Meditation & Mindfulness

4 yrs

Question: What are the best morning meditations ?

I don’t think there is a “best morning meditation”. Use what works best for you. All meditations fall into one of two categories. Either you’re meditating on something. Ie: your breath, you job, your goals, etc. Or you are just standing witness to your thoughts, letting them float away, until there is only the experience and knowledge of your true self, the watcher.

ALSO very important, in relation to morning meditation, keep in mind that while you are waking up, that is a time when your subconscious mind is MOST susceptible to suggestions. And thus the BEST time to recite your affirmations. This works especially when when doing so evokes an emotion, as it is the emotions more then plane thoughts that propel your affirmations in reality.

You’d be surprised. Even something as simple as, “This is going to be a great day!” can have a immediate and significant effect.

4 yrs

The most important skill needed to learn when growing in mindfulness is…. SELF OBSERVATION. More specifically, you need to be able to — continually or intermittently — watch your thoughts. Become the observer.

The easiest thing to do is simply be grateful as as many times as possible. Make a conscious recognition for every little thing and everybody meet. It's true. What you think about, you bring about. Being grateful for all those good things, only brings more good things into your life.

Just being grateful like this, you will ultimately attract the situations, people and things you need to prod you on to your true destiny, even if you have yet to recognize this yourself.

6 yrs

My wife wea telling me about this interview she heard. Seems some guy was in a terrible accident. He died for 6 minutes but the doctors were able to bring him back. They told him he'd never walk again. The thing is, he made a miraculous recovery by using this affirmation a sports coach once taught him.

He called it a 5 minute rule. It goes like this. When something bad happens, you can be angry or pissed for 5 minutes. Then you have to let it go. You do this by telling yourself over and over again, "I can't change it."

Funny thing. Telling yourself, "I can't change it" may help you get over your anger. But when you keep repeating "I can't change it" over and over again, your subconscious, hears, "I can change it."

You see, a VERY important point to remember when creating affirmations or mantras is the fact that the subconscious mind ignores all negatives. In this case, "I can't change it" is heard as "I can change it."

Maybe that's why his 5 minute rule worked so well.

So... what kind of meditation works for you?

6 yrs

I've got this blood pressure meter. In addition to giving you the usual systolic and diastolic readings, there's a LED indicator and a color coded scale. Feeling a bit stressed, I checked my blood pressure and much to my suprise, my blood pressure was in the red zone. Ouch! So... I immediately did 5 minutes of deep breathing and... checked again. Back again. That quick! Well into the green zone. Nice. Meditation works!

So... let's start at the beginning. Take a deep breath... Hold for 1 or 2 seconds... Exhale.

Now, do that three times. Stop reading this. Go! Do it.

Back again. Okay. That was easy. Next is the real test. I want you to do the same thing again. Take a deep breath. Inhale comfortably fast. Hold for a second or two. Then comfortably exhale. BUT... this time I want you to KEEP COUNTING.

See how far you can get before your mind wanders. As soon as you realize that your mind had wandered away from counting your breath, try to remember you last and highest count. Good. Start again. Start counting from 1. Again, see how far you can get before your mind wanders. It's more difficult that it sounds. If this is your first time doing something like this, try to get to 20. That would be good.

This just show us how busy the mind is. How easy the mind is distracted by all the wonderful sensations and thoughts that surround up. Every day. All day long. Every minute.

Now here's the challenge. Can you spare 5 minutes? This can have a very positive impact on your health AND peace of mind. Continue practicing this little exercise, each time striving to count more more breaths before you mind wanders away.

How did you do?