Relaxing is easier when we move our attention to the way we feel in our bodies rather than dwelling on what we think in our minds.
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Top Ten Tips for Successful Meditation Meditation (or mindfulness as it is increasingly referred to) is the practice of being in the present moment. Meditation has proven health benefits and has been shown to reduce addictive behaviour and improve our relationships with both ourselves and others. But many of us struggle to find the time or dedication to meditate. However this need not be the case. Meditation can be done anywhere, anytime. Here are the top ten tips from our friends at Positive Meditation that will help bring you into The Now... 1. Go to your breathing: The moment we move our attention to our breath we have started meditating. Begin to 'feel' your breathing by observing the sensations that arise in the nostrils, chest, diaphragm or abdomen as you inhale and exhale. Luckily your breathing is always available for you to use as a meditation. 2. Observe sensations: As well as observing the sensations that arise as you breathe begin to notice other sensations that arise in the body. Take a little journey around the body, making sure to cover every part. What can you feel in each area? You may feel hot or cold, tension, aches, tingling, perspiration, heaviness. The list is endless. But try not to label any sensations that you find; simply observing them is good enough. 3. Don't expect anything to happen: Meditation is the opposite of excitement. When we are excited we are anticipating something in the future. When we meditate we are simply being in the present moment, here and now. Do not expect some flash of insight or transcendental moment of enlightenment. Simply be with the sensations that are arising for you now. Stop searching for anything. 4. Do not judge the sensations: Accept every sensation that arises anywhere in your body with equanimity i.e. no sensation is good or bad. If we judge our sensations then we will begin to crave those sensations that we label 'good' or generate 'aversion' towards 'bad' or 'painful' sensations. Learn to watch each sensation dispassionately. 5. Do not react: Some sensations appear to demand us to react to them when in truth we can allow the energy behind the sensation to move through the body without needing to react. The secret to overcoming addictive patterns is to practice non-reaction to 'painful' sensations or cravings. When meditating resist the urge to react to aches and pains that arise. Allow them to be there and move your attention to observe another part of the body. You may even find that some time later that 'unbearable' sensation has completely gone. 6. Stop listening to your thoughts: This is the part of meditating that causes so much confusion for beginners. So often people say 'I can't meditate because I cant stop thinking'. Want to know a secret? Nobody can. Thinking is what our human brains do. Every time you notice that you have stopped meditating and started thinking again, immediately move your attention away from thought into feeling breathing sensations in the body. You have started meditating again. You will probably need to do this many times even in just a few minutes of meditation. That's fine! 7. Smile: This may seem like an unusual suggestion but the simple act of smiling releases endorphins into the blood stream that make you feel happier and more present. Really! Try it. Even if you don’t feel that happy, turn the corners of your mouth up. Feel the sensation of smiling in the face and especially the eyes. Even a 'forced' smile has been shown to make us feel happier. So fake it till you make it! The more you smile during meditation, the more you will start to enjoy it. And the more you enjoy it the more motivated you will be to meditate! 8. Meditate Now: You can meditate anywhere at all, at anytime. One of the myths of meditation is that you need to sit with your eyes closed to meditate. Do not wait until you are sitting on a meditation cushion to start meditating. You can meditate as you brush your teeth, walk down the stairs, drive to work, log on to your PC, sit in a meeting (you do not have to grin at your boss though!), play sport, do yoga, cook dinner, eat dinner (feel those taste buds and your tummy react), make love or as you lie in bed trying to get to sleep. Whenever you remember to meditate, do it, even if it only lasts for a few seconds. The key is to remember to meditate. Use little reminder notes around your house or in your calendar to remind you. 9. Start loving yourself: As you spend more and more time observing bodily sensations, you will begin to notice which thoughts cause you to feel negative, unpleasant sensations in the body. Start turning angry or hurtful thoughts into loving thoughts and feel the difference these new loving thoughts have in your body. Instead of needing another person to say lovely things about you. Say them to yourself! Then meditate on the way they make you feel. This is essentially what mantras are. 'I am good enough' is usually a great place to start. 10. Set a timer: Once you start to see the benefits that meditating brings to your life, start making more time to doing it. Set a timer (for ten minutes initially) and do not stop your meditation until the buzzer rings. Of course there will be times during the ten minutes when you will go off into the world of thought, but that's OK. Every time you notice you are thinking, immediately move your awareness away from thought and back into the body. The more you practice meditating, the more able you will be to resist the temptation to listen to your endless thinking..... To find out more about how to learn meditation and mindfulness please visit www.positivemeditation.com Mark Dunn 2013 Love is a tricky thing to pin down isn't it? When we deeply love someone, we experience such a broad range of emotions that it is hard to know what is 'love' and what is 'need'. In fact love is a patchwork of contradictions, ultimately paradox. And it turns out that the understanding of this paradox is important if we want to go deeper into loving our partner and experiencing more profound joy. So what exactly is this paradox? Love is total immersion in the other, connection to oneness, to god, to universal consciousness - complete unity.... and yet paradoxically within this we still remain separate and can easily get caught in egoic thoughts. The danger lies then in being careless about which thoughts we believe, especially as we run the risk of thinking that we cannot be happy without our lover; that if they leave us we are doomed to a lifetime of yearning, regret, sadness and disconnection. When we love mindfully, however, we allow ourselves to revel in all the pleasure of the other, to worship them on all levels and yet remain firm in the knowledge that we will be absolutely fine if the relationship ends. Sure there may initially be the odd twinge of pain if we see our lover with a new partner or we are reminded of them in some way. But when we love mindfully, we do not turn these short-lived physical sensations into a big negative drama that perpetuates our suffering. This may seem absurd but it is totally achievable with a little mindful enquiry. If you have dreams you want to achieve but feel unable to pursue, begin to break your gridlock by becoming aware of the self-defeating patterns that keep you stuck. Whatever you’re currently thinking that hurts or paralyses you, identify it and start thinking the opposite. This new way of thinking will also lead you to take new action to override the old pattern, liberate your potential, and empower yourself to pursue your goals. Below are three questions you can ask yourself to help you jump-start positive change in your life: How am I treating myself? Perhaps you dream of completing a graduate degree. If you’re physically exhausted, in a depleting job, or not taking good care of yourself, it’s going to diminish the energy you need to research the right university, get your application done, and complete your studies. Think about how you’re treating your body and what you need to do differently to generate the energy needed to create the life you want. This means making healthy choices about what you eat and drink—and what you’re not going to eat and drink—as well as healthy choices about exercise, sleep and addressing those addictive behaviours that sap your energy. The key here is to be very mindful of the impact your habits have upon your body. Get more and more in touch with the physical sensations that you feel before, during and after you eat, smoke, drink, exercise, act out etc. Meditate on these as much as possible by being present with these sensations as they arise. Simply watch them and listen to what they are trying to tell you. This will give you more insight into what serves your body and what depletes your energy. What kinds of messages am I believing about myself? Often as we embark on a new venture our ego (thinking mind) will send us some negative thoughts. We may not be able to stop the ego sending us these thoughts but we do not have to believe them. We have a choice whether we take our ego's negativity on board or whether we confront it. Maybe your goal is to exhibit your paintings in the local art gallery, but you tell yourself you’re not good enough. You’re defeating your purpose by believing any message to yourself that erodes your self-esteem. Or maybe you dream of starting your own business, but you think: “I will fail.” If you’re believing your negative thoughts, you’ll be too paralyzed by fear to get your business off the ground. When you believe a negative thought you will always feel a negative reaction in the body. When you feel this negative reaction, its time to question the thought. Turn the negative thought into its 'Positive Opposite'. For example: 'I couldn't handle failing and looking stupid' becomes 'I can handle failing and looking stupid'. Then find 3 reasons why the Positive Opposite is true. Over time, you’ll learn to take risks without minding what the outcome is. You will also strengthen your self-esteem and build the confidence you need to actively pursue your further goals. What kinds of relationships am I creating in my life? Your life vision might involve a fun, inspiring, and fulfilling personal life, but you continually participate in relationships that make you feel bad. First of all see if you can change the way you think about the situation. Can you learn to accept aspects of the other person? Turn negative thoughts like 'He shouldn't be so negative about me' into their Positive Opposites: 'I shouldn't be so negative about me or him'. Again search for three reasons why this Positive Opposite is true. Miraculous things can happen within your relationships simply by changing the way you think about yourself and others. Maybe you can learn to love and accept a parent's negative views and learn to love yourself enough not to take those views to heart. We can question other ego's negative thoughts just as we can learn to question our own! This way you can bring positivity into a relationship that has seemingly gone sour. This does not mean that you have to spend time with those people who are seriously negative! The more you learn to love yourself the more you place appropriate boundaries around relationships which do not serve you and which perpetuate cycles of pain. For each negative person that you identify in your life decide how much time you want to give to them and stick to it. Is trust important to you? If so, who exactly can you trust? Can you ever trust anyone else's advice 100%? Can you even trust your own thoughts totally? When we examine our experiences, it turns out that there is only one voice we can trust totally to give us good advice.... Take a moment to think back through your life. Have you ever noticed that even your closest friends can give you bad advice? Or that your family members, who you would love to be able to trust implicitly, have sometimes given advice which in hindsight was not in your best interest. In most cases this 'bad' advice was given with the best intentions. Other people often 'think' they know what is best for us when in reality they do not. So blaming them for the poor advice is unfair, especially when ultimately we took the decision to listen to it. It is the same with our own thoughts. Our thinking mind (or ego as it is often referred to) is constantly 'advising' us what to do. You will probably hear these thoughts inside your head throughout your day. 'I should do this', 'I should be more like that', I mustn't let them down', 'I need to do this', 'I am a bad person if I don't do that' etc. Again take a moment to look back through your life and see if you can remember the times when you gave yourself bad advice. Have you ever woken up the next morning and thought 'What on earth was I thinking!'? Have you ever made a bad investment which at the time you thought was a good one? Have you ever thought that what you are about to say is funny, only to have your words received by shock, anger or disappointment? Alternatively you may have noticed how your thinking ego can tell you little fibs. 'Just one drink won't hurt' or 'I can have one cigarette and then stop'. In hindsight we can see that believing our thoughts without question is not always a healthy practice. The truth is that whilst the human ego may have plenty of good ideas, it also has its fair share of bad ones too. The endless stream of thinking passing through our minds can lead us to do great things but is also responsible for us doing some fairly stupid, mindless things too. So given that we can't totally trust anyone else to give us good advice and we can't even trust our own thinking egos, who can we turn to? Fortunately there is one voice that is totally trustworthy. One voice that is incapable of lying or making a poor judgement. That voice is the voice of bodily sensations. Sensations are the feelings that we get from our bodies. The tightness in the chest when we feel stressed, the feeling of joy when we do something kind, the feeling of hunger, pain or tiredness. These are all sensations. And the great news is that they never lie! Our bodies always provide the perfect response to whatever is happening for them in the moment. If we eat something sweet we receive the sensation of sweetness via our taste buds. If we eat too much sweet food, our stomachs send sensations that are warning us of the harm that overeating this type of food is doing to our digestive and other organs. The big question is then, do we listen to the right voice at the right time? Do we stop eating the cakes on Christmas day because we begin to feel a bit bloated or do we listen to the ego telling us 'Oh go on, its Christmas!'? This is the main message of any training in Mindfulness. We are mindful when we listen not only to the voice in our heads but also to the voice in our bodies. These sensations that we can feel throughout our day are the best guide to how to live a happy, peaceful and contented life. So how do we tune into them? Start by practicing a bit of mindfulness every day. A ten minute sitting at the beginning of the day is enough to start big changes in your life. If you take this time then not only will you benefit directly from tuning into your sensations then but for the rest of the day you may also find that occasionally you remember to tune into your bodily sensations for a few seconds at a time. This increased awareness of what is healthy for your body will help you to know which thoughts to believe and which thoughts to disbelieve. If a thought causes you pain, stress, tension, shortness of breath or increased heart rate then the thought is more often than not untrue. It is time to trust your body and question the thought. Here is a simple ten minute mindfulness technique that you can practice wherever and whenever you like. Mindfulness Meditation Technique: Breath Awareness Set a timer for 10 minutes. Sit with your back straight, neck long and your eyes closed. Breathe normally and smile. Bring your awareness to your breath and observe the sensations that arise in your nostrils as you breathe in and out. Try to consciously feel the touch of the breath in the nostrils as you inhale and exhale. Do not attempt to change your breathing but if your breathing naturally wants to change in any way then allow it to. If you cannot feel any sensations in the nostrils as you breathe then deepen the breathing slightly until you can feel some. Observe the sensations of breathing in the nostrils for a short while and then move the awareness to the abdomen and observe the sensations of breathing which arise in your abdomen. After observing a few breaths in the abdomen, move your awareness to the diaphragm for a few breaths, and continue like this to the chest, the shoulders, the upper back, lower back and hips. Once you have completed the circuit, start again from the nostrils. You may be aware of thoughts or other distractions coming into your consciousness. Keep moving your awareness away from thinking or distractions and focus on the breath. Every time that you notice that you have started to think and forgotten to observe your breathing, return your attention to the part of the body you were last working on. Do not stop this meditation until the timer rings. Then bow your head and slowly open the eyes. Smile. For more insights into mindfulness, meditation and the benefits of self-enquiry please visit www.positivemeditation.com. Please 'like' www.facebook.com/positivemeditation if you would like to receive more mindfulness techniques like the one above. |
Blog AuthorMark Dunn lives in Bristol where he teaches Positive Meditation and Mindfulness skills to the wonderful people that live in that great city. Archives
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