Exercises From the Book, The Divine Within

In this mindfulness practice you explore what the concept of the inner compass means to you. It explores what you interpret the divine within to be. It also explores how you understand the concept of embodying this inner compass to be in relationship with the divine within.

This mindfulness practice is designed to help you continue to experiment with developing self-awareness through guiding you to notice what comes up inside you as you reflect upon my personal story.

This practice is designed to deepen our practice of experimenting with having self-awareness through mindfulness. It is to strengthen the idea that we have an inner compass that witnesses and observes our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and body sensations and can develop wisdom from understanding why these things are present.

Roadblocks are any emotion, belief, body sensation or thought that creates a sense of discomfort inside us. It is something that clouds our inner compass or distracts us from feeling calm, curious, non-judgmental and compassionate. It is an indication that we have either a need, a boundary or a wound to heal. This exercise is designed to help you identify some roadblocks you have in relationship with yourself and others.

RAIN is an acronym first coined by Michele McDonald to describe a mindfulness practice where we recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture our inner experience. This practice can help you find some calm when you notice you are triggered. It can also help you deepen your self-awareness.

This exercise is designed to help you be in the present moment by being with an activity in a mindful manner. Learning to be in the present moment can help us experience less suffering and can help us embody the inner compass. This is a deepening of the mindfulness practices as now you are practicing focusing on a task, while observing what arises internally, and then attempting to bring your awareness back to the activity when you are distracted by something happening internally.

Being in nature can be deeply healing and being in nature while being in the present moment can help you connect deeply with the inner compass. This next exercise is designed to help you be fully present with mindfully walking in either your neighborhood or somewhere else in nature.

With this mindfulness practice we deepen our experimentation with being the present moment by focusing on an object. This exercise will also help us play with our active imagination to sense the energy of the object. This can help us sense the energy inside us, which is another form of self-awareness.

This mindfulness exercise is based on the teachings of Neil Douglas-Koltz. He teaches a meditation using the Aramaic words for the elements. I am changing his meditation slightly but the premise is the same. We are meditating on the Aramaic words for the elements as a way of connecting to the vibration and energy of the words. I say chant the words, but I actually mean breath the words, and say them in your mind. This can help us to connect to the energy of the elements. This is a way to connect to the divine within, specifically the inner compass which is our essence and part of the collective divine.

In many Eastern spiritual traditions they chant what they consider to be sacred sounds. OM is the sacred sound for ultimate Reality or God. It is though that by chanting OM you can connect to the God spark within yourself, or your inner compass.

In the chapter on spiritual traditions, many of them discuss that the breath is the connection to our inner compass and to God. The breath is the gateway to the divine. For this next exercise we will experiment with being with the breath. Being with the breath and learning to control and regulate your breath is a powerful tool in developing self-awareness. Many of us have breathing patterns that either result in our bodies being in a stress response that is hyper alert or in a stress response that is collapse. Learning to recognize the sign of an unregulated body is the first step to learning to regulate your body through the breath. This helps us live in the present moment more fully.

Our bodies provide powerful messages of where we hold tension and when we are feeling unsafe. Yet many of us are detached from our body and have forgotten how to pay attention to these powerful messages. For others we might notice the sensations but ignore them and push through. Others of us might have learned to listen and respond. In this exercise we will experiment with noticing what is happening in the body. This is another great self-awareness exercise as when you notice sensations of discomfort in the body it is often a sign that you have a need, or a boundary has been violated, or it is a sign of an ailment. Learning to pay attention and respond to our body is a way to heal.

For many of us our thoughts can be distractions and can even cause distress. However, we are not our thoughts, we are the presence that witnesses and cares for our thoughts. Our thoughts are another way our unconscious tries to communicate with us. Learning to observe your thoughts without being swept away by them or lost in them, is a powerful way to deepen your self-awareness and give yourself agency in any given situation.

In EMDR the use of a safe person and safe place is used to help ground clients when they are feeling distressed. This is a mindfulness practice designed to help you connect to the collective unconscious or the collective divine within yourself. This can be profound and lead to healing.

This DBT inspired practice can help you connect to your inner compass, or what DBT calls your wise mind. You will experiment with observing and identifying the facts of a challenging situations, the emotions that arise, and any other insights that occur as you create a sense of separation from the facts and emotions.

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of being human is learning to be comfortable with and tolerate emotions that we label as 'bad.' Many of us have been taught to suppress our emotions or that only some emotions are allowed. This practice will help you learn to accept and tolerate all emotions.

This exercise is for those of you who find it difficult to offer yourself loving kindness. This exercise is designed to help you come up with some phrases you would be comfortable offering yourself. To get prepared grab some art supplies or a journal and writing impliment.

This meditation is a loving kindness practice designed to help you offer yourself loving kindness. Loving kindness is the process of offering yourself well wishes and compassionate care. This practice is designed to help you offer the parts of yourself that you struggle with some kindness.

This loving kindness meditation is designed to help you offer yourself and others loving kindness.

I invite you to discover your attachment style by going to www.attachmentproject.com/attachment-style-quiz/ and take the online quiz to determine your attachment style. Then listen to this meditation to reflect upon what you learned. I invite you to grab a journal or some art supplies before listening to this recording so you can create some sort of ritual as you listen to the questions in this practice.

This practice is designed to help you learn to balance the breath. This can be a powerful tool to help you learn to recognize when you are triggered and how to calm yourself through the breath. I invite you to experiment with doing this several times throughout the day.

This next exercise is a gentle seated yoga practice that is designed to help you balance the breath with movement.

This mindfulness practice is designed to help you reparent your infant self and regulate yourself when you are triggered. In this practice we will focus on imagining we are engaging with our infant self.

This next mindfulness practice uses active imagination to help you connect with the divine through the breath. Many spiritual traditions suggest that the breath is the key to connecting to the divine. What do you notice when your experiment with the concepts in this meditation?

This meditation uses active imagination to help you connect with and sense what your toddler self might be like. Be prepared to explore moving and being your toddler self.

This mindfulness meditation uses active imagination to help you be with and reparent your toddler self. It is similar to the exercise where you reparented your infant self.

This meditation is designed to help you connect with your inner child and get to know them. It uses active imagination and IFS.

This mindfulness practice is designed to help you connect to your younger self ages 6-11. Be prepared to create some for of creative expression as you connect to this part of yourself. Perhaps journaling, doing art, moving, or creating music.

This mindfulness practice is designed to help you connect to your teenage self ages 12-18. Be prepared to create some for of creative expression as you connect to this part of yourself. Perhaps journaling, doing art, moving, or creating music.

This mindfulness practice is designed to help you recognize some potential roadblocks to intimacy. Be prepared to create some form of creative expression. Perhaps journaling, creating an art project, vision board, movement piece, or music.

This meditation is a slight variation to the one where you spoke to the air as if it was alive. This meditation is designed to help you connect to the collective unconscious as Carl Jung calls it, or the collective divine as I call it. Don't get discouraged if you don't sense it the first time.

This meditation is designed to help you sense and connect to your spirit team or your guides. This meditation uses active imagination to help you connect to the collective unconscious.

This meditation is another way to sense and embody your inner compass. This practice uses active imagination to help you connect to your own energy. It can also assist you in connecting to parts of yourself that need support.

This next meditation is brief and is just to guide you in another way of sensing your own energy through a form of creative expression. Be prepared to journal, move, create a music piece or an art piece. The meditation is short but stay with the art activity until it feels complete.

This meditation guides you in how to connect to earth energy and universe energy. However, the energy might ask you to connect to something specific. I will guide you to connect to the light first to ask it what it wants you to do and if you here something other than connecting to both, turn off the recording and trust your own inner guidance. If you feel you need or want more guidance, then follow this guided meditation.

This meditation is designed to help you connect to your higher self. Everyone experiences this differently. Some of my clients have been told that the higher self changes depending on the lessons you wanted to learn in this lifetime. Others have been told that their higher self is their God image or their connect to Ultimate Reality or the energy of the beginning of time. Trust that it is unique to everyone and one is not better than another higher self. Your higher self will reveal itself as what is in your best interest at this stage of your journey.