Somatic Healing Meditations

Our bodies are incredible. They hold so much wisdom and capacity for healing, and one of the simplest, yet most profound ways to support our nervous systems is through a body scan meditation.

This episode is an extended, slower version of one of our most loved episodes, the Guided Body Scan Meditation to Regulate Your Nervous System. If you've done that practice before, this one moves at a gentler pace, with more space between each cue so you have more time to feel into each part of your body rather than moving through quickly. (And if you haven't tried that one, this is a wonderful place to begin.)

When we gently bring our attention to the sensations in our bodies, we create a sense of safety and presence. This practice helps to downregulate the stress response and invites our vagus nerve, the cornerstone of nervous system regulation, to activate its calming, grounding effects.

In this episode of Somatic Healing Meditations, Karena guides you through a slow, extended body scan meditation that will regulate your nervous system, quiet your mind, and help you reconnect with yourself in a way that feels grounding, safe, and soothing.

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or just wanting more time to settle into your body, this extended body scan meditation is for you.

In this episode:

An Invitation To Slow Down and Regulate Your Nervous System

Guided Body Scan Meditation (Extended, Slower Pace)

Soothing + Regulating Breathing

Rotation of Consciousness Full Body Scan

Related: More Deep Relaxation Meditations
Related: Listen to the original Guided Body Scan Meditation

Learn more about how body scans regulate our nervous systems!

If you want to learn even more about how to regulate your nervous system and connect with your body and emotions in a deep and supportive way, enroll now in The Feel It To Heal It Mini-Course!

In 5 powerful mini-lessons, it will help you drop in, deepen your compassionate self-understanding, and find more clarity and healing on your journey.

Enroll for free now!

Join me on my Somatic Self-Love Retreat in Costa Rica 2027! Early bird pricing available now!

https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Go deeper on your somatic healing journey:

Follow @helloinnerlight on Instagram, and YouTube

Find ALL of the amazing Somatic Healing Meditations here

Submit a question for the podcast: Your Healing, Your Questions

Free mini-course: The Feel it to Heal it Mini-Course

Join me on a retreat! https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Get AD-FREE access to this podcast, plus live classes, workshops, and group coaching in Somatic Healing Hub

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There's a reason so much of daily life can leave us feeling frayed and exhausted, even on days when nothing especially hard has happened. Our nervous systems weren't designed for the volume of stimulation we live with every day.

We're living in a world that generates more sensory and emotional input in a day than our nervous systems were designed to handle in a year. It takes such a huge toll on us, and we end up overstimulated and dysregulated, like we have too many tabs open in our brains at the same time.

In this episode of Somatic Healing Meditations, I guide you through a short somatic practice that can help your nervous system settle and regulate in a tangible way. It's a simple and gentle breathing technique I call Body Scan Breathing, and it's my favorite practice to turn to when I want to ground, relax, and feel less overstimulated quickly.

If you've been feeling wired, exhausted, and unable to relax, this episode will give you a real, felt way to help your nervous system come back down, even in the middle of a busy or overstimulating day.

Perfect for nervous system regulation, grounding, stress relief, and finding calm when you're feeling overstimulated

In this episode:

Understanding an Overstimulated Nervous System

Somatic Practice to Settle Your Nervous System

Love this practice? Here’s a longer version!
Read more about healing your overstimulated nervous system

Related: More Somatic Practices to Regulate Your Nervous System

If you want to learn even more about how to regulate your nervous system and connect with your body and emotions in a deep and supportive way, enroll now in The Feel It To Heal It Mini-Course!

In 5 powerful mini-lessons, it will help you drop in, deepen your compassionate self-understanding, and find more clarity and healing on your journey.

Enroll for free now!

Join me on my Somatic Self-Love Retreat in Costa Rica 2027! Early bird pricing available now!

https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Go deeper on your somatic healing journey:

Follow @helloinnerlight on Instagram, and YouTube

Find ALL of the amazing Somatic Healing Meditations here

Submit a question for the podcast: Your Healing, Your Questions

Free mini-course: The Feel it to Heal it Mini-Course

Join me on a retreat! https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Get AD-FREE access to this podcast, plus live classes, workshops, and group coaching in Somatic Healing Hub

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most of us have a running list of shoulds and supposed tos living within us... I should be more productive. I shouldn't feel this way. I'm supposed to have it more together by now. I'm not supposed to struggle, or be vulnerable, or imperfect, or human.

The pressure of it is immense.

And even when we recognize it, we often can't seem to stop, because these shoulds and supposed tos don't just live in our conscious thoughts. They live much deeper than that, woven into our nervous systems, our bodies, and our subconscious experience. Quietly shaping what we believe we deserve, how we feel about ourselves, and how much joy and authenticity we allow ourselves to experience. That's why these patterns are so hard to change even when we cognitively understand them. They don't live in our thoughts, so our thoughts alone can't reach them.

In this episode of Somatic Healing Meditations, I guide you through a healing meditation that will take you beneath the surface of the conscious mind to work with these exhausting patterns at their very roots. It's some of the most powerful self-healing work I know, and my hope is that you come away feeling genuinely lighter, freer, and more reconnected with your own authentic needs, feelings, and desires.

Perfect for releasing shoulds and supposed tos and self-criticism, reconnecting with your authentic self, and finding real freedom from the pressures of who you think you're supposed to be.

Episode timing:

00:00 - How We Learned to “Should On” Ourselves

05:21 - Healing Meditation to Release Your Shoulds and Supposed Tos

35:53 - Conclusion and Reflections

Read more about the somatic approach to freeing yourself from shoulds

Related: More Somatic Emotional Processing Exercises

Join me on my Somatic Self-Love Retreat in Costa Rica 2027! Early bird pricing available now!

https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Go deeper on your somatic healing journey:

Follow @helloinnerlight on Instagram, and YouTube

Find ALL of the amazing Somatic Healing Meditations here

Submit a question for the podcast: Your Healing, Your Questions

Free mini-course: The Feel it to Heal it Mini-Course

Join me on a retreat! https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Get AD-FREE access to this podcast, plus live classes, workshops, and group coaching in Somatic Healing Hub

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most of us know how much sleep matters for our overall well-being, but we don't always think about how much the state we fall asleep in affects us.

The quality of our sleep cycles, our dreaming, and how we wake up feeling the next morning are all shaped by what our nervous system is carrying when we close our eyes.

In this Guided Sleep Meditation for Self-Love, you'll be led through gentle somatic practices designed to help your nervous system settle, and your heart soften as you drift off to sleep.

You'll be invited to connect with a warm, healing quality of love and to cultivate that as a real, felt experience in the body, so that you can close your eyes tonight feeling cared for, peaceful, and truly loved.

This is a beautiful way to close your day and a meaningful way to deepen your relationship with yourself, one night at a time.

Perfect for deep sleep, nervous system regulation, self-love, stress relief, and cultivating a deeper and more compassionate relationship with yourself.

(And if you want to deepen your self-love in a tangible way when you're awake again, my Meditation for Secure Attachment with Yourself is a beautiful place to continue exploring how to build a relationship with yourself where feeling loved becomes something real and embodied in everyday life.)

In this episode:

Welcome to this Self-Love Sleep Meditation

Self-Love Sleep Meditation

Soothing and Regulating Breathing

Cultivating A Feeling of Love Within

Quiet Music for Sleep (with no talking at the very end)

Read more about Why Bedtime Is the Perfect Time for Self-Love
Related: Embodied Self-Love Series

If you're looking to support deeper, more restful sleep, magnesium is one of the most well-researched nutrients for exactly that. Unfortunately, most supplements are just magnesium salts extracted from rocks that your body struggles to absorb. But Rainforest Activated Magnesium from Buoy is whole food-bound, so it comes with the cofactors and phytonutrients your body needs to actually absorb and activate it.

I've been using it faithfully, and I definitely notice a difference in my sleep quality and my ability to relax and recover from stress.

I've got a special discount for you at this link if you'd like to try it: https://www.justaddbuoy.com/BUOY147706

Join me on my Somatic Self-Love Retreat in Costa Rica 2027! Early bird pricing available now!

https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Go deeper on your somatic healing journey:

Follow @helloinnerlight on Instagram, and YouTube

Find ALL of the amazing Somatic Healing Meditations here

Submit a question for the podcast: Your Healing, Your Questions

Free mini-course: The Feel it to Heal it Mini-Course

Join me on a retreat! https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Get AD-FREE access to this podcast, plus live classes, workshops, and group coaching in Somatic Healing Hub

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Resourcing is a somatic practice where we intentionally connect with a felt sense of safety, support, calm, or joy in our bodies, in order to soothe ourselves and shift our nervous system state.

And the more we practice it, the more our nervous system learns that safety is possible. Each time we offer our bodies this experience, the stress and threat responses in our brain and body are able to soften and quiet down, and over time, that capacity for regulation becomes something we can access more and more easily in our everyday lives.

In this episode of Somatic Healing Meditations, I guide you through a resourcing meditation paired with Havening, a psycho-sensory therapeutic approach that uses gentle touch to calm the nervous system and ease feelings of stress. Together, these two practices create a real sense of relaxation and support from the inside out.

If you've been wanting a simple, body-centered way to feel more safe and supported, this episode will show you how to access that, using tools you already carry within you.

Perfect for nervous system regulation, stress relief, resourcing your nervous system, and learning how to feel safer and more supported in your body

Episode timing:

How resourcing helps us heal

Somatic Meditation To Resource Your Nervous System

Self-Havening to settle and drop in

Bringing to mind a resource

Read more about how to resource your nervous system here
Related: More Somatic Regulation Exercises

Learn more about Havening Techniques and the science behind them

Havening Techniques is a registered trademark of Ronald Ruden, 15 East 91st Street, New York. www.havening.org

Ready to find your center, quiet your mind, and step off the roller coaster of stress and overwhelm?

You’re invited to join me in Somatic Healing Hub!

SHH is a beautiful, deeply supportive online community filled with the structure, support, and somatic practices to help you actually feel better in your body - and create real change in your life.

Inside, you’ll get ad-free access to the Somatic Healing Meditations podcast!

Each week, I guide multiple live somatic healing classes - calming, grounded practices to regulate your nervous system and reconnect with your inner world.

There’s also monthly group coaching with me, heart-centered workshops, and an extensive library of powerful body-based resources to support your healing journey.

Your nervous system. Your emotions. Your healing — lovingly supported.

Learn more and enroll now!

Join me on my Somatic Self-Love Retreat in Costa Rica 2027! Early bird pricing available now!

https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Go deeper on your somatic healing journey:

Follow @helloinnerlight on Instagram, and YouTube

Find ALL of the amazing Somatic Healing Meditations here

Submit a question for the podcast: Your Healing, Your Questions

Free mini-course: The Feel it to Heal it Mini-Course

Join me on a retreat! https://helloinnerlight.com/retreats

Get AD-FREE access to this podcast, plus live classes, workshops, and group coaching in Somatic Healing Hub

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.