Are you tired of feeling stressed out, anxious and easily distracted?
Feel like you can't "turn off" your mind and give yourself a rest?
Wondering what the heck meditation really is exactly?
To many people, meditation is a mystery or seems impossible. Still others think you have to be some monk cooped up in a mountain all day and night to meditate -- but this is totally not true!
It's actually quite easy -- you can even start meditating in just 10 seconds right here and now! That is, you can do it if you change your mindset about what meditation is.
Watch the above video to learn how you can get started meditating now!
"I can't meditate."
This week, Spirit is asking that we cover an introduction to meditation.
Well it's about time! I can't tell you how many people I've met, not only over the course of doing my work over these last few years, but also even on a daily basis or when I'm out networking to share what we do here at the dojo for more people, who ask me the same questions about this.
So many people are asking, "Well how exactly do I get started with meditation?" "What is it?" "What's the right way?" I shrink, by the way, from that question “What's the right way to do meditations?” Your way is the right way.
Here's why: what matters most is how you feel.
The more you're able to create a healing, peaceful, calm, clear, and confident state within you, the better! It’s essential that you do whatever it takes to get yourself to a space of clarity, confidence, calm and health.
This is my intention that I hold whenever I'm teaching meditation or whenever I'm doing it for myself, doing energy work, or speaking, or sharing: that you find whatever you need to do to get to the space is the right for you.
One of the very first techniques for meditation that I learned from my Guides to start sharing with others as well as what I mastered first what I call “The Calm-Down Breath.”
Breathwork in general, if you want to Google that, as an approach to meditation is brilliant for stress relief and creating a better space of homeostasis: that calm, clarity and peacefulness that should be a product of a regular meditative practice.
If you're not feeling like you're moving towards a greater state of health and balance, or a greater state of self-awareness and self-acceptance as a result of your meditative practice, you're doing it “wrong.”
I never really say that, but in general if what you're doing isn't increasing the good in your life, or bringing you closer to who you really are, then stop. Just stop!
Know This: If what you're doing right now isn't increasing the good in your life in some way, then stop. Just STOP! #focus #selfcare
If you're in a meditation class that makes you feel inferior, or if you're in a presence of someone who makes you feel less of yourself and more of them, and the “them” that you're becoming isn't a reflection of who you really are and isn't resonating, put the brakes on it!
That's the type of permission that we need to create in our own selves: that if this isn't increasing my joy, if this isn't bringing me more love, if this isn't expanding my horizons I am free to go.
Spirit really wants you to know that the purpose of meditation is to bring love to your mental “dragons” or “monkey mind” of fear and people-pleasing.
The act of meditating is coming into your inner space mentally and emotionally, as well as spiritually speaking and physically, but really from a mental driven exercise.
All of the other parts of life – the emotional, physical, spiritual, social, financial, nutritional – all of the others outside of the mental aspect of meditation, those are all effects of your mental focus on a mental exercise.
First and foremost, let’s define it. Exactly, what the heck is meditation? It's mental exercise. What are we exercising? What muscle are we flexing, or massaging, activating or exploring, and learning about? What muscle? That is the muscle of “Relaxed Focus.”
In and of itself the idea of Relaxed Focus is a spiritual practice, it's a mystery until you really start encountering her first hand through meditation.
If we are able to maintain a state of Relaxed Focus, then all those other areas of life – the physical, emotional, social, financial, environmental, etc. – are affected.
When you're getting started meditating, a great way to work with getting used to it is the Calm Down Breath.
It's a simple mental exercise of inhaling the thought and intention “calm” and exhaling the thought and intention “down.” It’s that simple.
As you're inhaling you're thinking the word “calm,” as you exhale you’re thinking the word “down.” Imagine that as you inhale, you can feel calm moving through your body, the idea, the image of what it would look like.
Then imagine that as you exhale, you can feel this “energy” moving down and releasing out of your body. Once you get used to imagining that, what you want to do is repeat this form of deep breathing for ten seconds.
Try it now. You have ten seconds right now to practice breathing the Calm Down Breath...
Did you feel that word and intention move through you?
Did you notice any shift in your energy or adjustment in your body?
Did you notice that your mind had to redirect?
Maybe you need to close your eyes so you could focus better on the sensations and imaginations.
By the way, congratulations! You just meditated for ten seconds!
It's that easy getting started. Your next step is that to increase the time or the temporal value you assign to meditate. You can go for ten seconds and next set your cell phone timer for 1, 3 then 5 minutes. You hit the timer and then it does the countdown, just close your eyes and continue thinking “calm down,” inhaling calm and exhaling down.
The Calm Down Breath, just as a practice, a mental exercise can affect your physiology positively, the more temporal value you assign to it.
It can affect other areas of your life too because your mindset is shifting and that is the power of meditation.
There is also another very simple technique to add on to The Calm Down Breath, that can supercharge your ability to focus and get more things done with less effort, help you tame your monkey mind in the moment, and turn down anxiety, stress and distracting thoughts.
You’ll have to watch the rest of this week’s video strategy to find out what it is!
In Love and Light,
Victoria.
VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield
Just for Today...
Try a 10-second or 1-minute "Calm Down Breath" meditation.
Especially if you feel anxious, stressed or frustrated.
Notice how you feel at that moment - you're already healing!
SHARE THIS! You’d be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!