In this article I published recently on Shut Up & Yoga, I discuss my own experience of when meditation can be unhelpful and even harmful. This is a great way to explain how the meditation I practise is different, as an instinctive and innate part of who we are.
I am honoured to now be a contributor to the Shut Up & Yoga Community.
Read the latest newsletter for Innate Being, including new offerings for 2019.
Many popularly-taught meditation techniques are failing people with anxiety. There are healthy ways to bring your anxiety to meditation, but you have to be aware that some approaches can make things worse. So what are the healthy and helpful approaches to meditating with anxiety? Read more on my latest blog on Yogi Spirit.
Call it logging into your higher self or reaching into your deeper being – or, for some people, connecting to natural wisdom which feels like common sense – we all have access to intuition. It is a native, innate part of being human. It’s just that we don’t all use our intuition or use it as powerfully as we could.
That is often the reason why we might find ourselves in places situations or relationships where we know we don’t belong, wondering how on earth we got there.
When we do engage with all our currents of inner wisdom and guidance – our energy, our feelings, our subtle-sensing beyond what is obvious and logical – we often find we make our best decisions. We meet the people we cannot imagine living life without, we find our dream job – the one that seems as if it were made perfectly and specifically for us – we manifest our best and most delightful creations. We follow our hearts into spaces which are healthy, joyful and meaningful, we curate our own world, rather having one imposed upon us like an ill-fitting outfit.
Personally, the more I have connected to all the sources of these currents, the more I live in daily gratitude and awe at how wonderful it is to be able to trust my intuition, my depths, my inner guide whose soul reason-for-being is to ensure my health, freedom and happiness and that I serve in the way the world is best served by me.
One of the ways we can understand what needs to be done to access our intuitive flow and live with the resulting abundant benefits, is to look at the habits and lifestyles of people who are thriving in their highly intuitive traits.
Here are 10 traits shared by highly intuitive people.
You may enjoy this guided meditation“Open The Flow Of Your Deep Intuition”which brings you directly back into your own powerful, intuitive being.
If you are aware of external forces which are conflicting with your ability to fully receive yourself and your deep knowing, you may like to try this affirmation-meditation “I Choose To Claim My Power”.
Photo Credits all from Unsplash: Rhett Wesley, Ihor Malytskyi, Aditya Saxena, Brandon Wong, Jeremy Yap, Jimena, Jack B and Priscilla du Preez
How often have you got to the end of the day feeling frustrated by what has been left undone? How often do you feel as if you are carrying the burden of the unticked boxes on your to-do-list like a physical weight that won’t release you from a nagging tension that hinders you from feeling truly present with your evening – your family, your unwind-time, your ability to fall peacefully into sleep?
There is a reason why our minds refuse to let us get easily off the hook of getting-everything-done. It’s important to understand that reason and to see why it doesn’t serve our capacity for relaxation, pleasure and healing – the vital components of a physically and emotionally healthy being. It’s important to have alternative strategies to simply being seduced by stress.
Imagine, if you will, you were once among the earliest inhabitants of Earth. There you found yourself, without a map or guidebook for survival except for your instincts and experience. At that time, you were effectively responsible for the entire creation and longevity of humanity. You were the architects of the world we have now, billions of years later.
This is a big job. I’ll bet this job is bigger than any job you have in your life right now.
Whoever or whatever created you has ensured that you will get the job done right. You will need to be alert and awake most of the time, taking a schedule of shorter sleeps and even while resting, vigilant for the danger of being carried off in your sleep, or killed. You needed to be on a kind of permanent emergency button. As Rick Hanson says in his brilliantly-elucidating Ted Talk “Hardwiring Happiness”, our ancestors were probably nervous, cranky people, constantly on edge for danger. The catastrophic effects of stress that we are seeing our populations dealing with these days – heart attacks, mental health problems and stress-related immune-system diseases – were not an issue or a warning sign for our ancestors who were only living until about thirty years old. No. They needed only to focus on getting the job done and getting the job done well.
In the simplest of terms, our emergency button is alive and well. We have the same brains as our ancestors. We also have the same capacity for rest and healing and unlike our ancestors, a much wider range of opportunity to collaborate with that part. We don’t need to rely on short sleeps and we can’t afford to either. Neither do we have the advantage of a highly-physical life, as they did.
Our needs have changed but our brains are still giving us the “get it all done and get it all done well” cue, with the same level of accompanying stress hormones aimed at keeping us safe and alive.
Here’s where it gets interesting, and profound. Humans have two natural states of being: the action state and the recovery-from-action state. The action state is our motivation and enthusiasm and “get-up-and-go” feeling, with all the accompanying neurotransmitters and biological processes such as increased blood flow to organs and pumping heart. We feel comfortable in this “stress” state for periods of time, which is good, as it is what allows us to do the things we want to do in our lives with enthusiasm and vigour. However, we also need to balance the stress state with the rest/repair state – the one we go into naturally when we are feeling relaxed or in a state of pleasure – the one you hopefully get into when you are on vacation, making love, listening to music you enjoy or enjoying time in nature, and all the other myriad gateways we have to joy, pleasure and ease.
Our bodies will remain in the state of action for as long as we allow them to, or until we collapse. They will also give us cues, little nudges, to release the pressure and take a mini break from action. For those working in an office at a desk, that prompt can come as an urge to look up from the screen and gaze out of a window, stretch or daydream, for a few minutes. A few minutes of these kinds of “mini vacations” here and there throughout the day adds up to a super-dose of soothing and repair for the nervous system. Our bodies have the ability to refresh quickly. Basically, we are collaborating with our intuitive processes and reminding our muscles, cells and nerves that there is an “off switch” to our emergency button and we can come off it at any time we choose.
Indeed, our job is to choose. Every time we agree we should be getting everything done, and all the time, we are resisting our capacity for healing the wear-and-tear that every single body experiences in daily life. After a while, after years, of such behaviours, the backlog gets harder to fix. The build up is similar to the difference between having food residue and hard plaque on your teeth. One can be cleared with a quick brushing and flossing, the becomes inflammatory gum disease that risks us losing our teeth. We know we have to clean our teeth every day. We have to remember that we must come off the emergency button every day.
We need to be able to emphatically down tools with a happy heart that is satisfied with all our efforts and totally comfortable with things left unfinished.
If you are a perfectionist, you will find this hard. If you are someone who believes-without-question a voice which tells you that you are only as worthy as the amount you achieve in a day, you will find this hard. If you have not practised relaxation for a long time because you cannot resist the pressure of the emergency button, you will find this hard.
Like everything, it takes practice – lots of practice – for something to become intuitive and second nature.
In the case of the emergency button, we are fortunate that we get to practice every day. Every day we will be called by our love of action and called by our love of healing and rest. Our job – our empowerment – is to be discerning about answering each call in a way which brings us to a balanced energy body and a satisfying, productive and peaceful life.
Here are some ways to come to terms with your unfinished business and allow yourself to down tools and relax at the end of the day.
Evening Savouring and Cherishing
Affirmation Meditation: I Am Proud of All My Efforts
Just knowing we can be an ally to the natural rhythms of our bodies and remain in a constantly-healing state can bring us a deep sense of confidence about life. We can flow from action to healing seamlessly, as we are wired by nature to do. Rather than feeling we are always running behind our lives, trying to catch up, we can allow a full life to become a fulfilled life, without any need at all for everything to be completed.
Photo credits – all on Unsplash:
Atharva Tulsi, Tyler Lillico, Rob Mulally, Anton Sharov, Jeremy Bishop
I meet sensitive people all the time. As an empath myself, I am drawn to kindred spirits. In my work as a mentor, I find that many people who come to me are Sensitive Souls.
What amazes me though, is that so many sensitive people have not identified themselves as that or if they have, they have misunderstood what sensitivity means and can see it as a weakness or a failing rather than the strength and gift that it truly is when it is valued, protected and allowed to thrive.
Read more in my blog at Shri Yoga.
When we are diagnosed with a serious chronic illness, we can find ourselves worrying that our lives will be impoverished and potentially a story of loss and suffering. I have lived with MS for 24 years and mine is a story of gain and of healing. Thankfully, though there have been times of tremendous struggle in my past as I learned to navigate life with such a volatile illness, I achieved everything I hoped to in my life and far more.
Strange as it may be to read this, I give a large part of the credit for this to my journey with MS.
I wrote this article to share some of the valuable and life-enhancing lessons that working positively, proactively and holistically with my MS has given me. These insights and ways of approaching myself and life would have been just as valuable to me had I not I had MS. MS has simply been the pathway to a better understanding of how to thrive.
Follow the link to read the whole article on overcomingms.org.
Release the day and drift away. When crossing the portal into sleep, our bodies like to go through a process of feeling safe and cosy, of putting the day we have had away with positivity and welcoming the seeping of relaxation into our bones, as the tense and weary parts of ourselves sing their song of having lived another precious day.
I created this meditation to take you through that portal into sleep. To release the day and drift away. Snuggle down and settle in, sleeping beauties. A delicious night’s sleep awaits you. Sweet dreams, my friends.
One of the problems with meditation is that there is a lot of chatter and received wisdom about it swirling around that people take into their practices as unquestionable truths. Some of these ideas come simply from misunderstanding and confused language that has become part of the meditation lexicon. Others are practices used for lives other than the ones you might have and were never meant for our lives, a key example being meditation practices which have developed around monkhood, for celibate men living thousands of years ago and who had renounced life.
Nothing is more heartbreaking to me than people who have given up meditation because they have given over their natural instincts and inner resources to systems not designed for them or misleading meditation instructions.
So that being said….let’s bust some myths and reclaim a healthy and life-affirming approach to meditation. I haven’t invented this by the way – this healthy approach has been adopted by us humans since the beginning of time and is backed up by robust, replicated science.
“We Have To Concentrate in Meditation”
In life, there are thousands of ways in which we have to concentrate. We all have to concentrate on something and most of the time. We all come into a different range of ability to concentrate, so yes, we sometimes need practice. But meditation is not the place to come. Meditation is not the place we come to in order to improve our concentration skills. We can go to concentration practices for that. Meditation is not a concentration practice.”
“We Have To Sit Still in Meditation”
More than ever, we are a sedentary lot. We sit in cars, we sit at desks, we sit on sofas and watch TV. Our bodies, all the while are building a craving for movement. When we come to meditation in particular, we may very well feel this craving and start to feel fidgety and restless. Welcome this restlessness and ask your body what it wants to do with it. Dance has been a vessel of meditation in many cultures since ancient times, for instance. People who walk often find they get clearer about thoughts, have “aha” moments or creative ideas while they are walking. Even if you are sitting or lying down to rest during meditation, you can still respond to your body’s impulse for movement. For example, by swaying, rolling, moving your arms or hands.
“We Have To Endure Pain And “Transcend” Our Bodies During Meditation”
List the benefits of ignoring pain. Are there any? Our bodies are one of the allies of our intuition. Should we really suppress what they are telling us? Meditation is improved the more you are able to relax. Any holding or enduring of pain is counter to that. Further, we need to bring attention to that relaxation process. When we come to meditate and we begin to relax, often the first thing we feel is those little-to-big stresses and strains the body has been holding onto until we are not too busy to attend to them. Bringing attention to our bodies is a very important part of meditation. Not only does it allow the tense and painful parts to relax and release, but it can bring tour notice things we may need to bring to the attention to of a doctor or other professional healer in the outside world. Our bodies love this attention. So much so, that simply breathing with everything they alert us to can bring them respite, healing and renewal.
“We Have To Block Our Thoughts in Meditation”
If you try to stop thinking in meditation, you will fail. We stop thinking when we are brain dead. While we are vibrantly alive, we have the gift of this miraculous tool of consciousness, that deeply bonds us into being and expressing. If you want to make yourself really unhappy in meditation, shame yourself for having thoughts. If you want to be with your own naturalness and miracle of your whole mind/body/system, then welcome every impulse of the mind as expressions of the energy circulating inside you.
“We Mustn’t Let Our Minds Drift in Meditation”
Clouds drift, water drifts, feathers drift on the breeze……Nature is full of drifting. And so is your innate nature. There can be few things as relaxing and expansive as letting your awareness roam freely. Scientific research shows that we need to daydream to thrive. R.E.M. – the dreaming phase of sleep – is the most important element of the cycle. When sleep is interrupted and people miss this phase, they are deprived of essential rest. Decisions are harder to make, impulses are slower, moods are turbulent and they are likely to have more accidents. The benefits of meditation – clarity, restedness, peace, restored vitality – will not be there if natural dreaming and drifting is blocked from its range.
“We Must Close Our Eyes in Meditation”
Why? When you lose yourself in your lover’s eyes, take in a breathtaking view of the ocean or gaze in awe at a sumptuous sunset, are your eyes open or closed?
Like many meditation instructions, this one is often accepted without question. When you think about it, there is no rationale to back this precept up.
I have had many a student who, on being given permission to keep their eyes open, found it transformed their practice. All meditation is enhanced exponentially by engaging even one of our senses. A great way to open your meditation is to let your eyes roam and settle on something that draws them in and then rest your gaze there and feel as you do, your inner world unleashed.
You may find, like I do, that your eyes spontaneously move between both open and closed during the cycle of meditation – the way I explain this is sometimes I draw from the beyond and others, from within, and between those two realms is a connecting thread, a pulse.
You may like to experiment for yourself. And remember the saying – the eyes are the windows of the soul. It might be nice to keep those soul-windows open now and then, and see what comes into vision.
“We Mustn’t Have Emotions In Meditation”
To me, this is such a sad instruction. It is like being told we aren’t allowed to feel what we really feel. We come into meditation to experience intimacy with the flow of life as particular to us, not distance. Every day, life is touching us in myriad ways, with the unwritten agreement that at some stage we will come inside and feel those touches and tend to them. Emotion is – e-motion; energy in motion. Have you ever had a moment of spontaneous cherishing of someone or something and felt your whole heart fill and thrum with feeling? Behind that feeling will be your heart’s journey in the past and the present and even its perception of the future. All wrapped up in a sense of deep blessing. That kind of feeling-awareness is meditative. Our emotions play the song of our lives. It is worth listening to that song and entering it more deeply.
“We Must Be In The Now where “Being In the Now” means in the present only”
Do you have memories that you cherish so deeply that when you play them over in your head, your whole body tingles with feeling, as if you were right back to where you were then? Are you looking forward to something so much that every time to bring that thing to mind – especially if you go into the rich detail of it – you have a wild sense of being thrilled to be alive? Have you ever been so enchanted by a dream or fantasy that it seems as real and fulfilling to you as your ordinary life?
Our inner being is perfectly capable of cycling through many realms and this adds to our enjoyment and appreciation if life.
Great poets, visionaries, artists and film-makers have used this innate “time-travelling” ability we have to produce breath-taking creations and inventions.
The present in one dimension can feel very monochrome for a meditator. If you can be present in all the dimensions – well, then you get to meditate in colour.
A Sweeter Softer Voice Lives Inside You
There is a sweeter, softer voice inside you, waiting.
All you have to do is go inside and listen.
Listen to the beat of your own heart, listen to the whisper of your breath, listen to the call of your longings and desires, listen the roar of your love.
The love that flows through you speaks to you and shows itself this way.
For a moment, leave the commands and opinions of the world and be with the life inside you.
There is a sweeter, softer voice inside you, waiting.
The ability to empathise is possibly the most important of all human qualities.
It motivates us toward acts of compassion that can be life-changing, and even life-saving, to those on the receiving end. It becomes a precious gift to those around us when we can be where they are and offer them space to be deeply heard, seen, felt, and received.
Having someone else’s pain, fears, anger, and judgement fully inhabit you, however, can be a massive unwanted burden.
Click here to read my article published on Elephant Journal on how can recognise that you are holding onto energy that doesn’t belong to you,
Where in your priorities is time for yourself, without interaction?
This could be the most loving and life changing time you have.
Click Here to read this article I have had published on Medium.
A short, portable, do-it-anywhere-anytime-practice which is totally effective. For when you are feeling anxious … panicky … overwhelmed … over-stressed.
One breath to find your feet and ground.
One breath to find your body and come right back inside it.
One breath to feel your invincible, steady spirit.
It only takes three breaths.
Here, I explain the technique and we practice it – which takes more time than doing it of course. It’s very simple and based on principles backed by science. One you have this one tucked under your belt, you have a saviour inside you for those times that affect your ability to be function, feel safe and be bright.
Need a shot of confidence?
The most powerful person in the room is the person with the best breathing pattern.
Perhaps you have to speak publicly and feel vulnerable and shy. Perhaps you have an important meeting or crucial conversation and want to feel steady and make an impact.
Maybe there is someone in your life you need to be there for, spreading an energy of stability and peace.
This is a standing breath and affirmation practice for just those situations and any time when you are feeling wobbly and need to feel in charge. You can use it to prepare and rehearse and while you are in the situation itself. really works.
I do not know when you were born, but the first thing I want to say is thank you for coming.
Maybe you were a child who knew things that other people didn’t know.
Maybe sometimes the sense of that knowing lit within you a pathway of deep trust and instinctive guidance which kept you quietly strong. And free.
Maybe sometimes that same sense of knowing came into conflict with a world that didn’t care for what could not be rationally explained. Maybe sometimes you felt alone or ashamed.
Maybe you were also a child who felt things so strongly that there were times it seemed were your heart to stretch any further it might break apart. And that was wonderful when what you felt was joy or love or wonder but brought the kind of pain that can kill you when what you were absorbing seemed to be the sum total of all the world’s suffering.
Maybe sometimes you felt you could not speak your own language in your own country. Maybe you even felt homesick in your own home.
Perhaps as you grew up, you tried to develop a thick skin, or were told to. And then found yourself between that rock and that hard place of being either in a skin so thick no joy or tenderness could reach you or still encased in something so translucent, soft and fragile it didn’t feel like skin at all. Nothing can bounce off a skin like that – everything penetrates.
I too am one who know some things beyond knowing and this I know. We need sensitive people. Sensitive souls are keepers of integrity in this world. They are the healers, the peacemakers, the sages and the visionaries. The whole world needs you, sensitive souls. Now more than ever in the evolution of human consciousness. And we need you to be strong, supple and resilient in body, mind and soul.
So look after yourselves, Sensitives. And with at least the same amount of passion, commitment and compassion as you look after others.
As a soul mentor and coach, I am seeing increasing numbers of young empaths who hold such light, I can literally see it sparkling outside their body. They give with ferocious generosity. They change things. They see with a clear eye. These souls can literally love a person back to life. The main conundrum they bring to me is this: how can we keep going, how can we stay physically and mentally healthy when we are picking up so much toxic energy all the time that it is hurting us? How can we do our light-work when we are weak and exhausted?
The answer lies in daily self-care strategies. In this case, self-care for your sensing self, self-care for your psyche, self -care for your energy body.
There are so many things to bring into your tool kit and your world which I could share with you but there is one most important first step.
The very first step is to embrace, claim and love your sensitivity. This is your gift. It is here for a reason and the reason is not to deter you but to empower you. Be inspired by yourself – by the depth of your perception, the willingness of your courageous heart to care and by the inhuman strength you were able to draw from your magical self in order to survive whatever you had to survive and conquer in your childhood in order to stay close to yourself and keep your sensitivity intact.
And that ocean of compassion you hold in your heart for the world? Turn that tide directly into yourself and to all the spaces that might have had to lean on addiction, over-protection or unwise hiding-places for a while in order to keep going. Forgive yourself and promise to offer yourself something better and healthy and sweet.
Know in fact that from same source is indeed your source of self-care: that you DO care so deeply about looking after your gift is what will keep it strong. That the world cannot have it unless you say so. That it is something tender and distinctive. Know that it is okay and important to shelter and protect but you can do that in ways which are fiercely self-loving and empowering, ways which are healthy. You don’t have to hide yourself now. And the world wants your gifts. But let your shelters be the beautiful spaces that fortify and light you up: places in nature, the dance floor, hang outs with your tribe of like-minded beings, your meditation space, the yoga studio, the food that nourishes you, those things that pleasure and inspire you until you are full and replete with goodness. Play like a child
Do some of these every day. Lots of them. As often as you can. Do not miss a day. Fill up, fill up.
You will feel your power, you will visit it often, you will enjoy it, celebrate it, nourish it, rest it and renew it. Your love of your gift and its capacity to thrive in supernatural ways will remind you that Sensitive is Strong and there is nothing you need fear.
This is how you cast a spell of protection around you and your sensitive self. You find out how you thrive. You pursue those things with discipline. You use the magic mantra No to build a sacred boundary whenever you can between you and what drains or depletes you – including people, places, activities. And you love yourself every damned day.
I love you.
Thank you for being here.
Are you too busy to meditate?
Do you not have the right kind of space, routine, body, breathing pattern, mind-set?
What if I were to say to you – don’t worry about any of that. You have at your fingertips the one only really important thing you need to be able to meditate. You have you.
And don’t worry about how little time you have. The most essential of all meditation practices requires only one commitment and it has nothing to do with time.
And if you think the two most important words in meditation might be “Be present” or “Just breathe”, you might consider again.
The two most important words in meditation are Show Up.
Show up for yourself. Show up for yourself exactly as you are. Show up for yourself as you would show up for a dear friend to whom your door is always wide open and who can do and say no wrong and should you hope, be able to be completely themselves in your company.
As soon as you make a conscious decision to be conscious you are showing up.
If it takes pausing for a few conscious breaths only – it doesn’t matter – you showed up. If it takes pausing on the threshold of an argument you don’t want to have, holding back a thought you choose not to express, saying no to an invitation it doesn’t serve you to accept or any other moment where you have a choice how to protect and serve and give your energy…. That pause is you showing up.
Meditation is an awareness practice. Every time we are conscious and aware and awake to our energy – how we are feeling – and the way it is vibing with external energies – how we are being touched by life – we are in this awareness.
Here’s a Show Up For Yourself meditation in 125 words. You can pause and linger in it or you can be with it for a few breaths. You can do it at the start of your day, the middle, the end and any moments in between. It is powerful and it shifts things.
Here it is. Wherever you are right now, you can begin.
Show up for yourself. Be with yourself for a moment. Feel your feet on the ground, earthing you. Feel the air on your skin as a bigger presence supporting and welcoming your expansion and growth. Take your hand to your heart and breathe there. Ask yourself how you are. Offer yourself some goodness. Take a moment with your eyes wide open to greet yourself and life and honour that ever constant, and yet miraculous, relationship. You are you. And you are alive at this particular time in eternity. And each moment is a new moment. Now take one conscious step or stride towards continuation, from a place of wholeness in the totality of life.
I was recently administered oxygen on a long haul flight when I became afflicted by the dreaded motion sickness. That big canister of goodness had an extraordinary effect on me. “The colour has really returned to you face!” exclaimed one of the cabin crew delightedly. Other flight attendants went onto share stories of the huge benefits they or other passengers had felt from being given the same good air. And a good breath of fresh air makes all the difference when nursing a hangover or feeling sleepy.
You may have noticed that meditation teachers go on about breathing a lot. Why is breathing so important? Well, if you think about it, it is the source of life itself and not only that, but of everything that’s good in us. Breathing well matters because it influences our energy levels, mental alertness, digestion and moods and emotions. When you begin to feel a drop in any of these, notice how you are breathing Are you taking a full, long breath from your abdomen or is your breathing shallow and centred high up in your body, around your chest area? How is your posture – are you making enough room inside you for the musculature of your breathing to do its job properly?
One thing breathing can make a huge difference to is fatigue. I have been so conscious of this when working with the symptoms of MS, which I have had all my adult life. Good breathing has substantially lessened the impact of fatigue on my life and anyone who has experienced regular bouts of fatigue will know what a huge difference that makes to absolutely EVERYTHING.
Here (click here to access the article) I share more about how our breathing can alter when we are fatigued and make symptoms worse and how to reverse that. There’s a video demonstration (click here to access the video ) and a delicious, visualisation breath meditation (link to a meditation on breathing.)
“Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.”
Gregory Maguire, http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3155594
When I was diagnosed with MS I felt a very strong intention rise up inside me. Not only to manage but to THRIVE. Thank you to the wonderful Nom Foods – whose commitment to healthy snacks is also inspired by a personal health journey – for publishing my piece.
I had a mantra when I was first diagnosed – literally, sitting in the neurologist’s office looking at my MRI results and the lesions which dotted my spine – words rose up from the depths of me like a blazing fire and settled into my being where they have never stopped pulsing. “I want to keep my vibrancy high.”
Read more here about the role nutrition has played in my well-being.
It’s a funny thing to consider: can I really be me? Is it okay if I put myself aside for a minute? Are there things in life that can remove my right to be me and make me somehow “less me” or not me at all any more? Sometimes when we are under stress or going through crisis, we can accidentally re-identify ourselves as “less than” or “not what I used to be”. It’s an illusion, but a profound one.
When I was experiencing this myself, certain words from someone woke me up. It was very powerful. I shared this story on World MS Day with Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis.
We funny humans can be so hard on ourselves, nagging ourselves that we are not doing enough, being enough – that we are not worthy enough. Nonsense! Every day you show up and do your best. How often do you reward yourself for that? Congratulate yourself? Rest on your laurels? You should – and every day! This meditation offers you the affirmation “I am proud of all my efforts” – take it in deeply, beyond the layers of self-doubt to the truth of your glowing spirit. You’ve done well. Enjoy.
We all benefit from some sweet time and space at the end of the active part of our day to come back inside ourselves and process, review, cherish and savour the rich textures of our day. There are two main parts of human life – the “doing” part and the part where you integrate all that doing into your being, into wholeness. In this meditation, we ask ourselves what we were busy with today and with whom as a gateway into savouring all that we have within us and in our lives. No matter what kind of day you had, it’s always special to be alive.
WHAT REBECCA TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE MAGICAL POWER OF JOY
“Life is full of possibilities and you must always dive in,” said Rebecca.
From the moment I met Rebecca, I knew she was a diver. We were 24 years old and we met at the BBC, where we both worked, on her first day. I had one of those supremely rare and inexplicably certain moments that she and I were destined to meet. We were soulmates.
Rebecca – without being in any way flamboyant or over-the-top – expressed the most literal interpretation of joi de vivre I have ever seen. She exuded joy, without waiting for the conditions to be right. She could light up a darkened room in neon.
She had a technicolour appreciation for the simple pleasures of life. These were her pleasures: good friends, Prosecco, sunny days, the reddest red lipstick, clothes, shopping for clothes, dressing up in lovely clothes….. When she didn’t love something, instead of getting dark about it, she infused it with what she knew she did love. So when her work situation got her down (as happens to all of us) she instinctively ramped up her contact with the things that connected her to her inner joy, which gave her light and faith and perspective.
One of her biggest joys was writing. That first day I met her, she told me that. It was something she and I shared. Unsurprisingly for someone so focussed on their loves, she left a very successful career at the BBC to pursue an even more successful one as an author. “Do what you love” is a motto many of us uphold, but how many of us really follow that guiding light of what we love, with the courage and trust and passion that Rebecca showed?
She gave birth to three delicious, abundantly joyful children – her son and twin daughters – and she infused them with the spirit of joy, of course she did, she could do no other. And they gave it straight back to her. Hers was the household you went to when you needed a bit of cheering up.
She was intimate with joy. Her dominant vibration was joy. There is a Sanskrit word anandarmta – “joy-nectar”. That was Rebecca. Of course, she was also connected to all the other vibrations of life – to frustration, weariness, bewilderment, pain. She was the most human of humans, making her so genuine and compassionate. She wore no masks. Her bright red lipstick was an expression of her vibrancy, not a piece of armour, as lipstick can be.
Something I still find unfathomable happened about 18 months ago. My beloved ray of light, my dearest friend, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She lived for about a year from the initial diagnosis. We talked every day. Her suffering is unimaginable but it was visceral. She was full of grief because she loved life – “I don’t want to die, Ali!” I remember her crying in a desperate, almost-begging tone. Every moment she looked at her children, filled with love and pride, she was equally filled with grief and fear. Bad news after bad news came her way – the hope of a new drug made her elated, she felt as if she had been given her life back. The same drug nearly killed her. Throughout her whole journey, she remained full of light. She remained completely herself and more so. She continued to wear her favourite red lipstick, to exercise the plastic in the online shopping community, and she love, love, loved spending time with her friends and family – often with a glass of Prosecco.
It was the joy and the vibrancy of that joy that kept her – and actually, everyone around her – going. And it wasn’t a fakely mustered, “I’ve got to put a brave face on this”; it was the true spirit of joy. Yes, it went alongside these horrible feelings of grief and fear and anxiety and sadness, but her vibrancy went so deep, all of these could be held by it, be infused by its healing and energizing current.
And when we – her friends and family – talk about Rebecca…when I remember her, if I just bring her to light…what I feel is not pure sadness. Amongst the sadness I feel the joy, buoyantly rising up inside me. I can hear her throaty chuckle, warm against my shoulder. I can feel the very vibration of joy, filling me up.
The practice of connecting to joy is a necessity. It is a life changer. Where we place our attention trains our inner compass. Joy is not just for the good times. Joy can be a satellite, a homing signal. Maybe joy is a literal survival instinct? But like all instincts, to truly keep them honed and useful, you need to keep using them. Maybe joy is like a muscle – if you stop using it, it loses substance, and it becomes weak so that when you most need that muscle to strengthen you, you collapse. Rebecca’s practice of joy was uncomplicated, but it was frequent. She exalted the little things, the simple things. She worked out in the joy gym. When she most needed it – it gave her supreme strength, foundation and support. It was so powerful, it held all of us up too.
And here’s another very important thing. Rebecca was not in any practices of life denial. She did not get into inner conflict about whether she could have a slice of cake or a glass of wine or whether that new colour in the red lipstick range at Mac should not be hers. She loved what she loved with her whole heart and without conditions, which is why we – her friends, her family, her husband, and her children – have been so lucky. To be loved that unequivocally and freely.
Meditation is an opportunity self-connection and connection with that “deeper” “higher” that expresses to itself to us in ways which are personal and individual. When I teach meditation, I always say the fastest, most direct route to thriving in your meditation practice, is to invoke what you love. * And to approach meditation in a life affirming attitude, which can be challenging for people in life denying practices – but keep practicing and it gets easier and easier, especially when you see how deep and delicious it makes your meditation practice become.
Rebecca is a stunning example of how the practice of joy is in fact a necessity. And it’s the same in meditation, too. It’s important because it makes meditation delicious and we want meditation to be delicious and inviting, so that we keep doing it. And it’s important because it makes meditation about us – you – as an individual. And we want meditation to be about us as individuals – about our personal connection.
But it’s also important because it’s about harnessing a power: a strength that we sometimes really, really need, and we would struggle to get it if we are either out of practice or have a practice of doing the opposite. If we have a conscious practice of eradicating joy from our lives, from our meditation practices – and there are lots of ways we can do this, accidentally often – then we are in trouble when we really need to call on something powerful and vibrant to keep us going through adversity in life. It’s a problem to disconnect from joy because it’s a disconnection from self – what we love and what makes us feel joyful to be alive – it’s us receiving the elixir, us receiving the abundance.
I am very clear I am not advocating a “Pollyanna”, spin it, make it happy, approach. Because that doesn’t hold when life gets tough. It wouldn’t have held Rebecca. It’s something else. We already have this current of joyful connection. When babies smile and laugh, they are expressing this. We’ve had it since birth. It is hard wired into us. It’s the flame that doesn’t go away. But we can suffocate that flame, we can leave the fire untended so it whittles to embers, and we want to be careful about that. Equally, it’s our fire and we can keep it burning, sometimes just by remembering it. (Below this blog are some meditation practice suggestions for connecting to joy, and “remembered joy” is one of them and a powerful one.) It’s keeping it alive in the midst of everything else, not spinning everything to pretend that there aren’t certain tragedies in life, you can’t spin them into a joyful thing but you can somehow keep going and find your joy.
Rebecca danced the dance of life so perfectly, so gracefully, authentically and with compelling magic which drew us all in. She knew how to keep her inner flame burning, before the time came when she really needed to know. She stayed close to her inner vibrations. She lived in the practice of joy, in every tiny bite sized taste of it (her lipstick, binge watching Sex in the City), as much is in the huge heart expanding explosions of it (the birth of her children, her love for them and her husband every single day).
“Life is full of possibilities and you must always dive in” is the quote on the handout from the celebration of Rebecca’s life which was held in December last year.
Today is her birthday. She would have been 50. Now she is eternally whatever age she has picked (she will have had fun with that one). The best thing of all about her embodiment of joy, her being the vibration of joy, is that her vibration truly is eternal. There is another Sanskrit word nityanandarasa – “essence of eternal joy.” That’s her. Happy Birthday, Becca. Lifting my glass of Prosecco toward the sun.
This is a meditation I am posting on World Mental Health Day, but can be used any time you need to feel soothed, reassured and that “it’s ok”. My heart is with you. <3
Click here to access the recording on Sound Cloud
Morning! However much you have on, it’s the best time of day to take that time and space for yourself – to get clear on who you are and how everything awakening in you can get set for a good day ahead.
This meditation is especially good for people who feel that start-of-the-day tug of war between wanting more time to themselves and feeling the pull of all they have to get done….and lets that assimilate into a zesty wholeness!
And in the near future I’ll be sharing some shorter meditations for those whose get-up-and-go is so bright it’s racing ahead of them!
Click here to access the recording on Sound Cloud
Words Have Power
These are the words of the maid Aibileen Clark, in Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help” to her little charge Mae Mobley. Every day Aibileen tells the toddler Mae these same words and gets her to repeat them back to her.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Words are powerful. And the truth is more powerful still.
So it makes sense that words which reflect the deepest inviolable truth can deliver radical transformation.
Do you ever wake up in the morning fizzing with a low level charge of anxiety, wondering if you will be enough for the day ahead or whether you have been enough, ever.
Maybe that thought, that internal tremor of self doubt, quietly charges your day, so subtly you don’t notice it. Maybe it builds on itself, and escalates, creating a pressure cooker in your inner environment. And causes you to question yourself, limit yourself, push yourself – or to silence yourself and retreat from spaces in which you are desperate to dance with all your free expression.
Maybe this happens so subtly you don’t even notice it. Maybe you’ve just got used to living under its rule or with the struggle of having to press on past it in order to live the life you want to live. Maybe you do notice it, but it feels too overpowering to subdue.
If this rings true to you, please know you are not alone in this experience. You are in good company. Everyone has it. Everyone has times when they forget who they really are and need to be reminded. And Aibileen was wise to that. She knew as confident and carefree as the little girl in her care was, that she would one day be challenged by a conflicting viewpoint that might threaten to take her out of her innate free spirit. She also knew how quickly an external viewpoint can feel like an internal knowing.
Which it is not.
It just feels like knowing.
Especially if you have heard certain words over and over again, or told them to yourself regularly. They can start to feel like unquestionable reality.They can become encoded in you but they are not you.
How can we break the code and rewire things back to where they truly are?
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Aibileen cast these words around Mae Mobley like a spell of protection. A sacred reminder. A reminder so incandescent with the truth that any time Mae might stumble or wobble on her path and lose herself, the cell-memory of these very words would bring her home to herself.
This is the thing about words. And Aibeleen Clark knew this. They are not just symbols. They are not mere sounds. Words sparkle with energy and create powerful vibrations in our cells.
How quickly they can become a part of our being. Change the course of our day.
And here’s the good news, the great news. The amazing, liberating, life changing thing about words you need to know.
If words are so powerful as to seduce us into believing things that are false and misleading, and the truth is more powerful still, think about how powerful words which are true can be.
As powerful as it is possible for anything to be.
That expression “Speak the truth and the truth will set you free” is spot on.
And underneath all those layers of inherited or imposed self doubt and self judgement you know without a shred of doubt all you need to know.
That you are special. That you matter. That your unique soul deserves to shine.
You are more than enough. You are perfect. And your goodness flows through you like liquid gold.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Whenever you need a reminder, find the words you already know.
Listen to your soul, to what your instincts and individuality tell you and start to notice the voices that challenge that so you can create uncontaminated space around your truth.
Breathe, tune into yourself. Listen to your soul and interpret what it tells you.
Cast those words like a spell of protection around you every day.
Every time you give yourself a benevolent, gentle reminder of what deep down you already know for sure – you are creating the ultimate medicine. Actual inner medicine that is redemptive and healing.
You have your own words, but let me tell you this.
You are more than enough.
You spill over with goodness.
You are valuable.
You are important to the world.
You can relax. You’ve got this.
In your deepest personal space, you already know.
In this way, in every moment, you can welcome yourself home.
“I really want my child to meditate. How can I encourage them when they don’t want to?”
Your child is probably expressing constantly a desire, a need, a craving to meditate.
It all rests on our understanding of the word “meditate” and where that comes from.
A lot of our ideas about meditation come from a historical context that has nothing to do with our own lives now and was never meant to apply to lives like ours. These meditations were designed by and for monks, to keep them veering from vows of renunciation of the energies of life in the world.
What is appropriate for a celibate male living centuries ago and who had no connection to the world is almost certainly not going to rock your child’s world – or yours for that matter. Nor was it ever meant to.
Maybe when your child hears you say “You need to meditate” they are filtering it into the same category as “you need eat to broccoli, do your homework, stop playing on your Ipad, go to bed earlier, take a shower”?
Ie. “You need to do something boring that someone else wants you to do and that has nothing whatsoever to do with your life of fun and play and adventure.”
This is not a great way to introduce your child to a practice which could be joyful, exhilarating and transformational all their lives long.
Your child is signalling a response to a spontaneous call to meditate…
…every time they sit at their desk and instead of doing homework start to daydream, fiddle with something or get distracted by an object, a thought, a sound that absorbs their attention.
…every time they come home from school, fling down their bag, and run outside to climb a tree faster than you can say “change out of your uniform”
….every time they get out their Lego and get completely absorbed in building an imaginary town of coloured bricks, while you are begging, pleading, negotiating, commanding them to take a shower, do a chore, study for a test.
…every time they play with the dog, get on Minecraft, jump on the sofa, turn a pile of cushions into a den, make up a song, tell a tall tale, rough and tumble with each other or the dog, stare into space, zone out or steadily lick down an ice block as if the ice block was the only thing that has their attention.
All these are healthy, instinctive ways children automatically re-centre from their lives of scheduled action so that their parasympathetic nervous systems can do their important renewing, restoring work.
To understand this, roll back the years to when you were a child, maybe seven or eight years old. What made you feel happy, peaceful and relaxed?
What things did you do spontaneously that made you feel joyful and vitalized?
Were you a star gazer, a cloud watcher, an artist, a dreamer, a fort builder, a puzzle-lover, a tree climber, a surfer, a rider, a quietly knowing soul?
Anytime our attention is spontaneously absorbed by something, we are in a state of meditative awareness. We are innately wired to experience these moments so that we can collaborate with the body’s intelligence – the work of our parasympathetic nervous system to rest and restore us by filling us with the healing energies of life.
Meditation works best when we recreate the conditions for this kind of spontaneous experience. As adults, we can unwittingly condition ourselves away from our natural spontaneity and what instinctively pleasures us. Our kids, however, have this one nailed. When we were children we were all closer to our natural, healthy instincts and indeed our natural healthy instinct was to keep ourselves as close to that state as possible. That is why we were drawn to wherever our attention found itself absorbed, that is why we engaged in pretend play, that is why we stayed in our bodies and climbed, jumped, danced and lived in any way we felt moved to do. Life seemed compelling then and we kept our vitality high. This is what we want from a meditation practice.
We have it the wrong way round when we want to guide our children into meditation. Our children are the best meditation guides around. When we meditate in their world, an alchemy happens, and we recapture our own. We find lost parts of ourselves again. It’s very powerful.
Here are some ways to start sharing some joyful and fun natural meditation practices with your kids. If none of these sounds good, explore your own and please join the conversation so that I and other parents can get to explore them too. It’s fun to play and great to journey!
Top Tip: Always start with where your children are (Tired? Hungry? Need to move and energise? Need to rest? ) and with what they love (Lego, video games, sport, art, music, dancing, reading and so on) and you can’t go wrong.
Go outside. Lie on your backs on the grass. Really feel the wide curve of the stable earth underneath you, supporting you. What does that feel like? Gravity can feel like it is drawing us down into a hug from the earth. Our muscles and bones relax. And then there is a slight push up from the earth, which holds us. This might be a good way to feel the embrace of life: to feel held, grounded, supported and on a firm foundation. You can spend some time sharing with each other how good it feels to lie on the solid earth. Then let your gaze drift to the sky. You may feel like you are breathing in the sky, drinking it in or watching the clouds make particular shapes. You may feel like you are floating away. The sky has its own moods just like we do – sometimes dark and stormy, sometimes bright and mild – but always in motion. You can watch the moods of the sky change, shift and pass and appreciate them as the different colours and textures of life. No mood is a “bad” one, but part of a tapestry which is continually showing new threads and colours. After a while, if it feels right, you can share where you went in your sky-travels.
Make some bubble mix from detergent and water and find or make something to blow through ( a simple wire bent into a circle is fine). Blow bubbles to your heart’s content. Notice where they drift, where they land, how they hold the light and how they burst. Surround each other with bubbles and get completely heady with bubbles and then sink down somewhere and imagine a bubble around you. A sphere of energy 360 degrees around your being which is luminous. What does it look like? How big is it? Is it close up to you or further away? Inside this bubble you are protected and nothing from the outside can penetrate unless you say yes. What do you want to bring inside the bubble right now and what would you like, for now, to leave on the outside? Many of the kids I teach say the first thing they want inside is chocolate! What pets, activities, loved ones, prized possessions? What qualities – such as peace, strength, confidence, joy? (This meditation is an adaptation of my dear teacher Camille Maurine’s meditation for claiming your inner sovereignty from Meditation Secrets For Women. HarperCollins)
This is a simple one. What games does your child most love playing at the moment? Young children might guide you to play a character in their imaginative world. Really go for it, enter into it, forget any other world exists. Countless clinical studies show that deep play is exceptionally healing and transformative. Older children might like to jam with you playing instruments and making music, creating a science experiment or some art, dancing or playing a sport. What makes this meditative is simply to be guided by their instincts without controlling, editing, judging or filtering their experience. Follow their lead and be willing to get absolutely absorbed in their world.
In our 21st century lives we are all very forward focussed, looking at phones and computer screens. And even when walking down the street, research shows we use the front of the eye almost exclusively. We tend not to lookg to either side. We have neurons and synapses in every part of our eyes, albeit fewer at the edges than in the centre, and if we don’t use them we lose them, dulling our experience of life and making us feel less alert and disconnected from the “big picture”.
This is a meditation to open one of the senses to literally take in more life. Rest your gaze lightly somewhere ahead of you where it is comfortable. You can blink, but try not to move your eyeballs. Start by steadily widening the periphery of your vision to the right and see how far you can see, how much you can take in from the right. When you think you are seeing as far as you can, try and go a little further. Do the same to the left. Then above you and below you. Then all directions at once. Then sit for a moment with all the new sensations and share what you are experiencing, if that feels right.
When we open at least one of our senses as far as it can go, we feel a stronger connection to be alive.
This is a nice one to do at the end of the day and is similar to a gratitude journal without the need to write. Many children do like to journal or draw their experiences but many others have had enough of that activity at school and we want to make sure we create a natural balance for our inner rhythms.
Try beginning with questions along these lines
“Was there anything that made your heart feel full today?”
“Did anything that happened today make you feel excited?”
“Did anything happen today that felt different?”
“That made you feel curious?”
“That made you feel in wonder or awe”
“That made you want to find out more?’
“That gave you an idea?”
“Did anyone do something particularly kind today?”
“Did anyone say anything to you that made you feel good?”
And so on. Notice all these questions guide your child towards their feelings. You can enhance this sensory embodiment by asking them where in their bodies they feel things when they have these memories from their day. See how they move their arms and other parts of their body while they talk and get them to repeat these movements or “mudra” establishing a muscle memory of the experience. Then suggest they breath the feelings through their body, as if breathing them in – like smelling a beautiful flower or a delicious meal – infusing themselves with this quality. Like our muscles, our cells have memory, and the deeper we make a cellular memory of a life enhancing experience, the more quickly we can bring that back when we need the resilience it provides. This exercise is an inner strengthening. It a great one to do before sleeping as once activated, the nervous system can keep bathing in these healing and renewing energies while your child relaxes in sleep.
I would love to hear your discoveries and ideas! Here’s something my 11 year old came up with when she was about seven. “Mummy, I have discovered if you say ‘excited excited excited’ over and over again you get this really incredible feeling that wants to burst out of your body…”
Try it – it works!
Photography by Juliet Wioland. Cannot be reproduced without permission.
When I was a little girl living in Oxford, England, we used to go for a fortnight’s holiday to France every year, staying in a simple villa near a beach. Our lives in the city morphed into days of salty water, bright, bright sunshine, smells of bakeries, peaches and French cigars. The difference in the language, the food, the supermarkets and even the types of cars people drove made everything feel so exotic and all of this contributed to a feeling of special atmosphere, of having been lifted out of ordinary life, that I felt even at the ages of eight or nine years old.
But it is the coming back that I remember. As we switched from driving on the right hand side of the road, crossed the time/space boundary of the ocean between Le Havre and Southampton and found ourselves suddenly, increasingly, in more and more familiar territory I would press my face against the car window and feel something so profound it stands out to this day.
I had a sense that while nothing had changed, everything had.
That while we were only away for a mere two weeks, something inside me had shifted and the territory around me, though familiar, seemed to have shifted too.
It is fascinating that whenever we leave the routine and familiarity of our day to day lives and for however short a period time, we experience a sense of life touching us differently. As human beings, we take the energy of life deep inside us every time we breathe, and this creates a particular atmosphere inside us.
The scenery is enhanced somehow – the sights, sounds and smells more vivid. We can experience different parts of ourselves when we are away from home – feel new things blossoming and old things asking to be released. The common components of many of our holidays are the same and they include feeling relaxed, having more rest, doing more of what we love – reading, enjoying special company and meals, playing – and having an emerging expanded sense of time and space in which we feel comfortably at home.
We often have more immediate access to sources of intuition and inspiration, guiding us to having thoughts about things we want to do in our lives or change in our lives, when we get home. In short, our creative ability is ignited.
And with all of that, in this easeful sense of pleasure, a strong belief, an understanding – a knowing – that we can embody these feelings and experiences consistently, not just while we are away. Because they are closer to our natural state. We can take them home with us and they can take us home to ourselves.
But how? And when we step out of alignment with our natural state, how do we find our way back?
The Tantric meditation tradition has shown me that there are numerous techniques and practices to relocate me in this natural body of love. From accessing imaginable ability (meditating with photos and music and tastes and memories of your holiday) to using cellular memory (which is like muscle memory) to keep the vital energies that have been awakened coursing through our beings daily. These practices are simple, life enhancing and joy bringing. They involve meditating with our real selves and understanding how the overall sense of authenticity and belonging we often feel when we are away are, counterintuitively, showing us where our home truly is.
Practice
Next time you are away from home and feeling a sense of wider perspective and deeper self connection, explore through a journal or your own thoughts and meditations what those feelings are and where you are getting them from. When our beings are relaxed, our real needs and desires – the callings of our soul- come forward. On holiday, we can understand better what we have been missing in our lives and begin to explore how we might recreate that at home.
Write a list of some of those life enhancing qualities you have discovered.
Your list, for instance, might look a little like this
While we can’t recreate the exact conditions of time away, once we identify the specific soul nourishing components, we can be more mindful of bringing them into our lives, even in bite sized pieces. It’s amazing how small gestures towards ourselves can turn on inner lights. For instance, just going to the library or bookshop and getting a good book and placing it on your bedside table so you know it’s there; taking an extra five minutes for yourself here and there; going to bed earlier, taking up a new activity you enjoyed on holiday, gazing at a beautiful view.
It’s an interesting thing and the truth that when we start giving ourselves the things that nourish and nurture us, the response in our being is so positive we are encouraged to give ourselves more and more. And the harvest we reap from planting all these little seeds is higher vitality, deeper meaning and a peaceful and joyful experience in precious lives.
Recently I’ve been spending time in schools as well as one to one with children, exploring their meditation space.
When it comes to meditation, kids know best.
Children are often so much closer to their natural, healthy, instinctive state than we are as adults, that they make wonderfully creative meditators and their meditation experience is rich.
It would be an easy trap to fall into, when offering children meditation, to offer it from the framework of what we as adults think they “need”. Usually this framework is more about what we feel we need. A lot of children therefore learn to meditate with quiet and stillness and focussing and this can work against their natural state. I don’t know about you, but most school aged kids I know are “in the office” 24/7. There can be a relentless vibration of being marched -or commanded – from task to task. “Get up, brush your teeth, put your clothes on, have breakfast, get your stuff together, get in the car…GET. In. THE. CAR”. And from this schedule into the school schedule – with a little time-capped “Play time”, and then into after school activities based around structured learning and performance – Martial Arts, Dance, Sport, and so on. And then homework, dinner, get-ready-for-bed and bedtime. And in the morning, it starts all over again.
How are we going to allow our children opportunities to get back into their own natural instinctive rhythms of being, doing and resting?
That’s where making sure their meditation space is a proper sanctuary for them – in other words, it is all about them and their needs, cravings, individuality, dreams and desires – is key.
Silence and sitting still and concentrating on breathing or following the teacher’s demonstrations of stretching, it seems to me, are the last things our children will be craving and won’t provide the opportunity to recover and restore that is needed. And if any of us aren’t getting what we crave in meditation, then meditating at all is a waste of our time and energy. More importantly, it could even be injurious – in the same way as forcing your body into a yoga pose that isn’t right for it would be.
We come to meditation to nourish our souls, restore our beings and come back into our bodies. If your soul had been subjugated to this amount of imposed-structure, wouldn’t it be craving a chance to be in a free space again of deep play and freedom to roam?
A child who has been sitting the majority of the day and supressing the natural urge to move that all children are intimate with probably isn’t going to want to sit. A child who has been asked to pay attention to a variety of externally imposed experiences might well be craving a spontaneous, individuality-affirming inner experience. Kids are close to their imaginative instincts. Daydreaming is refreshing, it takes us home, and about as soul nourishing as it gets.
Our children are great teachers for us on how to meditate. It’s a fun and rewarding space to explore with children and see what their ideas are. Here are five of the most popular among the children I work with.
At the start of any meditation time with children, cue them immediately that this is their space, their time and they are in their power here. Effectively, hand the baton back to them so that they know they can and should have their own experience in meditation – this is not another thing that’s going to be imposed on them from the outside – this is about them coming home to themselves. Let them know that they are already meditation experts and that when you were a child, you were too, but as an adult need some tips. Ask them” “if you could be anywhere right now, where would you be and what would you be doing?” This is a great pathway back into their beings. Ask them, when they are thinking and talking about their “perfect right now” what feelings of “things waking up” or “lights going on inside them” they have and in what parts of their bodies. This is a way of teaching children how to self tend.
2. Move & Groove
Get a few ideas from the kids on what music they like. Create a playlist and then get them to vote on which piece to play. Invite them to move in any way they feel…moved to! Moving or dancing to music can be a great way of getting bodily into one’s inner rhythms.
3. Shake It Out
Little do we know how much children’s emotions are responding, below the radar, deep inside them, to things which are happening in their daily experiences of life. Emotions like resentment, fear, frustration, disappointment and exasperation are all emotions expressed time and again by the children I work with. First, we bring the emotions into awareness – the healing state of attention alone. Then we affirm is good to know how you feel! Then we get them to shake it out in any way they like – with as much craziness as feels right to them. I have seen children just use their hands and arms and others use their whole body in a crazy dance. They love this one!
4. Voice It!
Taking it one step further. So often, children want to voice how they feel but are afraid that isn’t allowed. Energy then gets trapped in parts of their being to an uncomfortable degree – often their throats, chests or in their bellies. This is a practice to empower children’s voices, to release unhealthy blockages of emotion and to give the kids a chance to let it all out vocally. It is great to focus on feelings of vibrations when we use our voices in harmony with our feelings. Get them to notice words and feelings as they vibrate through their bodies. Singing, chanting, sighing, humming are all expressions of feeling the music of life. This is Mantra practice for kids.
5. Mythical Worlds
Probably the best gift we can give our children is simply to allow them their right to dream. And dream and dream and dream and dream. Dreaming is a deep instinct and like all our instincts, deeply connected to surviving and thriving. You can honour daydreaming by exploring together some of the great contributions made to our lives by “Dreamers” – artists, architects, songwriters, musicians, inventors, people who have transformed world situations from a dream of peace and harmony. We need to dream and we can’t be scrimpy with ourselves when it comes to dreamtime. After the movement and voice meditations, children will feel relaxed and in their beings – the perfect context for settling back into their inner world of adventure. You could even get them to tell stories of their day dream, or draw pictures afterwards, if they are inspired to share.
Above all: make it friendly, make it fun, make it about them, not you. Let them guide you, teach you, inspire you. I love this comment from a teacher whose class I went into recently: “They came so alive when you unlocked some things in them! It was wonderful to see them getting so much out of the session. Personally this session had a big impact on me, I went home and started painting again after a 5 year gap!”
No Time To Meditate? Try This
This is so simple and yet so powerful and I’d love for you to try it.
It only takes three breaths.
It can be done at any time, anywhere.
The Take Three Breaths meditation is for any moment in life where you feel the need to pause and check in with yourself.
You might be at a crowded, noisy airport, office or your own home. You might be stuck in traffic. Or you might be in the middle of a challenging conversation and need to centre yourself.
You can make it a special, regular moment of sanctuary just for you to enjoy – maybe sitting in a favourite spot in your home or outside or gazing at the sky or water if you love to do that.
It is lovely to take a Three Breaths moment with yourself at the very start and very end of every day.
The call to meditate is the call to notice and deeply feel how life’s energies are flowing in our beings right now.
Our primary relationship is with ourselves. As in any relationship, there is a craving within us to spend more time with ourselves. As with a lover, we feel the urge to connect, to discover and simply to “be with”.
Try it now.
Each breath is a full cycle of an inhale and an exhale.
You might have your eyes open or closed.
Take three conscious deep breaths and as you do so, let your loving attention move straight into your heart space.
Our breath enjoys a fullness there.
Take your time with each breath. Luxuriate. You might find yourself softly smiling as you meet yourself again.
You may have a sense of gazing or feeling or diving within. You may have a sense of being at an inner meeting with your eternal self, your unique essence. Or you may simply feel the peaceful, groundedness of the moment.
This three breath technique is both a union and a reunion.
It can become a delicious, supportive, self-connecting practice we can bring into our lives, several times a day, every day.
This simple and super feel-good practice has all kinds of benefits which reach beyond that moment and infuse our lives. It builds an emotional confidence. Your unique being feels nurtured, heard and seen. You know you are there for yourself.
I’d love you to try the gift of Take Three Breaths and let me know what you find.
