*Read gently, with contemplative pauses between each paragraph*

Hello. My name is Dan, and I’ll be guiding your meditation today.

Now, I don’t usually do this, but Charlene, your usual guide, was feeling a bit anxious today, and that wouldn’t have been good for any of us.

Anyway, how are y’all doing?

Good, good, good.

What say we get started?

Let’s start with your brain.

It’s a mighty good brain, I can tell.

Your parietal lobes are lovely, organizing all that info and sending it out in nice little packages of understanding.

Your hypothalamus – don’t you love that word? Hypothalamus – maintains your homeostasis. You should get to know it on a first name basis. She’s a real lovely gal.

Do you mind if I shimmy down your spine?

I might stop at your heart.

There it is.

Beating like a squid.

Pumping oxygen through your veins.

You can feel it in the trees of your feet.

The ferns of your fingers.

The mosses of your innermost caverns.

Your lungs, the heart’s neighbors, brought that oxygen into your heart.

Thank you, lungs. Thank you, heart.

I’m reminded of the time I snorkeled around a coral reef. Held my breath. Dove down, down, down.

Holding my breath, putting my lungs on pause. I held my breath for as long as I could. Watched fish of every color dart away from me.

I imagined my body becoming one with the reef, a broken-hulled galleon forever filled with sea life. My main mast absorbed into all the living.

I found you down there, napping in a pile of sea cucumbers.

I let you be.

Of what did you dream?

When I ran out of breath, I surfaced, refilled my lungs, and swam somewhere else.

Can I shimmy down your spine some more?

Let’s go.

Now, I see little gut bacteria swimming around, digesting your morning sludge.

Your stomach may send bubbles upward.

Don’t feel ashamed to let them out.

Your intestines are waterslides. Imagine them this way. Take a second to imagine waterslides coursing through you.

Imagine a tide pool in the bottom of your mind.

Your mind is everywhere. It is not confined to your brain.

Let’s keep moving down the body.

Unclench your cheeks.

Now clench them again.

Now unclench them.

Now clench again.

Imagine you are crushing your anxiety. Keep clenching until it is crushed.

When you feel ready, unclench.

Let the anxiety fall between your ankles.

Feel its shrapnel splash across your feet.

Let the shrapnel absorb into your feet.

Kick your feet around a little. Feel the shrapnel shake around like sleigh bells.

Don’t kick that hard, please. You’re giving me a headache.

Ok. That’s better.

Now imagine your entire body as a distant object.

Now realize that you are no longer inside your body. You are seeing it from afar.

But who is making your body dance?

It’s me, Dan, making your body dance. I am still inside your body.

Don’t worry, you’ll be good at dancing again once I give your body back to you.

I know, I know. This is weird.

It will all be over soon.

All of it.

There is a cork where your nose would be.

Remove the cork.

You can feel everything that you are comprised of gushing forth, puddling around what you thought was you.

You are a puddle and puddles are blind, so there seems to be nothing.

Don’t worry about this. I am already on my way over.

I am moving your body toward the puddle.

I am lying face down in the puddle.

I am drowning in everything that is you, which is nothing at all.

I can feel something being absorbed into the body.

Is it you?