Warm Light Guided Meditation Series: Stress Relief and Whole Body Relaxation
As anxiety therapists in St Louis, we’re always helping kids, teens, young adults and their parents with stress management. And a really wonderful tool for stress management is guided meditation.
When meditation is used as a relaxation tool, we are able to either ground our focus into our bodies, or allow our focus to drift away on another image.
For this guided meditation, great for both anxious kids and overwhelmed adults, we use a grounding approach and feel a sense of warmth and relaxation throughout our bodies.
Image Credit: Unsplash Lulu Lovering @lululovering
How do I know if I’m stressed?
All of our bodies hold onto certain clues to how we’re feeling. It’s up to us to pay attention to what our bodies are telling us and it can be really easy to ignore or miss the clues, if we’re not paying attention to what’s going on.
It may be helpful to explore our Body Clues Activity to really identify your specific emotional experience of different emotions, but here’s a quick overview of how your body responds to stress:
Stress hormones get released.
Your muscles become tense.
Blood flow increases.
Breathing speeds up.
Your attention narrows, making your mind feel super focused on whatever is causing your anxiety, or making your mind feel like it’s totally blank.
Stress and Fight, Flight, Freeze:
For some, this stress leads to an angry outburst, like yelling and screaming and FIGHTING. For others, this stress leads to an anxious outburst, like freaking out and wanting to run away. And for the last group of people, this stress can lead to a frozen response, where they just feel totally overwhelmed and unable to come up with anything to do next.
Proactive relaxation is key to stress management.
You want to start dealing with those stress clues before they reach the overwhelm point, which is why it’s crucial to do two things.
Check in with your stress levels throughout the day
and
Relax before you really feel like you need it
Warm Light Guided Meditation Script
Want to download a free and updated copy of this script?
Head over to our newsletter sign up page to access this and all of our other free relaxation skills downloads.
Photo by Wesley Eland on Unsplash
You can practice this meditation by yourself or with others. If you’re by yourself, set a timer for five minutes, and maybe even turn on some gentle music. If someone is reading it to you, make sure that they can talk in a slow, soft voice.
When you’re ready, find a comfortable seat, or lay down on your bed.
Making sure that arms and legs are uncrossed, and that everything feels comfortable.
Take a few deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Imagine a warm light, gently floating in front of your face.
Notice the color of this light.
Maybe it’s even your favorite color.
When you look at this light, notice how it makes you feel.
Maybe it makes you feel happy.
Maybe it just makes you feel calm and at peace.
With your next breath in and out, I want you to imagine just a little bit of this color traveling into your body.
Imagine that nice, warm color filling up all the muscles in your face and letting all of them relax. Notice your eyebrows softening. Notice your jaw loosen. Even notice your tongue releasing from the roof of your mouth.
As you breathe deeper…
That warm light slowly fills up your body, starting to travel to your neck and letting your neck relax. Then traveling across your shoulders, letting your shoulders soften away from your ears and gently down your back.
And then that warm light slowly, gently fills in all the muscles in your back, softening anything tense.
Imagine that warm light filling up your arms, your elbows, your forearms, all the way into the palms of your hands and each finger, one by one.
Next, that warm light travel into the base of your throat, swirling around.
Let that warm gentle light travel down to your heart, and into your belly, letting all the muscles around your belly relax.
With your next breath in and out…
Notice the light traveling down your legs, your knees, your calves and shins, all the way into your feet and your toes.
Feel that warm light throughout your body, letting everything relax and smooth out.
Remembering you can come back to this warm space any time you need to.
Want more meditation scripts?
Want to get more support for your stress management?
Meditation is a great tool for anxiety management, but it doesn’t mean you have to just deal with anxiety on your own. You can always reach out to a therapist to talk more about your anxiety, figure out what else is going on underneath it, and build a really robust coping skills tool box, including meditation.
You can schedule a free 15 minute consultation call today to learn more about the team of expert anxiety therapists at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, our anxiety therapists offer in-person and online therapy Missouri wide. We know that anxiety can impact the whole family which is why we specialize in working with kids, teens and college students as well as offering parent coaching.
Kelsey Torgerson Dunn, MSW, LCSW is the owner of Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
Are you googling around for “Play Therapy St. Louis”? Looking for anxiety therapy or child therapy in St. Louis? Reach out to us at hello@compassionatecounselingstl.com. As child anxiety experts, we love working with kids, teens, college students and parents to help manage their anxiety, stress, and anger. Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is located in Clayton, MO and works with families by offering both in-person counseling and online therapy throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Couer, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. We also provide online therapy Missouri -wide to teens and college students. You can set up your first free consult on this website, on our consultation page.
This blog was originally published on October 12, 2020 and updated for January 27, 2025.