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What’s your happy place? A quiet beach? A nature walk? A family dinner? Do you ever stop and visualize your happy place when you’re feeling stressed? If so, you’re tapping into the power of imagery.
Picturing a soothing image, such as a majestic mountain, can help give you enough pause to start making sense of life’s experiences. Consider the existence of a mountain—day after day, year after year, a mountain sits—grounded, still, and serene. The seasons and weather change, but this doesn’t matter to the mountain. The mountain accepts the changes as the way things are.
What can we learn from the experience of a mountain? Can we find a bit of that inner stillness and stability amidst the storms of our own lives? Try this guided imagery meditation to see how this mindfulness practice works for you.
Grounding mountain meditation
Begin by finding a quiet space to practice. You can follow along with the audio link or read through these directions and try on your own. Sit upright on the floor or in a chair. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then, let the breath return to its natural rhythm.
When you’re ready, bring to your mind’s eye a beautiful mountain. It can be one that you’ve seen in your life or one in your imagination, or a combination of the two. Allow this image to slowly come into focus: the colors, the snow, the trees, the flowers. Notice the mountain’s base and how grounded the mountain is.
Now, pretend that your body merges with the mountain. Imagine that your head is the mountain’s peak, the sides of your body are the slopes, and your seat is the base of the mountain. Can you extend your spine upright a bit more, as if you are embodying the mountain’s stature?
With your head as the peak, you can see a panoramic view. You notice the sun moving across the sky. The sun casts different colors on the mountain until day turns into night with its starry sky. Before long, the moon makes way for the sun again, and a new day arrives with new possibilities.
Just as the days change, so does the weather. Sunshine one day, rain the next. Clouds and wind roll in, followed by clear skies and warmth. These changes make no difference to you, the mountain. Even through the most violent storms, you remain the same—centered, grounded, and solid in the present moment.
Sit for a moment as the breathing mountain. Reflect on how, just as the days, seasons, and weather change around the mountain, you experience changes in your own life. Like the mountain, you know that the storm will pass. Notice, too, how the mountain doesn’t take the weather personally. The weather is simply weathering. Is it possible to create some space from the storms in your own life? Consider that there is a place within you that is centered and grounded, even as life’s circumstances change.
When you are ready, end this meditation by wiggling your fingers and toes. Begin to open your eyes and know that you can tap into your inner mountain anytime you want.
