Sports | Recovery

Hi, and welcome to this recovery exercise. So no matter whether you've just finished doing what you're doing or if you've already done your cool down, just finding a quiet place where you can either sit or lie down to do this exercise. And I'd just like you to begin by once you're sitting comfortably or lying down comfortably, I'd like you to begin with your eyes open, just a very soft focus, aware of the space around you. And when you're ready, just taking some nice, big, deep breaths. Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. And as you breathe out now, just gently closing the eyes. And in closing the eyes just feeling the weight of the body, either just sinking down into the chair or into the ground, just letting go, allowing the muscles to relax, to sink down. And just taking a moment or two just to just settle back into the space around you, noticing the physical sensations and also any sounds around you. So as you sit there or lie there, even if the breath's still going very fast, that's fine, and allow the breath to do what it needs to do to come back to a natural place of rest. In the same way allowing the mind to chatter away if it wants to. Allow thoughts to come and go. We're just starting off by gently bringing the attention into the body, starting to notice how the body's feeling and almost just sort of checking in with the body post exercise as we scan down from head to toe, just noticing how the body's feeling right now. Not getting stuck on any one particular feeling but just evenly scanning down getting an overall picture of how the body feels. And as you do that, just starting to notice the movement of the breath as well, that rising and falling sensation. If you like, you can just gently place your hand on the stomach just to feel that movement. We're just feeling the breath begin to normalize in a rhythm as you just watch that rising and falling sensation. And just maintaining sense of focus on the breath, a very gentle focus. Just turning the attention now to the top of the head and I'd like you to imagine a very steady stream of warm bright sunlight just shining down on the body. It's almost as though it has a liquid quality to it as it flows down. I'd like you to imagine it almost flowing down through the head into the body. And we're just gonna imagine the body filling up with this quality spaciousness of ease, create a sense of relaxation and recovery in the body. And we just watch as it flows downwards through the body, down the legs, into the feet and into each and every toe. And as we watch it travel up through the body, almost like a vase filling up, there's a sense that...