Workshopalooza Part 1

Heartfelt thank-yous to my good friend Robyn for coming in (virtually last-minute) to give a fantabulous workshop on Reiki (check out Le Urban Retreat where she works). Unfortunately for me, I'm too heavily shielded to feel the benefits of Reiki, but my students did definitely feel the reiki energy pulse through them when Robyn did her demonstrations.

Then we did a grounding/centering just before the students did their Sabbat exams. I wasn't sure how I was going to do this guided meditiation, but as we sat down, I was inspired.

I had them visualize a pool of liquid light beneath their chairs. As they drew in a deep breath, the light would be drawn upwards through them, flowing through them and being held at their heads. When they released their breath, the liquid light would fall back down to the pool, dragging all the tension, stress, and other negative fluff out of them.

I'm very picky about guided meditations. The most popular one tends to be imagining that you are a tree and you need to visualize your feet becoming roots and your arms becoming branches.

Blech. I've never been a tree and it's unnatural for me to imagine any of that. In fact, my claustrophobia usually kicks in when my feet become roots, holding me fast to the ground. The terror that results usually pulls me right out of the meditative state that the leader is trying to build.

I try to stick to common experiences that people have. Walking in water, leaving a noisy place to walk to a quiet place, rubbing your hands along a cold stone, etc. Maybe I'm too literal, but I find I can ground and center with these images much easier than imagining that a beaver has started to nibble at my ankles.

Having an industrious beaver turn up in a meditation should tell you how irrevocably Canadian I am, eh?