![]() How many of you have a regular meditation practice? How many of you think you should meditate? How many of you just can’t seem to do it or are resistant to it in some way? So many of us have a love hate relationship with meditation but I think we should persevere with it because it does offer us an opportunity for growth. What is it? Meditation is when you sit quietly for 10, 15 or 20 mins and focus on one of your senses. So for example the most common one is to focus on your breath (so you can focus on the tip of your nose or the rise and fall of your abdomen). Another common practice is to focus on the weight of the body on the chair or focus on the feeling in your hands or the sound of a ticking clock or traffic or the whirring of the fridge. Some people like to use counting or mantras as their meditation object. You choose your object and stick with it. Then, when you realise you’ve got lost in thought (which you will), you gently and kindly bring your awareness back to the meditation object and start again. Sounds so simple right? What does it do? When done correctly it soothes your nervous system, reduces anxiety, aids sleep, better mood, allows the body to restore itself and offers us an opportunity make peace with present moment. It basically CONNECTS US TO OURSELVES and that's what we're all looking for. Meditation also helps us move up the emotional scale towards loving kindness and compassion. But the one thing I love about meditation is that has this strange ability to stretch our perception of time, so it helps us to create time AND it creates the headspace for more inspired ideas to flow. It's so good for us but.... Why are we resistant to it? I think there are a few reasons. Firstly because meditation feels a bit boring, it can feel like a waste of time and like it’s not very exciting…. that’s because I believe most of us are addicted to that dopamine hit that we get from interacting with social media and our work lives. Of course we need that in our lives but too much of it is over stimulating and puts pressure on our adrenals. We then get over tired and are looking for the next hit to pick us up again so we reach for TV, Tinder, sweets, cake, wine or something exciting and distracting. Meditation tends to get over looked and thought of as something that won’t work because it sounds too simple and it’s not a quick fix. Secondly we’re resistant to it because we like to avoiding feeing difficult feelings. Meditation highlights our thoughts and our feelings and sometimes they're not very nice. Trouble is, we can't ignore them forever otherwise they tend to show up as headaches, muscle tension and other dis-ease. So there are a lot of reasons NOT to meditate but there are loads of reasons to meditate. Will you choose to meditate? How can we overcome that resistance? You need to choose to love yourself enough so that you can choose to care about feeling good. Also you need faith that the consistency of daily meditation WILL bring you what you're looking for.... peace, balance and resilience. Like everything that’s good for you, start and continue even if you don’t feel like it. The paradox is this: the motivation to meditate it likely not to be there until you start and keep going. Meditation Tips: Try a soft gentle smile while meditating. It sends good news to your brain and gives you a subtle feeling of wellbeing. My mantra tip: I don’t need anything to be different, I’m satisfied with what is and eager for more. Something good will come of this. That’s all for now. If you’ve got any experiences with meditation you want to share, go ahead. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Alternatively if you're struggling with meditation and want to find out what's under the surface, book a call and we can work it out together.
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