This is an energy healing visualization taking you into each chakra and each element. I invite you to see for yourself how your body communicates energy and information with you. Take your time with this meditation and do it often. It is incredibly revealing.

Close your eyes and bring your attention to your breath. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Slow your breathing down and deepen your breathing. With each exhalation, feel your body softening, relaxing, melting. When you breathe deeply like this, you engage your parasympathetic system, and you let your body know that it is safe, that something new can happen.

As you continue to breathe deeply like this, I invite you to bring your attention all the way down to the base of your spine. Take your time. Follow your focus, your awareness down through your body all the way down to the base of your spine. When you are there, take a deep breath into the base of your spine, allowing your body to soften even more now...

My body quickly forgets that life is on my side.

Even after years of healing, my animal suit tries to protect me from disappointment by attempting to control outcomes.

The protective instinct: Childhood and beyond

It wasn’t safe to be open and soft as a child. And if I put my guard down, my environment quickly reminded me to put it back up. That reminder often came as a surprise, out of left field, catching me vulnerable, reinforcing the need for more protection, more layers.

Sometimes, everything outside of me proves true my conditioned belief that life is not on my side—I am the only one on my side.

The cost of closed hearts: physical and emotional impact

When my heart is closed, and my fire is kept neatly at bay below my diaphragm, with shallow breaths and busyness, of course, the reality I project is one of disappointment, compromise, and smallness.

And if I stay like this for a while, my inner world starts to crumble too.

It’s harder to meditate, harder to...