Season 3 Starting Now
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.
Filtering by Category: meditation
Recharge the Heart
This visualization goes out to the leaders working for positive change. Thank you for your efforts, your passion, and your sacrifices. We use metaphor as medicine to land in our bodies. We send ripples through the body with our breath, ignite the heart, and entrust the pelvis and the mind to support our nervous system so we can rest and recharge.
#boundaries
Feeling a bit drained these days? Working on your hashtag boundaries? We’ve got some six feet of separation self-care for ya. I talk super briefly about how fractal patterns of self:other are part of the body’s defenses from the perspective of Chinese Medicine and then we drop into a super soothing visualization that helps you disentangle your energy from others which ultimately benefits your immune system.
Read MoreThe Down Dial
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.
An Explanation of Guided Self Work
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
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
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.
All the Jellyfish Feels
Today’s jam is about poetry and jellyfish and feeling them deep in your being to regulate your Central nervous System.
Read MoreViral Combat
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.
Awaken and Empower the Immune System
This GV (guided visualization) is 22 minutes. Allow some extra time on the end to rest and continue the visualization in your own mind-body or else just space out. You can listen solo or with your family and then all compare experiences. Your immune system contains a dynamic and rich blueprint of biodiversity which runs without your input largely, but in this visualization, we offer our input, using language to speak directly to our cells, to communicate our intentions and desires for all hands on deck throughout this magnificent system in our bodies and in each others.
SEASON TWO - INTRO - WELCOME BACK
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
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
Jing-a-Ling!
Juice up your jing, which, in Chinese Medicine, is your deep essence goo, kinda like how oil is the deep essence goo of the Earth. People with BJE (Big Jing Energy) live long, love hard, and run strong.
Read MoreJust Me Being a Tree
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
Let's get wacky all up in this joint. Got a sore knee, elbow, wrist, kip, ankle, 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:
Artist Hilda af Kimt
The poem What's Broken by Dorianne Laux
Let's Get Real about the Diaphragm
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
Parachute
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
Still Life with Feather
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
Bubbles n Flow
Distilling the classic microcosmic orbit into a water cycle for all you nature + seltzer lovers.
Read More