Heart Awakening

Your heart and your solar plexus are key to your well-being. As your centers of love and life-force, they need to be nourished with your breath and mindful attention to stay vital. In this meditation, you'll imagine filling your heart and solar plexus with light as you breathe into them. Bring a little more aliveness into your day with this soothing and healthful practice. www.christina-mcmahon.com

When you meditate, it is always helpful to have something to anchor your attention to. Usually, that is the breath. However, in this meditation, you will use the sounds in your environment as your attention anchor. This trains you to be more in tune with your senses, which can create a deeper sense of awareness in your everyday life. www.christina-mcmahon.com

This guided meditation will help you welcome into your life more gladness - a profound sense of being content with where you are right here, right now. www.christina-mcmahon.com

What could be cozier than curling up on your warm bed or couch while gentle rain patters outside your window? Give yourself that dreamy experience with this short meditation. Perfect for a midday power nap, or to prepare your mind and body for a restful night's sleep. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Just before you sleep, your subconscious is very open to suggestions. That’s because when you’re drowsy, it's harder for your thinking mind to block or resist new ideas. In this meditation, you’ll first get nice and relaxed. Then you’ll bring to mind something you want to manifest: abundance, love, health, peace of mind, or any goal. You’ll visualize this briefly before you drift off to sleep. If you do this practice regularly, you’ll begin to notice more golden opportunities to act on in your waking life, which will help you turn your intentions into a lived reality. Get ready to manifest! www.christina-mcmahon.com

Underneath the busyness of our lives and our minds, there is a calm pool of stillness that we can always dip into. In this meditation, you will connect with that stillness, and go back to your day recharged and rejuvenated afterward. www.christina-mcmahon.com

We often notice our bodies when something is wrong with them. But how often do we pause to feel what is going *right* within our bodies? Bring some aliveness into your day today with this inspiring gratitude practice for your body. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Studies have shown that consciously practicing gratitude at bedtime leads to longer and sounder sleep. Gratitude promotes relaxation by shifting a busy or worried mind into a more positive state. In this meditation, you'll imagine you are floating on peaceful waters while warm waves of gratitude wash over you, lulling you into a deep sleep. www.christina-mcmahon.com

When our minds are racing, it's so easy to forget that we actually have the power to choose where we put our focus. In this meditation, you'll practice choosing the breath as your central focus over and over again. Consider it a "dress rehearsal" for sharpening your concentration in your everyday life. www.christina-mcmahon.com

The key to getting a good night's sleep is shutting down a busy mind. A relaxing body scan is one of the best ways to do this. In this meditation, you'll imagine your whole body to be a shopping mall whose lights are turning off for the night, section by section. Watch the final swirls of dust settle down as you drift off into restorative sleep.

Our default is to navigate life with our busy minds. How would today be different if instead, you chose to navigate with your heart? Turn your heart light on with this meditation and find out! www.christina-mcmahon.com

Do you sometimes feel like your mind is spinning out of control? Are you constantly rehashing a negative experience from your past? Or rehearsing what you want to say to someone who has upset you? In moments like these, our thought patterns are actually contributing to our suffering – not alleviating it. And the best way to shift those patterns is to move into deep, wholehearted compassion for yourself. A mind entangled with difficult thoughts is so worthy of your own compassion and love. Photo by Eeberhard Grossgasteiger on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

As humans, our default mental mode often looks like worry or stress, or at the very least, running through our to-do list. In meditation, we can shift that default mode by asking our minds to dwell on happier memories and experiences. The more you do this practice, the more you will change the neural pathways in your brain, and the more happiness you will welcome into your day. Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

When you're feeling stressed or anxious, everything seems to be moving quickly: thoughts race through your mind, and your heart may feel like it is going to explode in your chest. In this meditation, you'll intentionally slow down the breath, and then check in with your thoughts and your heart rate to see if they have also slowed. www.christina-mcmahon.com

This meditation is an exercise in self-compassion. By gently breathing into any difficult emotion we are feeling, we allow that emotion to feel total acceptance. After that, it usually feels safe enough to release on its own. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Want to increase your happiness quota today? It may be as simple as tapping into the joy that others are experiencing. When you can do this with an open heart, it is an important corrective to feelings of envy. Envy suggests that there is not enough to go around. But when you can feel genuine happiness for another person's win, you are communicating a new belief in abundance Ð that there's more than enough happiness to go around, and that your wins are just around the corner! Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

Sometimes when you're feeling lost or stressed, and you don't know what to do, the answer is to do nothing. When you allow yourself to surrender completely to the moment, to give up actively looking for solutions, you take the pressure off of yourself and your busy mind. That allows your intuition to kick in, and to deliver the answer you need at the perfect time. www.christina-mcmahon.com

When we meditate, it helps to have a peaceful anchor for our attention. In this meditation, you are invited to imagine your breath flowing in and out of your body with the rhythm of ocean waves. Wishing you a restorative practice. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Do you sometimes feel that you are the only one having a difficult day, or struggling with a challenging emotion? In this meditation, you will bring your awareness to the throngs of people around you who are just like you – doing their best to handle what is coming up for them emotionally as they navigate their day. As you breathe in connection with them and breathe out compassion, you will feel more solidarity with others around you – and more compassion for yourself as well. Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

If you're feeling neutral, or pretty good, you can get intentional about bringing even more brightness into your day. In this practice, you'll start with basic mindfulness, and then open up to lovingkindness and gratitude. Get ready to meet your happiness quota today! www.christina-mcmahon.com

Do you have a cherished goal you're working toward? Visualization is a powerful tool to get you focused and clear about achieving your goals. In order to "be it," you have to be able to "see it." Step into your best life with this powerful visualization technique. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Compassion is a strong concern for yourself and others when suffering. We all experience suffering, even if it is merely our everyday experiences of sadness, stress, or worry. By shining more compassion on yourself on the inside, you become a beacon of compassionate light on the outside as well. Photo by Gabriel Siqueira from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

Most of us begin our days in an uninspired state. We are running through our to-do list in our minds, or we may be resisting what we have to do that day. What if you could start your day in the most inspired state of mind you could imagine? How would today be different from other days? Dive into this meditation, and watch your inspired morning unfold! www.christina-mcmahon.com

If you're feeling great today, why keep it to yourself? Get ready to visualize an ocean of love and light expanding outward from your heart space and reaching everyone around you. Get your dose of love today! www.christina-mcmahon.com

It's true! Your life is bursting with blessings. Feel them wash over you in this joyful guided meditation. www.christina-mcmahon.com

There is a common misconception about meditation that it is all about "stopping thoughts." But that can be an exercise in frustration, since our minds are accustomed to thinking. Rather, mindfulness is about bringing our full awareness to whatever is present for us, including our thoughts. In this meditation, you will practice naming the kinds of thoughts coming up for you. You will learn how to be the observer of your own thinking, which ultimately will allow you to respond to events in your life with wisdom, rather than being in reaction to them. Photo by Reward Jr Juliano on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

Are you firmly in "doing" mode today? Find some stress relief by giving yourself three minutes to sink into "being." After you rejuvenate yourself, the action that you take today will be much more effective. Enjoy! www.christina-mcmahon.com

Perhaps there is someone in your life you love very much, and maybe you even want to strengthen your love for this person – to feel it even deeper. In this meditation, you will begin by amplifying the love you feel for yourself. Then you'll allow that wellspring of love to flow over to your loved one, strengthening the connection between the two of you. www.christina-mcmahon.com

When we meditate, we choose an "anchor" to hold our attention and coax our mind to stay still. In this meditation, you'll experiment with two different anchors: the sounds in your environment, and the sensations in your body. By zeroing in on those two aspects of your present moment, you'll train your mind to be fully aware of what is alive for you in the here and now. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Loving-kindness is the essence of a happy life. By generating boundless heart energy for ourselves and others, we open a gateway for more love to flow to us. In this mediation, you'll practice sending love to yourself, a loved one, a neutral person, and finally, the whole world. Photo by Jonathan Borba from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

This gentle practice will invite you to bring more self-compassion into your day, particularly when you are experiencing a difficult emotion. Photo by Rowan Chestnut on Unsplash

When difficult emotions arise, we often experience something even more agonizing: a rejection of ourselves for feeling what we are feeling. Instead, what if our first instinct was to love ourselves even more fiercely whenever we feel stress, anxiety, or sadness? This meditation is a tribute to Matt Kahn's book "Whatever Arises, Love That," which directly inspired the words I am speaking. www.christina-mcmahon.com

When something challenging comes up for us emotionally, our first reaction may be to resist it – to distract ourselves, to stuff the emotion down, or simply to wish we weren't feeling it at all. What if instead of pushing a difficult emotion away, you leaned into it? When you can let that emotion get as big as it wants to get inside of you and direct all of your compassionate breath towards it, oftentimes that emotion will release on its own. This allows you to continue with your day with a renewed sense of inner calm and peace. Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

On our path to inner peace, we start with where we are. We can't go directly from experiencing agitation to feeling joy. We first need to build a bridge to feeling better, and self-compassion is the best foundation for that bridge. When we attend to difficult emotions with tenderness, we can restore our natural zest for life, which often gets lost when our minds are clouded with worry or anxiety. Photo by Aleksandr Barsukov on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

When we’re experiencing a difficult emotion, we need inner resources to help us cope. One precious resource is the empathetic witness. This is a soothing inner voice that reminds you it is all right to feel exactly what you are feeling – and that you are okay, just as you are. In this meditation, you’ll begin to cultivate that inner voice, so that it is always available for you, whenever you are going through something challenging. Photo by Jill Wellington from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

In this meditation, you will be holding a strong intention for healing for our planet. This can be a calming counterbalance when our world is going through challenging circumstances, and you might be feeling helpless. We will close the meditation by imagining others all around the world holding the same powerful intention for global healing. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Empathetic Joy is a delight in others' good fortune. When we view the world through the eyes of abundance, there's not much we can fail to attract into our own lives. www.christina-mcmahon.com

There is so much happening all around us, yet we rarely take it all in. In this meditation, you'll focus on the sights, sounds, and physical sensations in your present moment, and learn how to notice them without judgment or resistance. This neutral gaze is a wonderful antidote to the stress and anxiety of everyday life. www.christina-mcmahon.com

Mindfulness means being aware of your thoughts, not stopping them. If your mind wanders, you're not getting it "wrong." In fact, every time your mind wanders and you notice it, it is actually a moment of mindfulness. Photo by Alejandro Piñero Amerio on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

Sometimes when we are feeling stress, anxiety, or sadness, those difficult emotions become amplified by the way we are thinking about them. We are resisting the emotion within us, which can make it feel even more intolerable. In this meditation, you will learn how to tone down the intensity of strong emotion, giving you more resilience as you step back into your day. Photo by Edurne Tx on Unsplash

In this meditation, you will practice the art of deep noticing. You will first bring your focus to your body breathing, and stay anchored in those sensations until you sense your mind wandering. When that happens, there is no judgment – only noticing. It's all okay. You're still in the circle of awareness. www.christina-mcmahon.com

This meditation gives you a powerful visualization for practicing the art of mindfulness, which is observing your thoughts and feelings from a neutral perspective, without attachment or resistance. They are like the currents of the river rushing past you, while you, the observer, are like a rock in the riverbed. This allows you to stay anchored in a calm state of awareness, which you can then bring back into your day. Photo by JAMES WESTMAN from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

Loving-kindness is a heart-opening practice. It is a strong wish for your own happiness, as well as the happiness of all living beings. Relax into this practice now, and feel your heart opening like a lotus flower. Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

In our world today, we are subtly taught to focus on the flaws in others. But when we start retraining our brains to notice their goodness instead, we are actually investing in our own happiness. When we are able to notice others' virtues, we are better able to appreciate it in ourselves as well. That appreciation for goodness is what we will be practicing in this meditation. Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels www.christina-mcmahon.com

Unlike our minds, our bodies are always in the present moment. This meditation will take you out of your headspace and into the physical sensations of your body, anchoring you in the present. Photo by Yujia Tang on Unsplash www.christina-mcmahon.com

In this mindfulness practice, we allow our attention to be easily caught by the feeling of the breath flowing, the sensations of the body, and the sounds in the room. We bring our awareness to these things without judgment, simply noticing them as part of the landscape of our present moment. www.christina-mcmahon.com

The art of mindfulness is the ability to observe your thoughts without getting attached to them. In this meditation, you will visualize your mind as the sky on a clear, blue day. As thoughts come up, you'll watch them float by like clouds in your sky mind - without resisting them, without attaching to them, and without even thinking them. With each passing cloud, you will return your focus to that calm blue sky, allowing yourself to feel peaceful and calm before you step back into your day. www.christina-mcmahon.com