How to Meditate

Meditation is the practice of focusing your attention inwards, without the distraction of your thoughts, your emotions, and your impulses that would otherwise hijack your attention and trap your mind in reactivity and overthinking. There are many schools and styles of meditation, but they all have this practise in common. You don’t need to be religious or a hippy to meditate, and you don’t need to chant mantras, adopt yoga postures, sit in front of a guru, or study arcane texts to learn how to meditate. Meditation is a simple technique available to us all, no matter what we are doing, where we are, or what our beliefs are.

Why Meditate?

The purpose of focusing your attention inwards with meditation is to enter a more resourceful state of greater presence in which you can experience greater peace, inner wellness, and effectiveness. This is why meditation is one of the tools used in my Inner Wellness Program that is being used by a growing community of people to release their inner blocks and enhance their health and fulfilment. Learn how meditation can help you turn your life around in this way by booking your Complimentary Inner Wellness Session with me.

Stress, anxiety, and depression are unresourceful states experienced by most, if not all of us, and if left unchecked can sometimes lead to physical illnesses such as heart disease, immune disorders, and cancer. We are also affected by our reactive tendencies to be distracted and addicted, and to overthink, or to be disabled by fear or overwhelmed by emotions such as grief, hopelessness, and anger. These reactive tendencies scatter and hijack our attention and make us less resourceful and less ourselves. They also sabotage our relationships and our potential to have peaceful, supportive, and authentic relationships with each other and all life. This is why meditation is so important.

When I started meditating over 20 years ago, I found that I became more peaceful, creative, and productive as a result of meditation, and enjoyed a greater sense of connection with all life that was very healing and literally opened my heart to all life.

By developing a meditation practice, which means meditating regularly, and preferably daily, we can:

• Free ourselves from debilitating states and suffering
• Improve our inner wellness and physical healing
• Become more resourceful and effective
• Discover greater peace, gratitude, and joy
• Develop our sense of compassion
• Strengthen our centre and be more present
• Reconnect with our true nature and true self
• Unfold in self-realisation
• Improve our relationships with each other and all life

Meditation is particularly important in our modern age where we have so many pressures, stresses, addictions, and distractions, and where illnesses are spiralling into epidemics. Given how essential meditation is to our life, it is surprising that in general we are not taught how to meditate when growing up.

Because a regular meditation practice trains us to focus our attention, it is a very good way to increase our effectiveness in many areas of our life, where loss of attention would diminish or sabotage our success. For example, I have found that meditation has enabled me to be a more effective writer, to consistently achieve the goals I set, and to be a more effective listener, which is great for the clients I have!

As a means for self-realisation, meditation can help to connect us to our true nature or true self, and to develop the  authentic values and true life purpose based upon our true nature. Our true nature is not our persona that is based upon reactive living. Rather, it is our essential being that exists beyond our personality. It is not our thoughts, not our emotions, and not the roles we play. It is a centre of pure being, connected with all that is.

Because meditation can be used to connect us with our true nature, it can help us to release our resistance to life, love, and wholeness. By learning how to meditate and developing a regular meditation practice we can become more and more embodied in our true nature and become a shining, healing light to ourselves and others.

How to Meditate

So now we come to the subject of how to meditate. First of all, set aside some quiet time for your meditation that is going to be free from distractions and interruptions. It can be indoors or outdoors in nature, whatever works best for you. If you wish you can light a candle. You can lay or sit in your meditation, so long as you are comfortable but alert.

Then, set an intention for your meditation. For example, you may like to discover greater inner peace, greater gratitude, or greater compassion. Or you may just want to explore being more centred, and to be more self-realised.

Before you begin to meditate, it is important to know that focusing your attention and disentangling from the reactive mind is a process that takes time and practice. Initially when you start to meditate, you will find that your attention is taken away from your meditation as thoughts interrupt your stillness. This is completely fine, it is not a sign that you can’t meditate. When this happens, rather than criticising yourself and reacting to the event, simply acknowledge it, bring your attention back to your centre, and let go of your thoughts. You may need to do this several times in your meditation, and that is completely fine. Eventually with more practice, you will find that your focus becomes stronger, so keep going!

When learning how to meditate you will find that a guided meditation will help you to focus your attention and take you through the process of relaxation, centring, and self-realisation. Over time as you become more experienced, you will be able to guide yourself in meditation.

You can meditate for as long as you like. I would suggest about 10-20 minutes to begin with. Make a commitment to honour yourself by meditating regularly, such as upon waking each day, and you will get much better results with meditation.

To help you understand the process of meditating, let’s go through a guided meditation that I have prepared below. The process begins with closing your eyes, relaxing your body, and turning your attention inwards. You will then go through the stage of focusing your attention in the present moment on your body and your breath, and then establishing your centre as observer, from which your self-realisation can begin—which in the guided meditation below is the exploration of your essential being and your connection with all that is.

Close your eyes and relax your body,
Letting go of any tensions and thoughts of the day,
Allowing yourself to relax from the head.
Releasing any tension from the jaw and the eyes…
Relaxing the whole of the face, the scalp, letting all the tension go…
And relax down through your neck and the throat area…
Relaxing into the shoulders, letting them drop back and down.
And then relax down the back, the upper, mid, and lower back,
Feeling the space between each vertebrae…
Then relax into the chest area, allowing the chest to open…
Relaxing down into the stomach, the lower abdomen…
And take your awareness to the hips, allowing them to relax…
Relaxing down into the thighs, allowing them to soften…
Relaxing the knees, down to the calves…
Relaxing down into the ankles, allowing them to loosen…
Then relax the feet, all the little bones of the feet, right to the tips of the toes…
Relaxing the upper arms, the elbows, spreading that relaxation down the forearms,
Down to the wrists, and into the hands, right to the tips of the fingers, allowing them to relax…
Then take your attention to the whole of the body.
Become aware of the relaxation filling the whole of your physical body,
Softening your muscles, becoming more and more relaxed.
Then take your awareness to your breath,
Following it as you breath in and out…
Placing all of your attention upon your breath
As you connect to the flow of life…
Breathing in from infinity, and breathing out to infinity…
Becoming one with life…
Breathing in from infinity, and out to infinity.
And as you do so, become aware of that place of peace and light within,
That place where you are most yourself,
A centre of pure being…
Beyond your thoughts, beyond your emotions, beyond the roles you play.
Become more present in your centre…
Be more deeply.
Expand your presence in your centre, becoming one with the light you truly are…
Radiating your light, connected with all of life…
As you breathe in from infinity, and out to infinity.
And as you embody your centre, allow the light to flow all through your physical body,
Surrounding you with light, extending even beyond the physical body…
Extending your light to all living things…
Extending your light across the world, across the universe…
Experience the power of your being…
Experience the power of life that flows through you…
You are one with all that is.
Acknowledge the infinity of your being.
And then in your own time bring your attention back…
Back to your physical body…
Feeling yourself fully grounded,
Back in your body…
And, in your own time, open your eyes, wide awake and alert.

If you would like to receive a free mp3 recording of this meditation, please let me know in the comments below or send me a private message. If you are a subscriber to my youtube channel, let me know and I can grant you private access to the video.

I hope you enjoy the meditation! Let me know how you get on and if you have any questions about how to meditate. Until next time, keep meditating!

Next Step: for more on using my tools of Inner Wellness to begin your journey to greater health, happiness and authentic fulfilment, make a call to awakening within yourself, and book a Guidance Session with me.