Now, more than ever, it's important to feel a sense of stability and stillness, and to find safety in an ever-changing world. We are faced with a growing transience which is pushing us to explore that place of absolute stillness within. 

Join me in this week's clip on the poly vagal experience of our nervous system to create a sense of "home". It's a major key to reaching that still place within and functioning confidently from our centre on a daily basis. 

Rumi says "When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy." 

That river is something we all need especially at such times of change. If we can learn to anchor ourselves in our centre while at the same time flowing with the transience, we will find ourselves in that soul-space that Rumi so beautifully describes. 

There is one particular practice which can create that anchor and also enable us to flow and bring peace. It's a pranayama and visualization technique which I've often practices on my many train journeys between Scotland and Wales or London. You can, of course, practice it in the comfort of your own home and shorten or lengthen it as you need. 

Instructions

Sit where you are, and be aware of your spine feeling lifted and supported. Close your eyes and simply focus on your breath like a wave of peace travelling in and out through the nostrils. Feel the stability of the earth below you. 

As you breathe in, imagine that the breath travels all the way down into the base of your spine. As you breathe out, visualize or feel as if the awareness from the base of the spine is expanding across the hips and down into your legs, bringing with it an ease, flow and a gentle stillness. 

Take the next breath in this time to the lower back. Once again on the out breath let your awareness at each vertebra of your lower back expand in a refreshing and soothing way across the abdomen. Experience a deep stillness there. Do this for another 2 breaths focussing in the lumbar region. 

Allow the next in-breath to travel into the mid part of your back and let the out-breath expand your awareness across the lower part of the ribcage. Feel a gentle lift in the whole of your chest area. Breathe out and let the awareness expand across into the whole of the chest, easing your lugs, ribcage, shoulder blades and collar bones. 

Finally, breathe into your neck and head. Breathe out and let the feeling of ease and expansiveness enter the whole of that region You can focus another breath here and simply let yourself feel expanded, relaxed and at the same time alert. 

Now be aware of your whole body and breathe, and then simply sit in stillness and pece for 2-3 minutes....

To come out of the meditation gently bring your awareness back to your breath, then to your body and the space inwhich you are seated. Begin to move your hands and feet, arms and legs and complete with a good stretch throughout the body Open the eyes and drink i the feeling of peace and presence you experience from this practice.