Grounded in Spirit: Awaken Your Inner Wisdom with this Masterful Listening Meditation

Unconditional, a poem by Jennifer Wellwood. Willing to experience aloneness, I discover connection everywhere. Turning to face my fear, I meet the warrior who lives within. Opening to my loss, I gain the embrace of the universe. Surrendering into emptiness, I find fullness without end. Each condition I flee from pursues me. Each condition I welcome transforms me and becomes itself transformed into its radiant, jewel-like essence. I bow to the one who has made it so, who has crafted this master game to play it purest to light, to honor its form, true devotion. I welcome you to ground it in spirit.

This episode is going to be a little bit unique. It is the first ever masterful listening meditation. I don't know about you, but it seems like a lot of us are currently struggling in all the human ways that I think humans have struggled for as long as we've been here on this planet, and yet that's probably not going to change. And yet, having tools like meditation certainly make life a lot more possible to deal with. Meditation has been a tool that I've used for years, and there's so many different ways to meditate, to find a space of calm and breath, so we can get some awareness

of our inner world. And I always say, or I often say, that masterful listening truly starts by listening to ourselves, going inward, going deep to find our essence, our truth. And it can get really confusing inside. You know, we're we're living in these bodies. I believe we're spiritual beings having a human experience, and that means we all have a mind, a heart, a gut. Our spirit is intertwined with all of that. And what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna invite you to listen in a little bit of a new way. Masterful listening is all about truly being in the moment of listening, meaning if you're

speaking to someone else, if you're listening to someone else, or if you're going inward and listening to yourself, you're gonna be listening to the words as I speak them and guide you through this meditation. You're gonna be listening to the pauses between the words, to any sounds that you hear. You know, we live in this world where even when we want things to be quiet and peaceful, doesn't mean that construction isn't going on or your dog isn't barking, but that's just all part of what is. And often we make what is wrong. We might be frustrated, we might not like what we're hearing from another, from

ourselves, and yet we don't have control over how others show up. We don't have control over the noise outside of us, but we can have more control of how we show up in all of that, and that is such a powerful tool. So today's meditation is going to be a chance to find some fierce compassion for yourself. You are constantly working to be here, whether you're aware of it or not. Our bodies are constantly doing so many things at the same time. Our brains are processing so much information. We have a conscious mind, we have the subconscious, we have feelings, thoughts, we have pain, physical pain,

emotional pain, mental pain. And so today, excuse me, today's meditation is called grounded in spirit. I came up with that recently because I was thinking about who I love to be as Svetlana on this earth. And I love to feel rooted like a massive redwood tree, you know, with roots in the ground. And by the way, all the roots within a redwood forest are all intertwined. There's a network of roots all working together, and we are all human beings connected as one, working together, although it doesn't always feel like that. And I found that when all the parts of myself are working together versus against one

another, which often happens in the mind with the heart, that it's hard to even know what's really true. What do we know, which is in the gut, the knowing versus what do we think we know, which is the mind? The mind thinks it knows. The gut knows. So, my intention is to help you connect to your gut. I say for myself, and I share this often with others when they're confused. You know, what do I do? Where do I go? How do I begin? Really valid questions. You first got to get really quiet and still. So I'm gonna guide us through the seven chakras of your

system. If you're familiar with the idea of what a chakra is, that's wonderful. I hope you can masterfully listen to me describing it, which might be a little bit different than how you've heard it described before. And if you're new to the idea of chakras, I'm gonna just do a brief introduction about what chakras are and how if we learn to tune in to the seven chakras within us, the energy centers within us, they will provide us, you, me, with all of the information that we need to make better choices, to get clarity, to find grounding and connect to spirit, to the higher realm, to your

highest wisdom because you have it. It just often feels like we don't know, but you do know. You just don't know that you know. And at the end of this meditation, I hope you discover some more knowing. And yet I invite you not to get caught in your thoughts. I'm going to be asking questions. And as words appear, thoughts appear, feelings appear, I invite you to notice them. Imagine clouds on a beautiful day passing by. Imagine your thoughts as those clouds floating in and out. My invitation is do not judge them, do not analyze them. If you find yourself starting to trail away, bring yourself back

with your breath. I say that often in this podcast. When you find yourself listening and you get distracted, which happens all the time, that's normal. Come back, bring yourself back. So the lens that I'd like to add today, as you listen, is the lens of deep presence and awareness, compassionate awareness. Notice if you've gotten distracted, whether you have that voice that says, damn, that's okay. It's great. You've noticed, you can come back. It's never too late to start your day. It's never too late to restart a meditation, even if you're in the middle of it. That's the point. This is a practice, okay? So the chakras

of the body, there's seven of them, and they're essentially energy centers. They're all working in unison to create your life force energy, and your body, mind, and spirit all benefit from balanced chakras. Often, if one chakra is unbalanced or blocked, it literally stops the flow of your energy or chi from flowing up and down from the ground to the very top essence of you, that higher being, that spirit, which is kind of above your head. I'm going to run through the chakras. Each one has a color, and the term itself is a Sanskrit term term, excuse me, for wheel. This is, imagine it that the spherical

energy center in each chakra is literally like a wheel that's moving your energy. Okay. And one way to tap into that is just through your breath or prana. You might have heard the word prana, pranayama come up in your yoga practice or in your meditation practice. Pranyama means breath control, which basically means that you know you're mindful of taking, let's say, a deep breath

versus those times when we're, you know, overwhelmed or anxious, our breathing starts to get really quick. And if you've ever been there in a state of anxiety and you're breathing really fast and heavy, it could feel almost scary. So learning how to just slow that down and go from to

in itself is a great tool. You've probably heard me say, if you've listened before, I wish we've all learned as kids how to breathe and how to listen. So this episode is a deeper dive into the breath and its connection to masterful listening. Because if you can learn to breathe in the way that serves you, that is your gateway to masterfully listening to all the parts of yourself that are eagerly wanting you to know. Pee-peep, have you heard that fire truck coming by? Perfect timing. Our lives sometimes feel like they're on fire, and yet that's often the mind convincing us that something is wrong. So there's

seven chakras. It all starts at the bottom with your root chakra. If you're sitting cross-legged on the floor, think of this as the very, very bottom foundation. Okay. This chakra is connected to basic trust, safety. Do you feel safe in your being on this earth, in your body? If you move a little bit up towards where your sexual organs are, this is the sacral chakra. The color is orange. This is about your creativity, your sexuality, that energy. And the root that I mentioned, I didn't say is red. So we're going from red at the very bottom, the ground, to orange just above. Then you're getting into

your solar plexus chakra. It's yellow. This is your wisdom, your power. That's your belly. That's when I refer to the gut. We're talking about that chakra, which is right underneath your heart chakra, which is green. This is all about love and healing. When you move up from the green, you get to your throat chakra. It's all about communication. Think about it. Your voice comes out of your throat. For a lot of us, if our throat is blocked, we feel like we can't communicate in the world. We can't express ourselves. This could be a very tough place to be, right? How can you express your wisdom and

your love if you can't communicate it effectively? We're gonna go into that through this meditation so that you can really unblock any energy that's stagnant.

Above the throat chakra is the third eye chakra. This is imagine your face and your eyes just above your eyes, is your third eye. This is your awareness. Awareness is something that I say is the first step, truly to just even be aware of what's happening in your body. If we don't have awareness of what's so, what you're feeling, what hurts, what feels good, what feels confusing, you can't really do anything about it. So that awareness is key. So opening up your third eye is really important. Then at the very top, above your head, that's the crown chakra, as if you're wearing a crown. That's spirit.

That one I want you to imagine going all the way up into the cosmos. That one's purple. I've also heard it described as like a sparkly purple. We all have spirit energy, and it's that spirit that then can guide us down into the third eye, which is that darker blue, the lighter blue of the throat, the green of the heart, the yellow of the solar plexus gut, the orange of the sacral creativity, and the root of that trust. We have to first trust ourselves. So we're gonna begin at the bottom, at the root, and we're gonna go all the way down to the top crown to

the spirit, and we're gonna be grounded in spirit, grounded in spirit. That's the connection to all of ourselves, and we can do this anytime. And I invite you to listen to this meditation anytime you want to ground to the highest part, which is a little bit of an oxymoron, if you think about it. How do we ground to the very top and yet imagine a tree with roots deep into the earth and branches that flow up and up and up above the clouds into all the dimensions above? I don't know what your spiritual beliefs are, it doesn't really matter. Just imagine anything that's beyond you as

a human being. You can think of it as God, the universe, source energy. And if you don't necessarily believe in the idea of a higher power, then I invite you to try on just for today, what it's like to imagine there's just something else beyond your being that maybe if you tapped into might bring you something new. And before we start, I want you to check in once again. Do you want to listen and do this? If you have some resistance, notice that that's super normal. See if you can breathe into that when we can persist through that resistance and start, we break the cycle of

resisting our resistance, which just causes more resistance. In today's super hectic, stressful world, balancing our chakras, our energy is actually something that takes quite some work. And yet I can tell you, I went through a time where I worked with a healer who was kind of a deep expert in this energy realm. And she said, Wow, your root chakra is so blocked. I didn't trust myself. I didn't trust the world. I didn't feel safe. And from that, my creativity wasn't flowing. I definitely didn't connect to power. I couldn't love or heal. I couldn't speak. I lacked awareness and my spirit was not present. And once I

unblocked that, it was like I could feel the energy flowing. So also don't expect you're gonna have some massive life-changing experience because expectations pretty much mess everything up. And yet you might be open, be open to whatever comes. Whatever comes is exactly right. It's what you need in this moment. Trust that.

So also notice my tone. It's gonna be very different than how you've heard me speak in the other episodes, which I think is an important thing to notice because we all have range, and I really like to practice my slower tone because my natural one is a bit faster. Both are great. They each serve at different times, right? All right, so let's just take a few deep breaths and find a comfortable position. You could be sitting in a chair, you could be sitting on the ground, or if you like, when you meditate, you can lay down, make sure your back is straight, your spine is straight,

so you can really get that energy flowing. And when you breathe, I invite you to breathe in through your nose

and out through your mouth. If you prefer, you can also breathe in through your nose, out your nose, or even with your mouth the whole time. I learned that breathing in the nose and out the mouth is what works best for me.

So let's take a few deep breaths.

I invite you to close your eyes, lower your gaze, go inward. And as you continue to breathe, send your next inhale down, down, down into Your root. Imagine a bright red color. As if you're sitting on a carpet that's red and soft, and it's holding you. Wherever you are, you are held by the entire earth right now. And I want you to imagine roots growing from the very bottom of your being. On that carpet, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into the earth, they keep growing in all the different directions. Really feel how held you are. You are safe in this moment. There's nothing to worry about.

Ask yourself gently right now.

What does this safety feel like? And then listen to the very bottom of your being. You're sitting on your butt. What does it feel like to be sitting down? Is there any discomfort? Is it really calm? Is it jittery? Whatever it is is perfect. Keep sitting and breathing down into that

red color, into those roots. You are held. Trust that you are safe.

And as you take another breath

into that deep red color, the very foundation of you, inhale and imagine an orange light right around your pelvic area. Breathe into that orange color, into the creative part of you, into the sexuality within you. That is the part of us that has so much energy for creation. If you're a parent, that is the part of you that has supported you in bringing life into this planet. If you're an artist or really anybody who's ever created anything, that is the part where the creativity starts and flows.

Thank you. Thank you, sacral chakra, for all of that creative energy.

Ask that part right now. What do I want to create? What do I yearn to create?

Notice what appears. Might have a lot of thoughts and ideas popping in your mind. Watch them like that film strip in the clouds. Nothing might appear. That's okay.

Forcing doesn't work. Fighting doesn't work. When we fight with our reality, we always lose. So whatever's there in that sacral center is exactly what's supposed to be there. And as you breathe, you move up. And imagine an elevator that's literally moving up through the center of your body. We started at the ground floor, it moved up a little higher, and now we're in the solar plexus. This is your belly. Put your hands on your belly. Hold your belly.

Feel the power within yourself. You have so much wisdom. Say to yourself, I am powerful. I am wise. I know.

And now ask yourself, what do I know? What do I know right now?

And if you don't know, you don't know. And if whatever you hear resonates, great. Hear that, listen to that message, and then on your next exhale, let it go. Your knowing never leaves you. Trust that what you know, you know. That's your power. Trusting ourselves is the ultimate power and wisdom. And with that, let's take the elevator just a bit higher into your heart. I invite you to put your hands on your heart.

Take a few deep breaths into your chest. Imagine a bright green, beautiful light expanding all through your chest.

This is love. This is healing. We're all healing. We're all here to love. It feels good to love. Sometimes it's hard to tap into love. Notice what your chest feels like. Is it constricted? Is it open? Go ahead and bring your hands out wide. Like you're a bird flying, and just keep breathing as you open your heart.

I am sending all of my energetic love to you. Receive that. This might feel emotional.

That's great. That's what it's supposed to feel like. You might feel like you want to cry, you might feel like you want to laugh. However, you feel, love yourself enough right now to just feel it. Your feelings are valid. Always consider your feelings.

And you're not making any choices right now. You have nothing to do other than just be with that beautiful green energy of your heart. Listening truly starts from the heart.

And now breathe in and allow that elevator to go up just a bit more to your throat. And let's clear our throats right now because I need to. So take a deep breath and then just cough or really breathe deeply. Let's take a few more fierce breaths here and really go and imagine your throat. You're in your throat.

Breathe out through your throat. Let's get that stagnant energy out. A lot of us are a little under the weather. It's the winter time. There's things stuck in our throat, physical, emotional. Just

and ask yourself, what do I want to say? What is my message?

And listen masterfully. Does a message appear? What do you hear?

The message that's coming through me right now to you is you are exactly perfectly on time.

There's nothing to fix or do.

You are strong and present.

On your next breath, let's continue to take that elevator up. You're moving through your throat, up, up, up, through your face. You're going past your lips, your nose, your eyes, into your third eye. This is your space of awareness. Awareness. So powerful to be aware. What are you aware of right now?

I'm aware of the rain sprinkling down right outside the window.

I'm aware of my breath.

Become really aware of your breath right now.

Any sounds in the space around you? Any sounds within you? Your belly rumbling, your mind moving fast or slow. That's exactly perfectly right.

What am I aware of right now? Notice that. Just be with that for a moment. Breathe into your awareness.

And as we breathe again, take that elevator up, up, up a little more to that beautiful sparkly purple crown.

This is your spirit. We've moved from the roots in the ground up to above your head to your spirit. Your spirit is always with you, above you, within you, below you. It's everywhere. I want you to imagine a beam of purple, sparkly light shooting from the top of your head. Up, up, up, up. It's going through your roof, past the clouds, out of the earth's atmosphere, into the cosmos, into the universe and the galaxies. It's going everywhere. You are so powerful when you're tapped into your spirit. Just send it all the way up.

Ask your spirit, spirit, what's here? What do you want me to know?

See what comes.

Keep breathing gently.

And now let's gently take that elevator that's now all the way connected to the whole universe and you. We're going to take it really slowly down, and I'm going to make some statements. As I make them, please say them as well within yourself. And this is the masterful listening part. As I say them, repeat them, and you can at the same time.

I am spirit. I am connected.

We're going down in the third eye. I am aware. I am here,

and we're going down to the throat. I

have something to say.

I am powerful with my language. I am

a communicator who's masterfully listening to myself. Thank you. Let's go down into the heart, that green, beautiful light, and say, I am love.

What would love do? Exactly this.

Say I am healing. I am my own greatest healer, and go down into the belly. I am wise, I am powerful. I know.

Let's go down that orange color. I am a creative being.

I am the creator.

And that red light at the very bottom. Feel the bottom of your being right now. Feel your butt in the chair. Feel your body laying down. Wherever you are, say I trust. I trust myself. I trust the world. I trust life.

I am exactly perfectly on time because you are.

And with that, on your next breath, come back. Feel free to open your eyes, and let's just notice what's here right now for you.

How are you feeling? How's your mind? How's your heart? How's your gut?

Now is a good time to take out a piece of paper, write down any reflections, thoughts, anything that came to you. Whatever did or did not come is perfect. This is the first time you've done this meditation because it's the first time I've ever recorded it. So, first, thank you for masterfully listening to me and to yourself. I hope this serves you. And today's homework is for you to continue to notice your energy. Breathe this week with a little more awareness and repeat this meditation as many times as you need, as you want. I feel more grounded right now, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful

for you for being with me right now, because you are. And share this with loved ones, with anyone you think could benefit. This is my gift in this moment to me, to you.

We're all connected, we're all energy. I really trust and hope this brings you whatever you need today. And I look forward to seeing you next time. It's a very special episode with a very special guest who is a mindfulness teacher and a yoga teacher. And we're going to dive even deeper into breathing and all kinds of other listening related conversations. See you next time.