Charles Freligh, PhD

Psychologist

When notice feelings of stress, anxiety, anger, and overwhelm building, sometimes all we need are a few deep breaths to reset the previous momentum of our day and open back up to the New day in front of us. Here is simple guidance aimed at a quick reset, which can make the difference between just a few moments of negative emotion and an entire day/week/month (or more) of that emotion built upon other difficult experiences. Enjoy!

Take a few deep breaths to reset negative emotions and prevent a chain reaction of difficult experiences.

Just A Few Deep Breaths

Connect with the pure and immediate experience of your senses by dropping through the story of language into the raw sensation of Right Now. We will systematically open each sense door, including that of thinking, and conclude with awareness of awareness itself.

Dive into the present moment and explore your senses to become aware of awareness itself.

Come To Your Senses

There are a variety of instructions available regarding the "proper" posture/sitting position to embody within meditation practice. Here's some guidance to help you explore why posture is important and to help you find your intuitive meditative posture. Then try extending this posture to your everyday living.

Explore the importance of posture in meditation and find your intuitive posture to enhance your practice and extend it to everyday living.

Be Like A Flower

Sometimes it can be a challenge to let the thinking mind come to rest when it's time for sleep. Use this simple guidance, along with music made specifically for facilitating sleep, to let the thinking mind take a well-deserved break and naturally merge into the healing realm of sleep. The session begins with vocal guidance which stops about halfway through, leaving you to just Be.

Use guidance and sleep music to help your mind relax into sleep, starting with vocal guidance before letting your mind naturally drift off.

Merging With Sleep (Music by Kamerin)

Spend some time with a part of you that may have been left behind. We all have various "parts" of ourselves that can sometimes be in conflict, which is generally what's at play when we experience negative emotions. Here is a practice to help you care for yourself when you feel angry, sad, anxious, stressed, or whatever feeling you might be feeling. Somewhere along the line, the feeling is totally valid and just needs to be understood, or simply just needs to be felt. In this guided visualization, I will lead you to encounter your own "inner child self," and you will utilize your imagination to experience this encounter in the present moment. Thanks for joining me!

Connect with your inner child to care for negative emotions. Use guided visualization to understand the feeling and experience the encounter in the present.

Inner Child Guided Visualization

This exercise is based on the "Focusing" technique as created by psychotherapist, Eugene Gendlin. This will help you gain clarity on whatever feels stuck in your life and shift old storylines into a new, creative, and physically felt experience. Gain balance in your processing of life by harmonizing the right and left brain hemispheres through this "focusing" method.

Use the "Focusing" technique by Eugene Gendlin to gain clarity, shift old storylines, and balance the right and left brain hemispheres.

Balance your Brain: Focusing Technique

These simple yet nuanced frequencies are intended to facilitate both focus and relaxation, a relaxed focus. Focus on what? Focus upon simply Being Alive, as it is happening Right Now. There is nothing else. Use this sound to drop deep within the unadorned Reality of the present moment.

Use nuanced frequencies to achieve a relaxed focus on being alive in the present moment.

Deep Relaxed Focus (Pure Sound)

Use this visualization practice to let go of resistance and struggling in life. Instead of protecting, allow yourself to trust the natural flow of the Universe. Allow yourself to trust your Self.

Visualize to release resistance & struggle in life, trust natural flow of Universe & self instead of protecting.

Flow with the Universe - Not Against It

Simply notice three things you see, hear, and feel; then two; then one. This technique quiets the habitual story of anxiety by forcing your mind to observe just what's happening around you right now. Use this method to slow down the thinking mind and feel into the observing mind. Through the lens of the observing mind, there is nothing wrong, there simply Is.

Observe three things you see, hear, and feel; then two; then one to quiet anxiety by focusing on the present moment and feeling into the observing mind.

Anxiety Relief: Grounding Technique

This track was created in collaboration with the musical artist Kamerin specifically for the purposes of deep sleep. Along with the sounds, focus on the physical sensations of your body without labeling them - no language here. Gradually let each muscle release and let go (you may have to re-let go several times, and that's okay!). May you rest well.

"Collaborative track with Kamerin designed for deep sleep, focusing on physical sensations and muscle relaxation without labeling, for restful slumber."

Deep Sleep Sounds by Kamerin

Your Observer Self is always here, always available to provide a broader perspective on whatever is happening, whatever may be stressing you out or causing you anxiety. Through the expanded lens of the Observer, things are okay, Right Now. Drop into the Observer for a few moments, and then re-engage with life in the way you truly want to.

Tap into your Observer Self for a broader perspective on stressful situations and anxiety, helping you to re-engage with life on your own terms.

The Observer Self

Just take three deep breaths (breathing in for four seconds and out for seconds) and completely reset the momentum of your day. The day has developed a certain momentum, a speed of habit energy. Through the breath, move out of this accumulated energy and into something New: Just This Moment.

Reset your day's momentum by taking three deep breaths, helping you move out of accumulated energy and into the present moment.

Slow Down With 3 Deep Breaths

Come with me back to just what's happening Right Now. Don't worry about this being a "formal" guided meditation. Just let it happen however feels best. The thinking mind wants to be anywhere else but here, but Here is the only place we can ever be! So let's return Here. Just come back Here. Use this guidance as a reminder, as an encouragement to return Here whenever the thinking mind forgets that it is already here and that Here is all there ever is. Just This.

Return to the present moment with informal guided meditation, reminding yourself that Here is all there ever is. Just This.

Come Back Here Now (music by warmkeys.)

We often treat life as if the goal is to get to the end. But what if life is really meant to be experienced like music?

Life is not a destination, it is an experience like music.

Life Is Like Music

There is always a deep experience awaiting you, no matter what your present moment is filled with. When you allow yourself to pause and genuinely press play on whatever is here, it becomes instantly interesting and offers a portal into awakening.

A deep experience awaits when you press play on the present moment, offering a portal into awakening.

Open Yourself To This Moment

How do we press play on life? We may need to develop a pause button first. Learn to train the mind's pause button just like you might train the body to get stronger.

Train the mind's pause button to press play on life and get stronger.

Calming The Anxious Mind

In this session, learn to identify a few particular anchors that work for you as the "pause" button entry points to the play button of pure being. Select just one or two anchors, preferably one, so you can remember to practice them easily in daily life.

Identify personal anchors for pausing and entering a state of pure being as a daily practice, selecting one or two for ease.

Choose Your Sidekick

We can easily become lost in a vicious circle of constant "doing." We become addicted to changing the present moment, but this means that we are training ourselves to never be present. In this session, learn a new way of being in full acceptance of the right now moment.

Break the addiction to constant "doing" and learn to be fully present in the now moment.

The Being Mode Of Consciousness

For any new skill to stick, we must practice over and over. Eventually, the skill will become a part of us without the need for so much conscious effort. But the effort must come first to reach that point of effortlessness. So let's practice.

Skill mastery requires repetitive practice, leading to an effortless execution in the future.

You Must Practice Consistently

When we immediately interpret our experience, we give ourselves a sense of control but we also block ourselves from anything new. Return to curiosity and release the control of automatic interpretation, and allow yourself the possibility of a brand new experience in the present moment.

Let go of automatic interpretation and embrace curiosity to experience something new in the present moment.

Stop Interpreting Everything

When the eyes close and the body comes to rest, there is a deeper level of awakening available to us. This space is beyond the thinking mind. It is a space of pure consciousness, where there is no right or wrong. There is just "is." Eyes closed, body at rest, and wide awake. More awake than ever. Use this simple practice to embody your awakened presence. I've left the final minute in complete silence for you to simply be without any guidance. You don't need anything. You already are everything.

Embody your awakened presence by entering a space of pure consciousness beyond the thinking mind, with this simple practice of closing your eyes and being.

Eyes Closed & Wide Awake

Use this simple practice to open the area of your heart and feel whatever it is that you feel right now without having to make sense of it. Open, release, and let in the healing energy of this pure, brand-new moment.

Open your heart and feel your emotions without judgment to allow healing energy to flow in.

Daily Heart Opening

Use this meditation as a daily morning practice to help center your energy in the present moment before you set out into the day ahead. When we make this shift, we can more easily return to the present again and again throughout the day when we are inevitably taken off course. For best results, use this consistently. Today is the only day of your life. Let's be present for it.

Start your day with daily morning meditation to center your energy and stay present throughout the day for a fulfilling life experience.

Daily Morning Grounding: Just Today

Use this simple guided practice to release chronic tension in the body and mind to help you naturally drift into sleep. We must release to rest.

Practice guided meditation to release tension and improve sleep quality by calming the body and mind before bedtime.

Sleep Well: A Simple Guide To Relaxation

Use this guided visualization to visit all the various parts of yourself, and to bring together your inner family into one unified whole. Much of our suffering is caused by inner division and by rejection and criticism of parts of ourselves. In this practice, become the loving parent for all versions of your inner child self, who just wants to be accepted and cared for as they are. My encouragement is for you to repeat this regularly, so the inner children learn and gradually develop a sense of secure attachment and a deep trust that you will not abandon them.

Heal inner division and self-criticism by uniting your inner family through guided visualization to support and care for your inner child selves.

Inner Child Visualization Practice

Use this meditation regularly to help your mind and body learn to let go and trust the Universe.

Regularly practice this meditation to release tension and build trust in the Universe for your mind and body.

How To Let Go (Daily Practice)

In this visualization practice, get in touch with the you you were meant to be. This true self is nowhere other than within you. Keep returning to this exercise to gain access to your wisdom, and commit to releasing your true self into the world. We need you.

Discover your true self through visualization practice, accessing wisdom within and releasing it into the world to fulfill your purpose.

Manifesting Your True Self

Let's release tension in the body and mind and lower your center of gravity down from the head and shoulders and into the very center of your being.

Relax body and mind by shifting center of gravity from head to core for tension release.

Lower Your Center Of Gravity: Grounding

Our bodies develop patterns of holding tension under the surface. When we bring awareness to the tension, it is allowed to release, leaving us feeling refreshed, relaxed, and renewed. Let's release some tension.

Release tension in the body through awareness, allowing for refreshment and relaxation.

Body Scan for Stress, Anxiety, and Sleep

Remember that we are inherently all good enough. We are all expressions of the one universal light. Take a moment to feel into this light source, and share it with the world.

We are all inherently good enough, expressions of universal light; share this light with the world.

Self-Compassion and Connection Practice

You were always good enough from the moment you were born. We forget this fact due to our experiences, conditioning, and societal expectations. Use this short practice to remember that you are whole, you are complete, and you are good enough, right now in this very moment. Thank you for being you.

You are whole, complete, and good enough just as you are - remember this with a short practice.

Daily Affirmation: I Am Good Enough

Use this simple guidance to merge into the sound of a forest stream. Release the feeling of separateness and rejoin your original connection with nature.

Connect with nature by merging into the sound of a forest stream, releasing separateness to rediscover your original connection.

Tracks by Charles Freligh, PhD