A Blessing for Your Face
by Rebekah Vickery
You will need:
Access to water
A mirror
In this contemplative exercise, we will bless our faces.
As we start, I’d invite you to place your feet on the floor and take a moment to look around the room. See where the windows are, where the exits are. And then, as you’re ready, look at the reflection of your face.
I’d invite you to kindly place your right hand on your right side of your face. Take a moment, and a breath, and notice the feel of your cheek beneath your hand. Perhaps it is warm, cold, prickly, or smooth.
I then invite you to take a moment and a breath, and kindly place your left hand on the left side of your face. Take a deep breath here.
Notice what emotions or sensations rise up. It is a vulnerable and tender action to cup our faces, and it can bring reminders of good connection, as well as grief for the ways our faces perhaps have not been held with kindness.
I’d then invite you dip your right fingers into water. Kindly raise your hand back to your face, and touch your cheek with the water. As you do so, I’d invite you to say out loud: you’re good, you’re good, you’re good. Now we will repeat the same with our left fingers to our left cheek, bringing the water up with the words: you’re good, you’re good, you’re good.
And finally, I would invite you to dip both hands in water and bring them both back up, cupping your face as we did at the beginning. And one last time, speaking those words of blessing and kindness to your face: you’re good, you’re good, you’re good.
Pay attention to where you may need to laugh, cry, move your body, sigh, or perhaps just notice where you may not be feeling much at all. The invitation is simply to notice what it’s like to bless your face.
Take a moment to look around the room once more, recognizing where you find yourself. And one last breath in and exhale.
Thank you for joining me.
Rebekah Vickery is a trauma therapist, group facilitator, and acrylic artist located in the beautiful and wild Pacific Northwest. In all of her work with people, art, and words, she loves engaging themes of grief, transition, and hope.
