Are you interested in exploring a meditation practice that is so vibrant and enjoyable that you will want to do it every day of your life?
Join Alison Potts for this 2-hour meditation workshop and learn a practice where you are allowed to be who you are and are encouraged to learn how to love and enjoy your mind, rather than judge or limit its activity. In this workshop you’ll learn an approach to meditation which celebrates your individuality and instincts; brings a feeling of deep connection to yourself and life; imposes no rules on your practice (you don’t even have to sit still!); and activates the parasympathetic nervous system to allow for healing, integration and renewal. Suitable for first time meditators and those with a regular practice. Cost $45. Click here to book.
Have you ever found yourself gazing at the most beautiful sunset or mountain or spectacular coastal view, yet been unable to take in the beauty because you were feeling so miserable inside? I know I have been in situations in life where I have been struggling so much on the inside that being in the most magical place in the world has not been able to lift my mood. I know how exquisitely painful that contrast is between inner and outer landscapes. It’s the sense of loneliness in a crowded room. It’s a heartbreaking rejection from life itself. How isolating it feels to be amidst beauty but not feel welcome there.
We often talk about making a sanctuary for ourselves to meditate in. We talk about choosing a favourite spot, in our home or in nature. We talk about making our special place, our inviting, super-comfortable. We suggest bringing in special objects to make it inviting – flowers, candles, oils. We might play music that we love.
The thing is, we can create the most welcoming and inviting space in the world for ourselves, but it all falls down if we are not providing that welcome and invitation on the inside. It’s our inner sanctuary that really matters. That’s the one we carry around with us. That’s the one that need to be available to us to dive into when life is calling us in challenging ways.
How can we take the beauty into a space which has no welcome, whose gates are closed even to the gatekeeper? We open that space when we welcome all of our life force – welcome thinking, welcome breathing, welcome emotion, welcome sensation. Not just tolerating it, but greeting, touching, embracing, enquiring about and cherishing everything thing flowing through us it with our tender attention.
Creating an unconditional welcome for ourselves in meditation can be a challenging practice and a journey, but a profoundly powerful and rewarding one.
Imagine loving yourself and life that much. Imagine how much beauty you could take in and how that beauty – all of life’s pulsating energies – could flow through you, refreshing, renewing and restoring you to that awareness of the sacredness of life, the sacredness of you.
It’s a practice we can do every day when we meditate. Learning not to resist ourselves, understanding where we might have a tendency to do so. Learning to greet whatever is calling us from our hearts. Learning to feel, learning to listen, learning to care. Just as with the beautiful outer scenery, being inspired, being moved, being overwhelmed with awe at the life-force within. All of these things are in the architecture of the inner sanctuary we want to claim for ourselves and we are the architect. Every time we say “I welcome my whole self”, we are placing a building block for our inner temple.
Both meditation and life are much easier and more joyful when we create this healthy, supple, free and sacred personal space. This is the very opposite of detaching, deleting, annihilating or alienating any part of ourselves. We can thrive in a meditation practice like this and thrive in life. It’s so, so important.
This continually evolving practice of self welcome has changed my life and truly allowed me to receieve the fullness of every one of life’s moments.
The truth is life’s energies are always welcoming us. What we have to remember is the skill of welcoming them back.
I think after all that is what our attention was made for, what it’s sacred purpose and its gift is. To keep welcoming ourselves back.
When you were a child, were you a space gazer, a cloud watcher, your vision resting on something, entranced, your mind drifting and dreaming?
Did a parent or teacher or other child ever ask you to “snap out of it”, “concentrate” or “focus”?
When you see a child staring into space, do you decide they must be bored and need something to do?
Ever been in that heavenly, dreamy, drifty, relaxed state of being – your mind roaming freely, unfettered and unfiltered – when someone suddenly snaps their fingers across your face?
Not nice, is it? Our nervous systems get a nasty jarring.
Never interrupt a daydream.
Daydreaming is part of our mind-body system’s intelligent healing processes. We need to let that happen.
Neurological studies show more than half our thoughts are daydreams.
When we dream, we heal.
When we dream, we process.
When we dream, we solve problems intuitively.
When we dream, we become inspired.
When we dream, we give ourselves space and time which our souls cry out for.
When we dream, our brains take a rejuvinating vacation.
When we dream, we innovate and create.
In the dream space, there is no filter, no censorship, no inner criticism. We let ourselves off the hook and our minds are released to do greater, deeper things.
We do our best thinking when we are not thinking about thinking.
No one creates anything special when they are “trying to create”.
Some of the world’s best inventions came when people weren’t even trying to invent.
Most art, poetry, plays, movies, video games and all the big ideas were “dreamed up”.
The drifting, dreaming mind does not lack discipline…the discipline called for, from us, is to put those snapping fingers away, release any value judgments biased towards “focus”, “concentration”, “control” or “mind mastery”.
And then we can unleash in ourselves all the treasures of the dreaming space.
Einstein was a daydreamer and a genius. He said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Let your children dream.
And let yourself dream, too.
And see where it takes you.
Happy drifting.
We all have preferences. Preferences are our individuality
Animals have preferences – a certain spot on the sofa, certain kinds of touch, certain food.
I don’t like coconut but I adore avocados. Climate-wise, I prefer warmth to the cold.
We are supposed to have preferences. They come from our essential nature. We strengthen when we know intimately what our preferences are and respond to them – know when to say yes, when to say no, when to join in, when to stand alone and when to compromise.
Preferences are instincts. All relate to our individual nature, our unique essence. We can fall out of connection with our instincts when we say too many yeses when we feel a no, when we join in when we really don’t believe in the community we are joining, when allow ourselves to be drawn into conversations, when we give our power away in whatever fashion. In a meditation practice where we cherish every instinct, listen deeply to every inner calling, we can bond with our innate, instinctive self again and that changes everything in life for the better.
At some level, our preferences are actually reporting on what our internal organs prefer, what our internal organs need to be balanced and happy.
Honouring our preferences as instincts creates healthy boundaries for ourselves. Think of our boundaries as like connective tissue, like a “second skin”. That’s our aura. Boundaries are infinitely nuanced. How much energy do I have, how much time, which part of myself have I lost or stopped tracking and how I can find and reclaim it?
Individuality, preferences, boundaries – all are ultimately about honouring our individual nature. When we meditate from our individual nature, when we live like this, we live in harmony with ourselves. We are less likely to get into fights with ourselves in or outside of meditation.
And that is the ultimate path to inner peace.
*Read on if you’d like some tips for meditating with your own individuality and personality:
– What would make meditation feel most easeful and natural to you: sitting in a chair? Lying in the grass or on a sofa? Walking, dancing, moving? In the shower, the bath or the ocean?
– What are your favourite songs or pieces of music? See how you feel if you meditate with these playing?
– Do your eyes feel like being open or closed?
– Do you want to meditate on a particular issue or affirmation? Or with your breath, or with your sense of taste or smell (using food or a fragrance you love). Or do you simply want to let your mind drift, daydream and unfold?
– How long do you want to meditate for today? When does it feel like enough? When does it feel like too much?
– If your instincts are telling you to fall asleep during meditation, don’t resist them. Most of us are chronically sleep deprived. We can enjoy a deep meditative rest. Studies have shown these are more refreshing than a night’s sleep.
– Do you want to meditate with others or by yourself? Use a guided meditation or let your inner guide take you on an adventure…
– Do you feel like moving, singing, shouting, crying, laughing during meditation? If so, can you embrace that expression of inner flow and go with it?
-…and so on and so on. For every individual on this earth – and that’s about seven billion of us – there is unique way into personal meditation. Listen to your instincts, play, experiment, journey, get curious and explore in your personal space. Own it. Make it yours.
Welcome Home.
The World Is A Peaceful, Kind and Loving Place
The world is still kind.
Nothing has changed that.
Seven billion people are still peacefully going about their day.
.001 % are murdering others
If the world’s population were able to stand in one room, this fraction would be less visible than a grain of sand.
The powerful feelings that rise in our hearts when we witness any kind of cruelty is a manifestation of the supreme presence of Goodness. These impulses of love, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of cherishing all life ARE the universe. So we can be thankful we feel these things, we can infuse ourselves with this naturally arising love and kindess and cherishing of life and in doing so, raise that vibration into the world. The world which remains loving, kind, luminous and flowing with grace.
(Gratitude to my teacher Dr. Lorin Roche for our conversations about kindness.)
At times of new moons, we are extra-supported in moving forward in our lives in ways which feel truer to our individual selves and nature.
However, does this ring true for you?
Does it tend to happen that, whenever you feel in a space of manifesting new creations and forging new pathways which you know are going to bring you closer to what you makes you feel peaceful, happy, healthy and most alive… “The Voices” come up? The gatecrashers at the party. The critics, the queriers, the nay-sayers, the fear-mongers, the ridiculours and the saboteurs? The ones you feel with every bone in your body don’t belong here and yet someohow make themselves feel so comfortable and welcome. Maybe they are saying
“this will never work”
or
“you don’t deserve this”:
or
“Feel that dose of tension and fear and insecurity we have brought with us as your party gift? Clue: this is a warning about what will happen if you make these changes.”
I’ve got good news.
This is meant to happen.
It happens to everyone.
It is a sign things are really shifting – when you can see the beings inside you who have, in the past, created the very obstacles in you that you wish to address now as you make plans to shift and grow and move forward.
When this happens, you can welcome it. You can make these seeming enemies your allies.
As adults, within each of us are the Old Tribe Rules and The New Tribe Rules. When we are children, it is wired into our sense of survival that our brains imprint and encode what our tribe tells us is true about life. “Don’t expect to much, you will only be disappointed.” “Don’t shout, don’t be too loud.” “Be brave, don’t cry.” “You may want to be an artist, but artists don’t do well in life – get a real job.” “Be careful.” “What a silly idea.”
And so on.
These are the Old Tribe rules.
As adults, we get the glorious and also challenging opportunity to create a new tribe with new rules that allow us to be fully ourselves – from small changes to new changes.
We need time and some self attention to allow our brains to relax into the new ways so they can encode them, just as we did the old rules.
This is where meditation comes into its own. When we are children, all of this encoding is unconscious. It happens automatically and surrupticiously. It creates literal physiological neural pathways. We just imbibe what the members of our trive tell us and show to us, over and over again until it travels in our bloodstreams.
As meditators, we are conscious and awake. Meditation is a state of relaxed alertness. It is the perfect space for healing the wounds we were caused by old programming and to form new neural pathways. Science has evidenced this again and again. So you can trust this process of being awake and holding space within you to get a good understanding of the voices that are coming up – where they really come from, what they really want for you. Originally, however it was manifested, they were there to protect you from something.
So one thing you can do, is to reframe them by seeing them as old protectors who leap up to help you because they are from the old tribe and that is what they know.
You can do this by saying, every time you feel that tension in the background, ” Thank you for trying to protect me but I don’t need that protection now. That was how the old tribe did it. In my tribe (or my family) we do things this way.”
You can be very specific:
“In my tribe, we encourage and support each other.”
“in my tribe, we know there is space for everyone to do their own thing and no one is a threat.”
“In my tribe, it is not selfish to care about ourselves.”
Or use the word family –
“in my family, we don’t tell each other to shut up.”
You can even add…
“…in fact, I am not even going to tell you (the Voices, the feelings of tension) to shut up.”
I have used this enlightened technique for years. I still do. Let me tell you, it is very powerful and joyeous athe more you practice it, the more you can be at peace to forge your own destiny, no matter what wants to “speak up.”
Meditation gives us space, it gives us choices, it shows us things tnhat give us powerful understanding of ourselves and our lives. The trick it medtate effortlessly – which means creating the space where you can honour and allow everything that comes up for healing – rather than use even a smidgeon of effort to resist, block or silence any part of yourself.
I will soon be recording a guided meditation for Creating Space For Yourself.
Your meditation practice can and should evolve. We know that we are in a dynamic flow of life. Both our outer and inner worlds are defined by motion in every sense. The universe is not static, creation is not static, we are not static – we as humans are active, creative, evolving, transitioning, changing.
Women especially experience profound changes in their hormonal patterns and physical beings at different times of life. This means that no one technique will work for us forever. We need to be constantly exploring and developing meditations for ourselves that keep us in healthy, in balance and full of mojo whatever stage of experience we are in. We need to be athletes – sensitive to how we need to prepare and live in order to move with strength, flexibility and artistry enjoy the sport in our individual life. In this sense, meditation is a place we can go to in order to receive nourishment and personal training uniquely matched to our own spirit, and to all the ways in which we we want to express and create and receive in the dynamic flow of our own rich lives.
Some people think that doing our inner work is naval gazing or selfish. For meditators, this can be a big force of resistance we need to work on melting so we can open up fully and dive more deeply in the meditative space which is so healing.
The thing is, wall human beings desire to be healthy and in balance, at home in their own skins and able to show up in the world , feeling full in all the ways we are called to and long to, as individuals. Our work as meditators can involve melting, dissolving, shifting and moving skilfully, moment to moment in our lives and in our meditation skills, as if negotiating a path in which there will be all kinds of “Shoulds” “should nots”, shame, guilt, feelings of being selfish or unworthy and undeserving of the time and space we crave. Lets get this straight – lets remind ourselves – working within ourselves mindfully, heartfully, sensefully and sou-fully is HOW we are being called to live. It is in our wiring – the fields of science, psychology, neuroscience, biomechanics, anthropology, sociology and the arts all back this up. We are called to live from within, to exoplore within, to heal within….for the greater good of healing for the world.
Think about it like this – when you feel at home in yourself, happy, healthy, balanced and in love with life – do you feel more able to able to give? More able to forgive? More able to respond to others? Able to uplift? To create and live in vibrations which are healthy, happiness and harmonious for the whole world? That is why inner work and meditation are the least selfish practices on the planet.
People often ask me what “brand” of meditation I teach. Like what “brand” of laundry powder do you use; what “brand” of jeans is on trend right now.
I guess that is part of our culture, to think of brands, trends and buzzwords. What is my “brand” of meditation called? It is called meditation. It requires no books, no guru, no strict practices and no control. All it asks of you is to be you. Which is the most sacred of all practices. And while brands and trends are subject to outside factors and come and go, meditation like this has always existed and will keep evolving forever. And you are wired to do it, you already know how to do it – though you may have forgotten. How does the drum of your own beating heart express itself to you? Let’s start there, That is the meditation I teach. The one that arises from your own unique essence. Both your classroom and your teacher are within, and while trends come and go, the desire and ability to turn inward, self-nurture and self renew are eternal.
The question of style or brand then turns back to you: “what does it feel like when you are meditating in your own way?”
But if I had a brand, my tag line might be: “Meditation. Where will you go today?”
Such a great example of how life animates us from within. How emotion moves us. Literally. Sometimes life seems so full it just wants to burst out of us. When we gesture, when we are animated in our speech, we are watching meaning come alive. Deep love, or deep sadness, move us to reaching for each other and embracing. Stirred by a song we love, we dance. In poignant moments, we may touch our own hearts.
Prana pulses in our physical beings.
Prana pulses in life.
Feeling and moving with prana connects us in a rhythm from inner to outer to inner.
Movement is a natural response to the rhythms of our inner life. It is also the body’s instinctive healing response. Movement invokes the prana body – energy flows, emotion moves in a rhythm with life.
Let life stir you all you want. Move it!
It’s different every day.
If you are tired or feeling overwhelmed, sometimes balance can be hard to find.
If your body is sick or injured, it can be hard to be balanced.
But our inner selves, deep down, know they have a centre. A homing signal. A grounding point. A place of deep stability where we can not only be held, but which can hold all that we experience.
I am interested in physical balance as I have chronic health conditions that challenge balance, yet have also learned – through these – the gift of FINDING balance. Coming into centre, wherever I am at.
From a meditation point of view, I am interested in “balance” too. When we allow our inner lives to come forward and be seen and heard- so often we see “opposites” at play. Things that we may mistake for “conflicts” calling for resolution, but are in fact the natural rhythms of the opposites of life, as day is to night, and sun is to moon, youth is to age, sweet is to sour.
In meditation, I have begun to think of “balance” as harmony. As coming into a healing rhythm within oneself, where nothing needs to be fought against or avoided.
Try it. Try relaxing into all the “opposites” within you. Let them speak to each other and be heard. Let them dance in a rhythm of moving together and dissolving away.
Be with your wholeness in this way.
Then afterwards, notice how you feel in relation to yourself and the world.
Think about balance – how does it feel to you?
Home
Harmony
Rhythm
Wholeness
Centre
One-ness.
….this I have learned. Every day balance means something slightly different. Every day we can find it a-new.
