Hello, and welcome to our first meditation. This meditation is a simple relaxation exercise. I'm borrowing it from my first online course. So if you're intermediate meditator or above, this is optional, feel free to skip it. But what this meditation will do is it will exercise your relaxation muscles a little bit. And we'll also get you tuned in to the sound of my voice which will be helpful in the meditations to come.

So, kick back, relax and enjoy the meditation. And today we'll be using a technique called progressive relaxation. So get yourself situated in a nice comfortable position. Close your eyes and we'll start to relax. What I would like you to do first is to take a deep breath all the way down to the tips. Have your toes.

Then just breathe out completely. And as you begin to relax, I'd like you to imagine if you can, a warm, secure, comfortable wave of relaxation moving into the top of your head and allow this relaxation to drift in moving into your brain so that your brain becomes very deeply relaxed and very calm. And as your brain relaxes, you can actually feel it start to slow down so that your thoughts are slowing down. And you can feel the relaxation as it begins to drift down into the stem of your brain. moving slowly down your spine all the way down to the tip of your spine and allow this relaxation to continue by drifting out into your nerves, that from the top of your head all the way out to the ends of your nervous system. You're very deeply relaxed.

You're very calm and you're totally at peace. Now bring the awareness of this relaxation back to the top of your head and feel it as it begins to move over the outside of your body. And be aware as the relaxation moves into your scalp into your hair slowly moving down into your ears and your forehead, your temples, your eyes and your nose into the skin and the muscles in your face. So you're on top entire head is very calm, very peaceful and very deeply relaxed. Now allow the relaxation to continue by moving down into your throat and into your neck, slowly moving down into your shoulders which are becoming increasingly heavy and feel the relaxation continue moving down into your arms So that the relaxation slowly moves in to your biceps and your triceps gently and peacefully moving into your elbows into your forearms, into your wrists.

And gently moving into your hands up to the tip of each finger at each step from the top of your head all the way out to the tips of your fingers. You're very deeply relaxed. You're very calm and you're totally at peace. Now, allow your attention to drift back to your shoulders so that the relaxation can begin to slowly move down into the muscles of your back Slowly and gently moving down, through your back, all the way down into your lower back so that your entire back is very calm, very peaceful and deeply at ease. And you can feel the relaxation as it begins to penetrate inside your upper body so that your internal organs begin to feel very comfortable and deeply relaxed. And you can feel your heart as it beats in perfect peace.

And you can feel your lungs as they breathe without effort as you become more and more deeply relaxed and you can feel This relaxation continue by moving into your other internal organs like your stomach and your intestines so that your entire upper body is so deeply relaxed. So calm and so deeply at ease and it feels so nice to be so deeply relaxed. Now allow this relaxation to continue its journey as it slowly drifts into the lower half of your body so that your legs become very heavy and very relaxed as the wave of relaxation continues to move down into your thighs and into your knees Gently working its way down into your thighs, your calves, your shins so that your legs are incredibly relaxed, very calm and deeply at peace and allow the relaxation to finish its journey by gently working its way into your feet and not to the tip of each toe from the top of your head All the way down to the tips of your toes.

You're very deeply relaxed. You're very calm and you're deeply at peace. Calm peaceful, relaxed, calm, peaceful. Relax. So just go ahead and enjoy this feeling of deep peace and deep relaxation. For as long as you'd like and when you feel like you're ready and when you feel like you've had enough you can just slowly and gently open your eyes.