Connecting To The Inner Child Audio + Integration Journal
When we are young, we are naturally more connected and open to the world around us. It is easier to touch into feelings of joy and awe without self-consciousness or embarrassment. Yet, because we are more impressionable to our surroundings, we are also more easily hurt. In this meditation, we explore playing with our inner child and reclaiming the magic and awe we effortlessly touched into when we were young.
This 22-minute audio meditation is a guided journey to establish a deeper connection with your inner child, set against a soothing background of binaural beats. After listening to the meditation, you can work with our 4-page Integration Journal, which includes prompts and room for notes, in order to deepen the connection. This exploration is also a great way to get a taste of the work offered in our transpersonal healing sessions.
Start to build or deepen your connection with a younger part of yourself: with their brilliance and vibrance, as well as the places they may need support and healing.
Download Your Inner Child WorkSheet
Connecting To The Inner Child Audio +
Integration Journal Transcript
Hello. This is Dara. And I’d like to welcome you to today’s meditation on reclaiming the magic of our inner child. When we’re younger, we’re naturally more connected and open to the world around us. It’s often easier for us to touch into feelings of joy and awe without any self-consciousness or embarrassment.
Childhood Vulnerability and Wonder
But when we’re younger, when we’re children, we’re also more easily hurt and more vulnerable to the influences of our caregivers and dependent on others to take care of us. So this can be a time in our lives when we are both more easily hurt and impressionable by our surroundings, yet more easily connected and filled with childlike wonder.
Preparing for Meditation
So before we get into any visualizations, let’s make ourselves more comfortable, making sure that you’re in a private space where you won’t be interrupted. And perhaps making sure your space is safe for you to close your eyes. Once you’re comfortably seated or lying down, I invite you to take in the space around you with your eyes.
Grounding in the Present
Gently moving your eyes around, allowing them to rest on whatever feels most comfortable for them to rest on, and lightly moving on. Simply getting a sense of what’s around you. Now I’d like you to notice where your body touches the ground. Points of connection, perhaps beneath your pelvis or your lower back, your upper back and your head, the bottoms of your feet. Any points that are connected directly to the floor beneath you, seeing if perhaps you can allow yourself to feel supported by that ground.
Breathing and Body Awareness
Taking a few deep breaths, and sinking like water. Noticing the rise and fall of your belly and chest as you breathe in and out. Simply noticing your breath without trying to change it. Beginning to become aware of your inner space, feelings, emotions, and corresponding sensations inside of your body. Scanning, letting your attention be drawn to areas of tension, areas of expansion and rest.
Noticing and Accepting Sensations
Again, not trying to change, but simply surveying, noticing, and tracking what’s moving inside of you. Landing on an area of your body that feels pleasant or safe, comfortable. If you can’t find an area in your body that feels comfortable or safe, Focus on an area that feels at least less challenging. Allow your eyes to relax. Cast your gaze downwards or gently close them as it feels safe to do so, and bring your hands to your heart center.
Connecting with the Heart
Resting on your chest, one on top of the other. If it feels okay to do so, you’ll leave your hands here for the duration of this meditation. But if it doesn’t feel safe to put your hands here for now, simply put them wherever feels most comfortable for you.
Invoking Childhood Memories
Now, in your mind’s eye, call to mind a place where you used to play when you were young, that you really liked playing. Maybe this is a creek or a stream, a park near the house you grew up in, an area where, when you were young, you could go to explore and express your creativity, maybe to play with your friends, or simply to connect with the natural world.
Exploring the Inner Child’s World
Notice what it’s like to be in this place, even if just in your mind’s eye. What feelings does it evoke in you now? Ask your inner child to meet you there. Does your inner child come as a younger version of yourself, or in another way? Maybe as a feeling inside of you.
Engaging with the Inner Child
A certain memory. Maybe you hear yourself laughing and playing in that place. However your inner child comes into the space with you, ask them. How do they feel about this space? Can they show you? What are their favorite places to play? What makes them feel most alive?
Understanding the Inner Child’s Emotions
Ask your inner child to play with you, show you their favorite places. What happens when you do this? What feelings does it evoke inside of you? And how does your inner child respond to being asked to play? Does your inner child seem happy, sad, playful, withdrawn, maybe a mix of all of those, or something else?
Offering Support to the Inner Child
Ask if he or she or they are hurt about something that they’d like to share with you. And explain to them that you know their past and their present as well as they do, and can offer support and guidance if they need it. When they share with you, how do they share? Is it through words, movements, images, emotions, sensations in the body?
Supporting and Reassuring the Inner Child
What support can you offer them in this moment? Maybe reassuring words are appropriate, and maybe they’re not. Maybe it’s okay to simply explain to the child that their feelings are valid, what they’re going through is not their fault, and that it’s okay not to be okay. Maybe the best laughter is medicine.
Embracing the Childlike Wonder
How can you best support your inner child and help them feel more safe, vibrant, and free to express themselves in their wisdom and creativity, in their expression and joy, in their natural affinity to be connected to the world, and to want to play and have a good time?
Reflecting on the Past and Present
Ask to enter into the imagination of your inner child. See if there’s a place that you used to play inside of your own mind. What is it like when you go there as an adult with your perspective now? Remembering what it was like to be a child.
Reconnecting with Wonder
The sense of wonder and mystery that permeated every moment. The imaginary games that you could play with yourself in the blink of an eye, the dreams you had, maybe even the superpowers. What is it like to remember your own state of mind as a young child with your present awareness?
Creating a Future Connection
Now, I invite you to go back to the place where you met your child to play. Ask how you can be better connected to them. Is there, perhaps, an element of the natural world that you can use as a medium. Maybe it’s through water, or plants, or animals. Where can you 2 meet? Where can you 2 meet to connect in the future?
Saying Goodbye
Tell your child that you are soon planning to depart from this place, but that they can come with you if they’d like, and see what their response is. Do they choose to come along with you? And if so, how do they come along? Do you 2 hold hands or merge into one being or maybe something else?
Returning to the Present
And as you stay connected to your inner child, gently return into your body, into the feeling of your hands, wherever they’re currently resting, either on your heart or somewhere else. Shifting out of the imaginal realm and back into the room where you’re quietly sitting or lying down.
Transitioning Back
As you come back to the room, feeling supported by the ground, gently keep your eyes closed for a few moments longer as you take in the sounds around you, acclimating yourself to your environment, noticing any changes in your body, in your heart, in your mind. Slowly opening your eyes and taking in your surroundings, the shapes and colors, textures of your environment.
Post-Meditation Reflection
Taking a few deep breaths, allowing time for a gentle transition back into your normal consciousness. Stretching your arms and legs, wiggling your toes, maybe shifting positions, grounding yourself here.
Expression and Learning
As you reflect on this journey to meet your inner child, after this meditation, I encourage you to draw, or take some notes, or, in some other way, create a symbol or expression of what you learned, particularly how you might be able to better connect with your inner child in the future? Was there an element of the natural world that came through that you feel connected to? That you remember being really excited about when you were a little boy, or a little girl?
As we conclude today’s journey, I thank you for taking the time to explore this deeper realm of yourself, and connect with your inner child — with their wisdom, strength, and sense of wonder, perhaps even in the midst of incredible pain. Thank you for taking this journey with me, and I’ll see you next time.
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