Meditation Articles

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Centering calming and quieting your mind

Woman doing a quiet centering meditation Centering is the process of focusing inward, allowing your mind to become calm.

Personally I can tell when I am centered because my mind becomes quiet and my anxiety level goes down. As my mind gets quiet I become more aware of my surroundings and my instincts become more active. That is MY experience, how it feels for you may differ.

As you learn to rely on all your senses rather than just your mind, you may find decision making comes more quickly. I think this is because you are gathering more information from your surroundings and allowing your instincts to surface.

Centering makes it easier to be objective about what’s going on around you. You may become less likely to get tangled up in other people’s drama and emotions because you are calm. This calmness helps you to more easily see all sides of an argument or situation.

Start with this relaxation. The more you practice this relaxation sequence the easier it will be to remember and you will find you can drop into a relaxed state more quickly and with more ease. Eventually you may find you can drop into the relaxed state by just taking a few seconds to remember how relaxed your mind and body felt after doing the relaxation 🙂

You may want to record yourself saying the centering meditation below so you can listen to it and just follow along to your own voice the first few times.

Please change the wording to whatever feels most right for you. The idea is to personalize this and make it yours (as with most of the meditations on this site and elsewhere!)

Centering

Bring your attention to the middle of your head.

Imagine there is a pure clean light at the center of your head.

This light is a place where you can find your own intuition.

There is only you here. You can still hear noises around you, but this place is yours and yours alone.

You are safe here.

This is a refuge where you can go to get away from stress.

You are still aware of where you are and the outside world but they don’t matter right now.

Here you feel a profound sense of peace and quiet and a sense of wholeness and vibrant health.

Allow yourself to inhabit that light. Feel and KNOW this light is you, the pure clean and unadulterated essence of you.

There is only you here and you are enough, repeat to yourself I AM enough.

Take a few minutes to allow yourself to feel, sense and know this spot and to relax in the quiet, releasing any thoughts that come up.

Know you can come back here any time by relaxing your body, releasing your thoughts and bringing your attention to the center of you mind.

Allow yourself to really see in your mind, feel and BE the quiet pure clean energy that is you.

When you leave this meditation you will bring with you a memory of what it felt like.

That memory will make it easier for you to come back to that center whenever you want. By paying attention to it and remembering it you can come back to it more quickly the next time.

When you are ready, stretch any part of you that needs to be stretched and slowly open your eyes.

Take a few seconds to adjust back to being fully awake.

To your vibrant health!

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Relaxation Sequence

This relaxation sequence is a preparation for longer meditations. By relaxing your body and your mind first it helps you to go into a deeper meditation more quickly and easily.

The more you practice this relaxation sequence the easier it will be to remember. Soon you will find you can fall into a relaxed state pretty quickly.

Make yourself comfortable, have a glass of water and a blanket handy for added comfort and of course turn off anything that is likely to make noise.

Close your eyes. Let your hands lay open on your lap and set your feet a comfortable distance apart.
Take a deep breath, filling your lungs and belly. Let it out with a sigh.
Breath deep, feeling your lungs and belly expand and breath out with a sigh.
Breath in again. Sigh out again.

Go back to your normal breathing and as you breath in imagine you are breathing in calmness. As you breath out imagine your mind and your body are relaxing and releasing tension. With every breath allow your muscles to become more relaxed, calm and heavy.

Feel your feet relaxed against the floor.
Feel that relaxation traveling up through your ankles and into your calves. Allow the muscles in your calves to become soft.
Bring your attention to your thighs, feel them relaxing down towards the chair.
Notice your buttocks and lower back are comfortably relaxed.
Feel this total relaxation spreading through your abdominal muscles. Any tension you were holding in your stomach melts away. Feel all the organs in your abdomen relax.
This quiet relaxation travels up to your chest and through the organs in your chest and into your upper back.

You feel calm relaxed and healthy.

That calmness spreads across your shoulders and down your arms into your hands and your fingers. Your fingers relax open.
Feel relaxation traveling up your neck and through your jaw. Your jaw may relax open a bit.
Relaxation spreads across your face with the muscles around your eyes softening and releasing tension.
You find yourself feeling so relaxed that even the skin on your forehead becomes smooth and quiet.
Take a moment to enjoy this physical relaxation. If you notice any areas of your body still feel tense spend a moment on that area – breathing in relaxation breathing out tension.

Your body is now in a quiet, calm and relaxed state as you bring your attention inside your head.

Allow any thoughts that come into your mind to disappear.
There is no need to try to stop thinking, simply release thoughts as they come up.
- There is no need to hold onto a thought, if it is important you can come back to it later.
- With practice you may become so quick at this that you can release a thought before you finish thinking it.
Now bring your attention to the quiet gap that happens between thoughts
Allow that sliver of time to expand in between thoughts.
Take a minute or two now, paying attention to the quietness between thoughts.

Use this relaxation practice on it’s own or as a preparation for a longer meditation. You will find I refer back to this page for many meditations.

To your health!

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Compassion for Yourself

We are bombarded with social media messages and requests from family and friends asking us to be compassionate for others. What about compassion for yourself? Being compassionate towards yourself builds patience and resilience, which in turn makes it easier to have compassion for others!

First some background

Most of the Mindfulness Meditations I have talked about so far focus on paying attention to what you are experiencing right now. Sometimes I ask you to accept what you are experiencing without resistance or judgement. Some of the benefits are –

Reducing frustration from unmet expectations.
Reducing stress or pain by changing your perception of what is going on.
Letting go of judgements that pops up unconsciously. A tip for recognizing some of of those judgments are that they often start with phrases like
- This means that….
- This is bad because …
- This is scary because …

Removing that judgment allows you to be more objective and opens a window for you to see yourself and others in a more compassionate light.

Compassion

The dictionary describes it as a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

Personally I like to focus on “alleviate the suffering” because sometimes I become overwhelmed by the other person’s suffering instead of moving into action. That doesn’t help anyone!

I usually decide pretty quickly if the request is something that feels right to me and either help out or disregard the request.

My compassion tends to spring forth in situations where I see a person struggling with pain or loneliness. This explains why I did the series of articles on pain recently. For that matter my desire to help as many people as I can is what spurred me to start this website in the first place. 🙂

I will write more about fostering compassion for others another day. Today we are here to talk about YOU!

Compassion for YOU

This exercise is deceptively simple, please give it a try and practice it a few times. I find it becomes easier and more natural each time I do it.

When you first notice you are judging yourself too harshly maybe calling yourself names like stupid, or lazy or whatever your mean names you sometimes call yourself; Or if you notice you are finding fault with yourself or comparing yourself to others unfavorably do the following –

Remind yourself that you deserve compassion.
As you breath calmly and deeply pay attention to what you are feeling or thinking.
Pay attention to physical sensations that come up
- Where in your body do you feel it?
- Can you identify a feeling that goes with it? For example it could be a vague uneasiness or anxiety. If you don’t easily identify a feeling that’s OK just move onto the next step.
Acknowledge the emotion(s) that comes up. For example it may be
- I feel angry
- I feel ashamed
- I feel afraid
- I feel like crying
Once you have identified the emotions, and where in your body you feel them it is time to start giving yourself some kindness (compassion).
- Sit in a comfortable position and breath deeply and calmly
- Take a few moments (just a minute or two to start with) and just notice what you are feeling without reacting to it or trying to change it. Just be with it for a few moments. Practicing non-resistance helps to bring objectivity and clarity … eventually. It often takes practice to get to this point.
- Acknowledge you are going to be kind to yourself
- Place your hands over your heart (which gives yourself physical reassurance and reinforces the self soothing practice that follows). Or if you have identified an area of your body that needs some kindness place your hands over that area. For example if you feel anxiety in your stomach area allow your hands to rest lightly on that area.

Speak to yourself as you would to a good friend who is in need of compassion and kindness –

To strongly reinforce what you are saying speak out loud and use your name –
- (Your name) I understand you are feeling _____ Naming the emotion or sensation you are feeling acknowledges it without judgement.
- (Your name) It is OK to feel _____ This gives you permission to feel what you are feeling and further helps to remove judgement.

This next step is where you start moving towards kindness and compassion for yourself. Personalize this to fit what you are feeling. There are so many possible variations I will give you just a couple to give you the idea of what I mean –

For sadness you could say

(Your name) I am here for you, I will help you. What would you like me to do for you?
- Then be still for a few moments to allow yourself to answer that question.
- Acknowledge your answer and do what you have requested if it is something that feels right and healthy.

For loneliness you could say

(Your name) I am here for you, I love you. As you say these words allow yourself to really feel love for yourself. Repeat this as many times as you need in order to really FEEL that love.

Address any other feelings, sensations or emotions that have come up in the same manner.

Please share any other techniques that you have found useful for fostering self compassion. It can be very useful for other readers!

To your Health!

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Meditation with children

We have covered some of the basics of meditation with children (mindfulness meditation for small children). Here are a few more points.

Have Realistic Expectations
With small children naturally occurring mindfulness moments can happen at the most wonderful AND the most inconvenient times. You may be in a hurry to get somewhere, but if your child stops for a few moments to stare at a bug, or splash water on a rainy day, (or any of the other many distractions that fascinate your particular child) let her have a minute or two before you rush her off. After all this is a natural form of mindfulness that is often thoroughly trained out of us by the time we reach adulthood. Patience.

On the other hand if you have arranged a meditation session for your child but she simply can not sit still for even a minute, try a little game or two to see if you can get better participation. Here are a few “games” to promote mindfulness –

Blowing bubbles, watching them float, noticing the rainbow colours in the bubbles. This is a matter of watching and seeing with very little talking for either of you 🙂
Smelling things – a flower, grass, dirt, clothes out of the dryer, food, crayons, even water. The point is to fit in a couple of minutes of just noticing the world around whenever the opportunity presents itself.
If your child is chatterbox and just HAS to talk about what they are doing you may as well take it in stride and not try to force silence on her.
Play a game of noticing all the sounds that are around (birds chirping, siblings talking, clock ticking, the wind in the trees)
Touching things and noticing the textures (soft, hard, squishy, rough, smooth)

A good idea for an older child who is fidgety is to set a timer so they can see for themselves how long they have been meditating for.

Start small, 1 or 2 minutes for a very young child and 3 – 5 minutes for an older elementary school age child. You know your own child, just how long do you think he can sit still?

Encourage Discussion

Ask your child what she noticed or felt when engaged in the meditation, at the same time don’t be too surprised if she doesn’t have many words to describe it, the areas in the brain associated with language are pretty quite during meditation.

Guidance

Make sure your child knows there is no right or wrong way to do the meditation.
Frequency bring results much the same as with exercise. Results come from repetition.
Find ways to make the experience enjoyable.
- Perhaps setting aside a particular quite spot with a comfy pillow or two.
- Perhaps a reward if that is a common form of approval in your family.
For older children try a breathing exercise with them.
- Encourage them to try their best to relax and focus on their breathing.
- Let your child know that it is normal to have thoughts pop into her head, and that when it happens to just go back to focusing on her breathing.
- When appropriate instruct your child to keep her eyes closed during meditation. Explain that keeping the eyes closed makes it easier to focus on the meditation because there are not as many distractions.
Again, expect some fidgeting. Fidgeting is common even for adults 🙂
Know that with practice they will be able to sit still longer with both you AND your children enjoying the benefits of meditation.

To your health!

by Totally Meditation on 2 Comments

Mindfulness meditation for small children

Teaching children meditation is unbelievably beneficial. A child who is easily frustrated can be taught to calm themselves down; a child who is very sensitive can learn to let go of hurt feelings; or a child who gets so overtired they just can’t sleep can be taught techniques to help put themselves to sleep.

Mindfulness meditation for small children

A FEW SUGGESTIONS

Be an example
Simply put, small children are natural imitators, if they see you doing meditation they are likely to want to try it out too!

Simplify the process
Make it easy to understand, especially for very young children. Use simple language and when possible use the senses – seeing, hearing, touch, smell and taste to engage them early on in mindfulness. For example – Do not have the TV turned on when they are eating, so their attention is not pulled in two directions. At the same time engage them in using their sense of taste and smell (best done when eating food they like 😉 ) by either asking questions or making comments about the food.

Use story-telling
Story-telling is a great way to tap into your child’s imagination and to help them follow along with less fidgeting. There are many great books in the market place that use story telling to teach meditation to children. From Christian or Buddhist stories to totally non religious. When looking for stories focus more on what will your child like (after all an engaged child will learn more quickly). Then focus on what fits your own moral and social beliefs and then focus on specific lessons. I picked out a couple of books and audios that are non religious, well rated and engaging. Of course I highly recommend you check out what is available for yourself, you know your child best!

Start with an easy experiment
To show what meditation is and to get your child interested in trying it show them what meditation can do. For a child over the age of about 5 for example

Take a jar of water, add a bit of dirt or sand and shake it up.
Explain that the dirt or sand is like our thoughts swirling around, messy and hard to see through.
As the dirt or sand starts to settle to the bottom of the jar –
- Explain that just like the water gets clear when the junk settles down, meditation helps your head to become clear and quiet, like the water.
- Explain that when your head gets quiet so do your hurt feelings, anger or whatever the mood is that troubles your child.
Children are smart, by explaining how meditation will help them feel better are they are more likely to give it a try 🙂

Expect fidgeting
If your child has not done any meditation before keep your expectations small, just a couple of minutes at a time and slowly build up from there. Remember 2 minutes for a child can feel like 10 minutes does for an adult!

It is natural for children to be fidgety. Keep encouraging them to come back to the meditation at hand.

Make meditation a regular practice, the more it is practiced the easier it becomes. Don’t give up if you don’t see dramatic results in the first few sessions. The best results will come with practice 🙂

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Reduce pain by changing how you think

Mindfulness exercises to reduce pain

There are several techniques you can teach yourself to lessen pain. Below are two I find useful and I invite you to add your suggestions in the comments below if you have found other ways that work for you. This blog is about building up a supply of techniques and information to help people reach their meditation goals more quickly and I welcome your input 🙂

One way to do this is to allow yourself to examine your pain OBJECTIVELY

It is all too easy be become so fearful of the pain that it ends up taking up a huge amount of your thoughts; so much so that sometimes even on pain-free days anxious thoughts pop up, casting a huge shadow over your day 🙁

To help you ease into this objective observance I suggest you do a bit of deep breathing first to let your mind get quiet enough to be able “hear” what your body has to “say”. (basic breathing technique here)

Your body speaks to you in feelings and sensations not words, so when words come up release them and go back to noticing the feelings and sensations.

By examining the pain objectively you may

Notice the pain is not really as bad as you thought it was. For example it may be a finger that hurts not the whole hand.
Notice that simple changes to the way you sit or breath may make you more comfortable. For example you may notice
- that when you sit hunched over your computer your back complains more than when you sit up straight.
- that your body is telling you not to sit for too long at a time. When I used to get a sore back, I found that getting up every half hour or so to do a couple of stretches helped to tame the pain. By listening to my body when it told me to stretch it sure made my work day more tolerable!
Notice if there are certain times of the day the pain is active. By noticing when it is quieter you may be able to reduce how often you take pain meds; Or, you may be able to reduce the amount of medication you take by using techniques like progressive muscle relaxation or deep breathing to take the edge off during quieter times.

If you are taking medicine prescribed by your doctor it is best to follow your doctor’s instructions, at least until you can ask if it is OK to take less. Some meds require a consistent dosage in order to work effectively.

There is no one right way of doing this and I trust you will find the way(s) that work best for you.

Another way is by changing the words you use to describe your pain

I am always amazed at how powerful our words are, especially how we talk to ourselves! By changing the words we use we can change our perception of what is happening in and around us.

Something to remember about this technique is to use positive language rather than negative whenever possible, and for times you do use negative words, use them early in the thought instead of the at the end. Studies show that the brain puts more emphasis on how you end a thought, so help your brain to send messages to your body to release helpful hormones / chemicals rather than stressful ones.

Every time you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, repeat the thought in a more neutral or positive way. It can take quite a bit of practice to change your thought patterns, partly because it takes a while to become conscious of the way you think, after all you may be changing habits that have been around for a long time!

Here are just a few possible substitutes, please change or add as many of your own as fits with the way you talk to yourself. The more you personalize this technique the more effective it is.

instead of “horribly itchy” use the word “ticklish”
instead of “burning” how about using “quite warm”
instead of “terrible” how about “annoying”
instead of “excruciating” how about “not pleasant”
instead of “I can’t stand it!” how about “I can handle this”

Here’s a big one … how about changing from despair thinking … you know, the thoughts that sound something like “I ALWAYS hurt!” or “This is NEVER going to end!” to something a little less dramatic and overwhelming? Perhaps “This WILL end, I can hang in there until it does”.

Here is a radical thought … how about noticing the times when there is no pain and choosing to thank your body for feeling fine? Train your mind to recognize that there are times of freedom and to enjoy them.

Second radical thought … how about using distraction to lessen your focus on the pain? My favorite distraction is indulging in something that makes me laugh. The reason that laughter feels so good is that laughter triggers the release of bio-chemicals that are natural pain killers.

Use these techniques to reduce stress and pain. I employ these exercises on an as needed basis 🙂

To your health!

Note – always follow your medical professional’s advice.

What is Meditation and Why is it Important?

Centering

Compassion for YOU

Mindfulness meditation for small children

Mindfulness exercises to reduce pain

One way to do this is to allow yourself to examine your pain OBJECTIVELY

Another way is by changing the words you use to describe your pain

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