. This season I’ll give you visualizations on: the Immune System, the Throat, the Lungs, Viral Load, Anxiety, Depression, Insomnia, and the Nervous System. Along with the guided visualizations, I’ll also include talks on kitchen remedies and accessible plant medicine you can hopefully find in the park or the median or in your neck of the woods. I’ll share links with you to tai chi and qi gong exercises and folk medicine techniques and all kinds of self-care tools you can practice at home. I’m here for you. Send me your requests. Liz@nightskyacupuncture.com If you grok this podcast please leave some stars and a review on Apple. Thank you. If you’d like to make a donation you can do so at BODYLAND on Venmo. I appreciate you. With my clinic temporarily closed, I am switching, like many providers, to online care. You can schedule a Telehealth session with me where I can advise you on health concerns, teach you acupressure and home herbal remedies, and do customized interactive guided visualizations with you. Sign up on on my website or through this direct link. Offering virtual hands— Liz

The Darkest Dark: a Guided Meditation to Help you Center, Ground, and Manage Stress from Body Land (14 min)

If you are feeling the depths of dark winter or a dark soul, try this.

Dive into the deep yin of darkness to let go of static emotional states through some wild and colorful methods.

There's a little explanation first and then it shifts into the meditation. 

Art Rx for all the Dark Feels:

Visionary artists who paint themselves and others flying and floating: Faith Ringgold and Marc Chagall

Check out the cosmic connectivity of Chani Nicholas 

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Just Me Being a Tree: An Earth-Based Guided Visualization to Practice Self-Care and Stress Relief (17 min)

 No shade in pretending to be a tree. 

 Let's get basic and be trees together. We'll go through the seasons and feel all the shedding and growing and windfall and snow. Get ready to get leafy and stuff. 

Need a Rx of art along with your visualization? Check out: 

Stunning Aerial View Photography

Artist Nils-Udo 

Artist Agnes Denes 

This Here Joint: A Guided Meditation to Ease Pain and Relieve Tension and Stress (9 min)

Let's get wacky all up in this joint. Got a sore knee, elbow, wrist, hip, ankle, or shoulder? Let's start at the source of your pain and see if we can use your imagination to shift the way you are holding tension there.  

Hey btw, FIRST-- if you don't have an image come to mind when you hear me say: atom shape -- google 'atom' first, so you can see it and have it readily accessible in your mind. :-)  

Your Art (and Wildlife) Rx:

Livestream honey bee hive

Artist Hilda af Kimt  

The poem What's Broken by Dorianne Laux 

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Let's Get Real about the Diaphragm: A Deep Breathing Deep Sleep Guided Visualization to Feel Better (22 min)

Really, it would be more accurate to call this “Let’s Get Surreal About the Diaphragm!

For real, when your diaphragm is in a pinch you can feel all kinds of crummy symptoms: anxiety, shortness of breath, heartburn, ribside pain, poor circulation, headaches, and more, but I'll stop there. Sheesh. Let's ambush the diaphragm with lots of imagery to help you release tension from this beast of a muscle. 

(P.S. the diaphragm is particularly influenced by creative expression, that's why we are going this route. P.P.S. Never worry if you are visualizing something different or at another angle from what I'm trying to describe. Just let your imagination do its thing.)

Art Rx for curious people who want to look stuff up: 

Images of treetops and a phenomenon called crown shyness

Listen to Chavela Vargas, one of the most expressive singers ever 

Artist Hiba Schabaz  imagines the self immersed in natural 

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Parachute: A Playful Guided Meditation to Honor Your Inner Child and Find your Happy Place (8 min)

 This one goes out to your inner child. 

 We're going old school, all the way back to pre-school for this one, mixing memory into our senses and embracing wonder while we bloom bloom bloom the diaphragm.

Curious for more? This episode's Art Rx is full of delights:

Agnes Pelton (1881-1961)- abstract artist with spiritual vibes

Eiko and Koma's Delicious Movement Manifesto - guidelines for living 4 sure

Using Memory and Sound to Regrow - creative uses of sensory memory on NPR and in the coral reef

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Still Life with Feather: A Guided Meditation that Makes Breath Work and Presence Fun (12 min)

Be an artist and make an internal meditation tool.  

 Build an assemblage in your body so that you can focus your breath. 

 

Curious to see some examples of still life painting? 

Still Life with Peacock Pie, Pieter Claesz, (Dutch) 1627 (vegans avert your eyes!) 

Surrealist Still Life (Pirate Souvenirs), Pierre Roy (French), 1930

 Andromède prisonnière, Pierre Roy (French), 1930

More here:  

How Artists Have Kept Still Life Painting Alive Over Thousands of Years, By Kelly Richman-Abdou 

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Spine of Pearls: A Vivid Guided Meditation to Help You Relax and Reduce Neck/Back Pain (12 min)

 A guided visualization in which the spine is a jigsaw puzzle column of bones getting refurbished, while also using the metaphor of a necklace, make that pearls!

 Is your spine a column of bones or is it a pearl necklace? You be the judge. (Hint: it can be both!) 

Curious about artists who paint the body in imagined and mystical ways? Here’s your Art Rx:

 Frida Kahlo 

Wangechi Mutu

Frank Moore   

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Be a River: a Guided Meditation to Reduce Stress and Practice Eco-Embodiment (10 min)

One River. One Body. Feel them merge. Be the current.  

 Water is soft and silky, mighty and powerful, and deeply cleansing. 

We have a lot of work ahead of us to make our rivers as clean and fresh as they are in our imaginations. If you feel called to make a donation, here are some organizations doing deep work: 

Native American Rights Fund 

Center for Biological Diversity 

The Ocean Clean Up