Play It Forward: Embracing Summer's Lightheartedness

Ready to trade your serious adult mindset for something more playful this summer? The Create Harmony podcast launches a delightful new series called "Play It Forward," designed to help you reconnect with your inner child during the sun-filled, carefree days of summer.

Host Sally Burlington introduces this summer rhythm where we'll alternate between nature-themed guided visualizations and storytelling episodes. Today's visualization, "Dandelion Bloom," invites you to imagine yourself as a fluffy white dandelion, your unique gifts represented by countless seeds ready to drift into the world. Through gentle guidance, you'll release attachment to the past, embrace the clean slate of now, and visualize your positive influence spreading far beyond what you can see.

Whether you're seeking a mental reset, a moment of mindfulness, or simply a break from "adulting," this episode delivers a calming experience designed to help you embrace summer's lighthearted spirit. The guided meditation balances stillness with imagination, offering both relaxation and inspiration in under ten minutes.

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To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome to Create Harmony
• 0:50 Summer Series: Play It Forward
• 2:08 Dandelion Bloom Visualization Begins
• 4:40 Seeds of Influence Spreading
• 7:29 Closing and Next Episode Preview

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:06

Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast, and so this is a place that is all about setting an intentional rhythm. We're about savoring life's blessings and learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. So if you want to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life, you'll probably find a lot here that you love, and if you like to be creative and fun, there's a place for you here as well. So in this place, we get together and take a few minutes to celebrate everyday joys and remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. So this is episode 127, and I'm your host, sally Burlington, and it is summertime around here.

Speaker 2: 0:50

I live in North Carolina and we are now having summer, and since we really take our cues from the seasons, we're going to do something a little bit different for our summer season. We're going to do a series that I'm calling Play it Forward. I didn't say pay it forward, I said play it forward. So we're really going to focus on the spirit of play, because summer is a playful time. It's time that we get outside, we do fun things, we go on trips, the days are long, we have lots of light and it's just a very uplifting, fun season, and so we are going to play it forward. We're going to have some content that hopefully makes you feel playful. It's going to help you connect with your inner child and instead of adulting, we're going to be childing around here during the summer and hopefully that spirit will then spread to the world around you. Hopefully that fun loving then spread to the world around you. Hopefully that fun loving, lighthearted, smiley spirit will spread out to the world around you. And that's the play it forward idea. So the rhythm of these episodes will be that one week we will have a guided visualization and it will be sort of nature themed and that will help calm and clear your mind, and then the next week we're going to have a story and there's going to be more about that next week. So this week we're going to start with our guided visualization and the one that we're going to start with is called Dandelion Bloom. So hopefully you will settle in and let this calm your mind and then play it forward. Calm your mind and then play it forward. So right now we need to shift into our more mindful posture so that we can be prepared for our guided visualization. Try to adjust your body, think about your body and adjust yourself so that, wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you feel comfortable and settled. You can sort of release the tension that you might be holding in your body. If you feel some tension in your neck or your jaw, you can shake out your fingers and your toes a little bit, just release that tension and then take a deep breath, breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude, and then, if it's appropriate for you to close your eyes, you can do that right now.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Now, today, we are going to connect with the concept of freshness, of starting anew. Picture yourself being like a white, fluffy dandelion. Your unique gifts are like the many white seeds on the bloom. So many possibilities exist in you. All the things that have already happened are released into the soil.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Take a minute to let go of yesterday, let go of last week, last month, last year. Those things are behind you now. Those things are behind you now. You have a clean slate. The world is open for you, full of possibility, full of promise. You are bringing a new energy to this moment, an energy that is ready for growth.

Speaker 2: 5:16

You feel the gentle breeze blowing and the seeds of your good ideas release from you and spread all over the meadow.

Speaker 2: 5:52

They drift all over to bless others.

Speaker 2: 5:53

Your fresh ideas and your clean energy, your gifts, touch places far from you. Your influence is gentle but powerful. You don't have to make things happen, just your existence will bring them into motion. You matter. Your scope is far-reaching. You can't even see how far these seeds will go. Even see how far these seeds will go. You can't know what they will create and how they will change things. You Now, with an open and released heart, begin to bring your awareness back to your body, back to the podcast, bring it back to where you started, take a final deep breath, breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude. If you closed your eyes at the beginning, you can open them now, and may it be so. Thanks so much for joining us today as we tried something a little different, as we played it forward, and hopefully that helped you embrace a lighter spirit of summer, and that you will take that energy out into the world around you and hope you'll come back next week for our story time. You don't want to miss that, and until next time, peace, thank you.