(0:06) Good morning friends. It’s Kelsy Timas from Guiding Wellness Institute and Be Well Podcast.
I wanted to start this conversation about meditation and how to cultivate a meditation practice.
There’s been a lot of inquiry about that. We were recently featured in Redfin, on this topic about how to create a meditation space in your home. And my portion, spoke to this concept that needs to be authentic, and not try to make it something that you’ve seen in the movies or read in a book.
But our meditation and yoga practice is very personal, and needs to be accessible to serve your everyday life. So like this morning, I have a room in my house that’s quiet, full of light, has simple things that remind me of myself that comfort myself, in a in our guided practices, we talk a lot about cultivating an inner resource or this interior harmonious place. And it’s helpful to have an exterior place that you can put yourself in, as you’re working on cultivating that inward place.
And this is, the results of this are seen a lot in how we measure resilience, and that no matter what’s going on in life, if we’re able to connect with that inner space, that inner resource of pause and calm, there, the benefits for that are huge and living well. So, first, it’s important to find a place that you find comfort, and whether you’re reclined or seated, you do not have to be on the floor, you do not have to be in a cross legged lotus position, like so many of the images around meditation demonstrate, I actually one of my other favorite places here at the house is my my white Adirondack chair in the backyard. And so obviously, it’s outside, there’s a lot of nature. But nature can be very grounding and calming. And oftentimes, nature or the environment that can access your senses in a way that’s not alerting is the beginning of actually settling in to meditation.
The pathway to meditation is first connecting with the senses grounding in your body, being in your body, you know, connecting with having a body. So much of our day is pulling us up and out of our body, our you know, our breath gets short and shallow. And we’re in our mind and in what I refer to as the front side of our eyes in everything is intense or engaging. And so to settle back to that space behind the eyes, settle back into that pause, where you’re an observer aware of everything that’s going on, and not necessarily engaging, everything that’s going on. That really requires being in your body being in the present moment.
And, so, wherever you can find comfort where the body is not talking too loudly, with all of its creaks and cricks, we recommend the movement to yoga and meditation a yoga practice or a gentle yoga practice prior to meditating can be very helpful when you’re beginning this journey or this craft. And so settling in once you find comfortable seat or comfortably uncomfortable seat, begin to connect with the senses, your tasting, smells, may the sensation of oxygen passing through the nostrils a hearing or sounds and the difference between listening for something and just simply hearing hearing sounds coming towards the ears, the sensations of the air on the surface of your skin or if you are outside the breeze, maybe the sensation of the environment around you. So, once you ground into your body, there’s awareness of also where you are in the room, where are you in space, and the breath will naturally deepen.
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Once we arrived back to being aware of, of having a body, usually a deep breath will come. And that’s the beginning, you know, where can you settle; so, that automatically this big inhale and almost a sigh, the sigh that, that you’ve landed. And for a lot of us, that’s when you know when you arrive home and you’ve settled from the day, and maybe there is that chair, or that place that you put yourself in your house that once you land, there’s this exhale, that is the beginning of settling in, and a necessary part of of achieving meditation.
And so, then we began to connect with the breath, first, by just observing it, where is it in the body? How is it moving, connecting with that you’re more than a body, that you also are breath. And the breath practices, there are breath practices that can activate a sensory or some or sympathetic response, which we’re not wanting to do when we’re meditating. So, we choose a more calming breath, or a cooling breath.
My favorite is the Dirga, or three part breath. So, inhaling low belly, mid belly and upper chest, up underneath the collarbones, and then maybe even into the forehead, and exhale all the way back out. And it’s this rhythmic pattern that moves in and up on the inhale and down and out. On the exhale, the mind will almost naturally start to follow that breath, much like an elevator, maybe imagine elevator traveling all the way up to the top floor and exhale all the way down, you know, maybe even into the basement further beyond your seat into the chair or the floor or the ground. And about 10 rounds of that breath will start to prepare the nervous system and bring some harmony to the body. And, and all of a sudden, there’s this just stillness, though.
So, the breath is moving, but we’re no longer really focusing on the breath. And this starts to move us into what we call concentration, concentrations, not the same as focus a lot of focus has happening during the day. But concentration is setting the mind on just one thing, without an effort to achieve anything, just being present with your attention all in one place. Now that does serve focus, but focus has a movement forward to it. And it engages the will differently and has a drive. And that already is more effort than needed for meditation. So concentration on one thing, maybe that’s the breath.
(8:13)
There’s another form of meditation I use as Tonglen, where you actually open-eye meditation focus on one thing, and I like to do that outside, maybe I find a part of the yard and it’s helpful. It’s if it’s something that isn’t moving like the birds or the clouds, but or even if it is a cloud focus on one cloud as it slowly moves across the sky, while incorporating that breath. And it slows everything down and starts to put space between the thoughts.
There’s a common misconception that meditation is non-thinking, like that you literally would not have a thought that you would be in this blank space. And that’s really not possible. You know, the mind– we have a mind we are more than our mind, but we have a mind. It’s often referred to as you know, like the “monkey mind” or this chattering mind. And it always is busying itself it always had there’s always something in its awareness. And so, so that’s not really the problem. The problem is when we attached to every thought, or following every thought were swirling or being agitated by and triggered by every single thing that comes across the mind.
So, this settling– this concentration on one thing starts to create a pause. That creates space between the thoughts, the thoughts start to slow down, and you’re able to settle back down In the eyes and be the observer of the thoughts. It’s in that place that you have a recognition or realization or an experience that you are not your thoughts, you are more than your thoughts and that your thoughts are just like your emotions, just like sensations that rise and fall that are constantly changing this constantly changing sensation that is arising within your unchanging Awareness. Taking time to be that awareness itself, leads to this meditative state.
So, the pause between the thoughts, the space between the thoughts, now there’s an awareness that there’s something more than your thoughts. And that space has a what most people have, label it as, as a very calming effect. Man, whether that’s calm or peace, it’s it starts to depending on your belief system, I think it’s colored or described a different way. But overall, this overall sense of harmony, I appreciate it most for being hard, it harmonizes my physical being harmonizes, my breath, it harmonizes the ability to sense and Intuit feel, think, and harmonizes, my connection feeling connected with life with.
So, even the problem that in the power of a meditation practice is that in the practice, no matter what’s going on in life, when you’re able to connect with this space of not needing to change, alter, or manipulate life or your experience in any way. Simply being with what is as it is, with a calming presence. That is powerful. And the realizations that happen by spending time in that place of being calm and harmonizing have a long term effect. So not only is it a simple way to kind of arrest stress in your daily life, or to really be gain control over the sense of not having control, to come back to being the author of your own peace, that we literally author, our own peacefulness through this practice, through through this cultivated practice.
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And then you move back into noticing that you’re thinking that you’re thinking, noticing that you’re feeling, noticing sensations, noticing, again, where you are, the space that you’re in your body being in your body, and a sense of gravity kind of coming back to being in your body. And nothing outwardly may have changed. You know, I’m obviously like maybe the time some time has passed and the sun may have shifted in the sky or there, the there may be some external things that have have changed. And even the problem or the stress that is going on in your life, you didn’t do anything to it. There was no other action, other than pause that happened.
And what we report over and over again, is that the way we see and feel and know the challenges of life or the situations in life that we are currently in looks and is different. Not because we were able to wrap our hands around it and change it in any way but because we took time to connect with a different part of ourself and then re approach life as it is 90% of the time. Life has a way of resolving itself through this practice. And, and then the parts that require effort. When we practice mindfulness and meditation, our choice of action, our choice of dealing with something or approaching something, or engaging, that this aspect of life is usually more harmonious, to the whole of our life. It’s less reactive, much more responsive.
And it has a lot more power to the authenticity of who we are to honoring both our past and our future. And lays the groundwork for finding peace forward. Meditation, oftentimes, for me feels like I’m sending Grace forward on my path, taking time now to cultivate peacefulness, and connect with being peace itself, which is can be the opposite of maybe what is going on. And also, there’s some sort of investment that’s made for my future self, since sending it forward. So, that’s another way to look at it. As a, were as a type A very, you know, productive oriented person, that helps me to some, sometimes justify this taking time to cultivate the practice or take time to the for the practice, because it’s not just for now, but it is contributing to the future. And to my future self. The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying:
“I have so much to do today, that I need to meditate for two hours instead of one”.
And the first time I heard that, I had that just didn’t make sense to me, to my rational mind. And I’ve come to appreciate that teaching. And it’s become very useful, that the busier we are, the more we need to take time to be still connect. And feel into really where we are and, and what we’re doing and where we’re going. And is it all in alignment with who we are and where we want to be. So, I hope that was helpful. And, that you would take time to just consider creating a meditation practice for yourself. And then, I will continue to offer some guided meditations on this podcast, to help you with that. So, take some time to consider creating a meditation place for yourself. That can even be in your car, you know, when the car is warmed from the sun and you take your earbuds and your podcast into the car on a break and be able to take that. So anywhere where you can be undisturbed, maybe uninterrupted, but also feel connected to yourself.
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So, wishing you all a wonderful day, and we’ll see you on the air again soon.
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