Totally Meditation

Totally Meditation A2Z

What is Meditation and Why is it Important?

Meditation is a state of peace. This occurs when your mind is quiet and calm, yet still very much aware. It can be practiced in a number of different ways and for a number of different purposes. It can help with relaxation, relationships, and sleep, for example.

It also elevates your levels of self-awareness and mindfulness. Meditation has been shown to have profound emotional and physical benefits, including improved immune function and decreased pain and inflammation at a cellular level. It can even improve self-control and the ability to regulate emotions. Productivity and memory improvements have also been noted as well as many other benefits. It can take years to master the techniques behind some of the more advanced meditations, but with others you may see results in minutes.

Here is a quick overview of the types of meditation covered by TotallyMeditation.com

Breathing Meditations: Often the first stage of any meditation practice, breathing meditation stops the distractions that surround us and make the mind clearer and more lucid.

Stress Relief Meditation: Meditation can ease the effects of stress on your body and mind. Stress relief mediation works by activating the body’s natural relaxation response to bring it back into a balanced state of equilibrium with the mind.

Relaxation Meditation: Similar in many ways to Stress Relief Meditation, relaxation meditation is a great tool for releasing tension and anxiety in the muscles of the body. It allows the mind to become calmer and trains the unconscious mind to stop interpreting tension as a threat to the body (fight or flight response).

Mindfulness Meditation: Simply put mindfulness meditation means maintaining a moment to moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment without judgement. The focus is on the present rather than the past or the future.

Pain Relief Meditation: Whatever your ailment, pain relief meditation can help to lessen the severity of the pain by focusing one’s awareness on something else such as breathing through the pain rather than medicating for it. It teaches you how to work with intense and unwanted sensations without succumbing to them.

Relationships and Meditation: Through meditation we can gain a greater insight and awareness of our thoughts, feelings and habits and can begin to improve them. When it comes to our relationships, meditation can improve our mood, empathy and acceptance of others. All are key elements for healthy and happy relationships.

Movement Based Meditation: As the name suggests, this type of meditation is carried out while on the move. Walking meditation is a common form of this practice. It is the practice of being aware of the act and experience of moving right down to the feeling of the ground and the smell of the air.

Meditation and ADD or ADHD: Meditation is the ideal self-care tool for those suffering with ADHD as it creates a moment of peacefulness amongst a constant sea of non-stop going. Studies have shown it is beneficial in improving self-control and attention, reducing impulsiveness, bettering decision making, and increasing levels of serotonin.

Seniors Aging and Meditation: As we age it becomes even more important to find ways to reduce pain and anxiety that do NOT require more medication. Meditation is a skill that once learned can (with practice) help us reduce our reliance on pain and anxiety medication. Fewer drugs means fewer of the side effects those medications can bring.

Sleep Meditation: There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to sleep. Not only can poor sleep make you really cranky, it can also lead to issues with concentration, depression, anxiety, and more. Sleep meditations can be exercised through deep breathing, muscle relaxation meditations, or guided visualizations, among others.

Meditation Podcasts: When you are looking for a meditation on the go, auditory instructions, or interviews about meditation we have helpful, easy to follow podcasts of various lengths.<

Meditation Videos: If you are more of a visual learner or simply want to have the basics demonstrated in an easy to follow format, our meditation videos will come in very handy.

Browse Our Meditation Articles, Videos and Audios:

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How to recognize if you are a grouch

A while ago I talked about keeping other people’s negative energy at bay through meditation. Well today I want to talk about how to recognize when YOU are being the grouch!

Classic clues that you maybe acting like a grouch

  1. Do the people around you seem like they are being too darned cheerful?
  2. When people are being too darned cheerful, do you feel you have to “bring them back to reality” by letting them know about some of the bad stuff going on?
  3. Do you tend to watch a lot of news? (I will explain this later)
  4. Do you find people are always trying to tell you that the glass really is half full, not half empty?
  5. Does noise seem to stress you out more than it stresses other people out?
  6. Do you hear yourself (practice actually listening to  the words you use) saying “Yeah, but” when people mention something they think is fun to you?
  7. Is your first response when you are considering a new opinion usually to think about all the things that might be wrong with it?

If you answered yes to more than one two of these read on! (This is by no means an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.)

Three De-grouchifying tactics

If you only have the occasional bout of grouchiness, the tactics below can help you appear to be less grouchy and more importantly FEEL less grouchy 🙂 (If feeling grouchy has become a way of life you might want to work on developing longer term coping mechanisms.)

  • When people are being too darned cheerful tell yourself “I hope it is contagious, I would like to catch some of that”. By being open to temporarily changing your outlook you can share few minutes of good cheer. Even a couple of minutes of good cheer can lighten the mood for a whole day.
  • Don’t watch so much news! It paints a horrific picture of the world because drama entices people to watch the newscast. It also sells newspapers.
    • Have you ever noticed that when the news does report something positive it is usually prefaced with something dreadful? Even good news stories have to have an element of “drama”.
    • Every picture of disaster stays in your memory, creating ongoing negative emotional impact every time something reminds you of that picture. Each of those photos have a little negative charge because we are social creatures and usually feel empathy for people in distress.
    • If a total news fast seems too drastic try setting aside one day a week when you do not watch or read any news. That is a 14% improvement right there.
  • HUMOUR! When I realize that I’m are feeling and acting grouchy I often resort to humour. Laughter is one of my favorite tools. This is a topic I will write about again because it I find it is so useful for dealing with stress, in the meantime here is one technique I use when I realize that I am overreacting.
    • Exaggerate how bad the situation could have been (to yourself not out loud), I mean REALLY exaggerate it, to the point that it is goofy. Say for example you put your coffee cup down on some important papers and it left a bit of a ring.
    • Visualize that cup was full of coffee and it tipped over making the papers unreadable, and it fell on the floor splashing coffee all over the carpet and you, AND it bounced up and splattered across the furniture in the room! OH NO! it scared the dog and now you have another smellier mess to clean up, AND your mother in law choose to drop in unannounced right now.
    • NOW, take a deep breath and say to yourself “I guess I can handle a little ring on the paper”
    • The idea is that by exaggerating it to the point of craziness it will either trigger a smile at how silly it is or, it will trigger  a feeling of relief. Either way it is better than what you were feeling 🙂

To your health!

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Interrupt Negative Thinking

I recently read a book by Dr Daniel G Amen called Change your Brain Change your Life.

One of the concepts I loved from this book is the idea of killing ants, not the little critters that love attending your picnics but Automatic Negative Thoughts or ants for short.

Sometimes people get stuck in negative thought patterns. The more the negative thoughts come up, the harder it becomes to think positively because the neural pathways in our brains actually become rewired to allow easier negative thinking!

The good news is that the reverse is also true, the more we practice positive thinking the better our brains become at recognizing the good things around us and reacting positively.

Dr Amen has a really great section in his book about recognizing “ants” and squashing them, but today I am talking about becoming a bit more APT (Automatic Positive Thinking) in your life.

This deceptively simple practice means you interrupt negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. Practice is the key, the more you practice the easier it becomes.

Automatic Positive Thinking

When you feel bad because _________ (fill in the blank with whatever is happening, for example everyone around you seems to be grouchy, or the kids didn’t do the vacuuming, whatever is “bugging” you)

  • Ask your self is that thought ABSOLUTELY true? For example, is EVERYONE grouchy, or can you think of one person that was not grouchy? This helps you to gain a bit of objectivity as it questions the validity of the negative thought.
  • Find SOMETHING positive about the situation, it doesn’t matter how small or big, or even silly for that matter.  For example, you know that if you remind your kid he/she will do the vacuuming. So you could tell yourself “I’m glad I only have to remind him about the vacuuming and I don’t have to do it myself.”

Now this is where the mini meditation comes in

Find one small positive thing to focus on and spend just a minute or two appreciating it. Honestly, that is all there is to it. Say for example it’s raining and you are waiting impatiently in your car for your spouse to get back from a quick trip into the grocery store. Take that time to notice (and choose to enjoy) the sound of the rain on the roof, the way it cascades down the windshield, the clean fresh smell in the air. Imagine that everything about it is good and any time a negative thought pops up tell yourself “Right now I am just enjoying this.”

An example of interrupting automatic negative thinking –

When my father was in the hospital. I was wrapped up in pain, grief and anxiety but as I walked out of the hospital I noticed how beautiful the frost on the ground was with the street lights glinting off it. I heard myself thinking “What is wrong with you? being happy about something like that when your father is dying?!” A classic case of stinking thinking!

Thankfully, I realized that I needed a break from the the pain so I focused on the beauty of the frost for a few minutes. That small break, it couldn’t have been more than 3 minutes, removed me from the negative spiral I was in and helped me to regain emotional balance for a few hours.

To your health!
Connie

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Boundary Meditation – Dealing with Angry People

It is amazing how quickly being around an angry person can make me angry. When I see an angry person headed my way I have to take a deep breath and remind myself to be objective. I don’t have to react with anger just because they are angry.

I try to imagine their words are like a present hidden in garbage. By listening objectively I can unwrap the useful information and discard the garbage 😉

This helps me be more objective so I can recognize the useful information hiding in what they are saying. For example if a friend tells me “You know what drives me nuts about you?” I know it is time to take a deep breath and listen calmly.

Afterwards I find a quiet place do a visualization meditation. Here is one  I find useful for helping me release emotions I have taken on from other people –

Sit down, close your eyes put your feet flat on the ground and your hands open in your lap. Take a couple of nice deep breaths and …

Imagine a column of pure clean energy runs from your tailbone to the top our your head. This is your own energy, pure clean and unadulterated. Spend a moment to enjoy the this quiet space, release thoughts as they come up.

Now imagine light is radiating outward from this column of energy, filling up your whole body and then the space around you (to about a 18″ outside of your body). Sense tension dropping away from you as you fill up this space with your own light.

Spend as long as you need to, sensing your energy filling you and surrounding you, releasing negative emotions, and any thoughts that come up.

As you fill yourself up with your own energy notice yourself becoming calmer as everything else drops away. Your own energy becomes so bright there is no room for other people’s emotions.

Once you have practiced this a few times it will become easier to release emotions you have taken on from other people.

This is just one meditation for handling angry people. It is a topic that I am sure to come back to again.

To your Health!
Connie

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Meditation Checklist

meditation checklist
Once you’ve been practising for a while all you will really need is you; But following a set of actions (like the ones below) before you start helps you settle into the meditation more easily.

BEFORE YOU START YOUR MEDITATION

Time

Pick a time when there is less likelihood of being interrupted. I usually choose first thing in the morning. I remember my cousin telling me that she always got up 20 minutes before any of her kids just so she could relax a few minutes before the mayhem ensued. Choose a time that works with your schedule.

Unplug

Turn off your phone, your cell phone, TV, Radio, you get the idea. There is nothing quite like a phone ringing to pop you right out of your mediation!

Focus

When you begin a daily practice I would suggest starting with 5 minutes and adding another minute or two every week until you find the length of time that feels right for you. It is easier to maintain your focus if you start small and build up.

If I am sitting for more than 15 -20 minutes I may have a guided meditation dialed up on my mp3 player. Some meditation teachers & practices say that the only “true” meditation is one of total silence but I disagree. I enjoy variety when I am doing longer meditations.

Other points of focus could be

  • Your breath
  • Progressive muscle relaxation
  • Meditation music (not the radio though, even on spiritual/religious channels the ads are intrusive)
  • There are many different points of focus. Explore some of the other options throughout this site or check out meditation videos on YouTube (only listening to the sound not the visuals)

Comfort

  • Find a chair that is comfortable, or if you are flexible you may be perfectly comfortable sitting on the floor cross-legged.
  • Have a glass of water handy.
  • Have a blanket handy to keep your stay warm if you tend to get chilled.

STARTING YOUR MEDITATION

You may want to set a (quiet) timer to keep yourself from checking the time during meditation.

Sit up straight, you can use a cushion at your back if it helps you sit straight without discomfort.

  • This reminds your body about proper alignment.
  • It opens up the chest area making deep breathing easier.

Place feet flat on the floor. Proper alignment helps release excess tension and energy.

Open your hands on your lap. I find open hands help to release what I don’t want (negative emotions or energy).

That’s it 🙂 Enjoy!

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Being Present Meditation 1

meditate on bubblesIf you want to learn to meditate, but just can’t sit still for more than a couple of minutes, I am here to tell you that you do NOT have to sit cross-legged on the floor for hours at a time in order to meditate. There are many wonderful mini-meditations you can employ that take very little time and provide a spring board to learning and practicing meditation.

Here is one of what I call a being present meditation I do sometimes when I hand-wash dishes (or use bubbling soap to wash anything).

As the sink fills with hot water and the soap starts bubbling up, notice everything you can about it … Notice how the light reflects off the bubbles making tiny “rainbows”. Notice how the water feels on your hands, is it too hot or does it feel good? Can you feel the bubbles as they break against your skin? Can you see your reflection in the bigger bubbles? How does the water feel against your hands as you swish your them in the water to make more bubbles? Do any memories “pop” up? (blowing bubbles as a child pops up for me, that probably why I like this mini mediation so much). Employ all your senses of smell, hearing, vision, and touch. Maybe not your sense of taste though 😉

The trick is to use all your senses, and to just let your logical mind take a break, you don’t need to use words to describe what you are doing, just be there 🙂

I will be posting more mini meditations as they come to me and I hope you (literally) take a couple minutes to try them out 🙂

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Visualization as meditation

Once again I find a new category is in order, “Visualization” There are many types of visualization exercises, so my first post is an overview.

Visualization meditations may be one of the more approachable types of meditation for people who (like me) find it easy to imagine, to visualize.

There are thousands of products available online. You could search for a specific type of visualization you feel would be beneficial for you. (Perhaps “visualizing good health” or “meditation for good health”, likewise you could concentrate on wealth, happiness, relaxation etc. You get the idea 🙂 )

Once you have found a couple of web site that look promising, see if they have “samples”  you can download or listen to. Some will give you a part of a meditation, some will even let you listen to a whole one – bonus!

This is really important because you want to find something that feel right to YOU. Some people love background music, some people find it distracting. Likewise, some people have voices that guide you into the meditation easily, others not so much!

Where I live there are several new-age, religious or metaphysical type bookstores. These can be a great resource, (especially the few that will let you listen to a CD before you buy) because you can talk to the staff and find out what is popular and why.

In upcoming posts I will give some simple written examples you can try.

This site will eventually have resources I’ve found useful, and I will record a few short visualizations for you. I am looking forward to doing that!