There is a great question for unlocking exactly the meditation, action or micro-practice meant for us, and it is: “What Do I Need Right Now?”
Right now, our mind-bodies are craving a healthy, practical, and appealing connection to ourselves and to all that is happening to support our nervous systems in their work of de-stressing and healing. We need a meditation space where we can cultivate such engagement with an embrace of positive qualities of attention that include welcome, love, compassion, and curiosity—rather than a sterile space of non-judgment and clinical self-witnessing.
In this article, I offer you a repertoire of accessible, practical practices designed to meet a whole range of specific needs we may have right now. There is no requirement to find a special place or move away from what you are doing. You do not have to change anything about yourself or worry about how busy your brain is or how intense your feelings are. You can bring these practices into where you are, who you are, and what you have available right now.
These are the words of the maid Aibileen Clark, in Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help” to her little charge Mae Mobley. Every day Aibileen tells the toddler Mae these same words and gets her to repeat them back to her.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Words are powerful. And the truth is more powerful still.
So it makes sense that words which reflect the deepest inviolable truth can deliver radical transformation.
Do you ever wake up in the morning fizzing with a low level charge of anxiety, wondering if you will be enough for the day ahead or whether you have been enough, ever.
Maybe that thought, that internal tremor of self doubt, quietly charges your day, so subtly you don’t notice it. Maybe it builds on itself, and escalates, creating a pressure cooker in your inner environment. And causes you to question yourself, limit yourself, push yourself – or to silence yourself and retreat from spaces in which you are desperate to dance with all your free expression.
Maybe this happens so subtly you don’t even notice it. Maybe you’ve just got used to living under its rule or with the struggle of having to press on past it in order to live the life you want to live. Maybe you do notice it, but it feels too overpowering to subdue.
If this rings true to you, please know you are not alone in this experience. You are in good company. Everyone has it. Everyone has times when they forget who they really are and need to be reminded. And Aibileen was wise to that. She knew as confident and carefree as the little girl in her care was, that she would one day be challenged by a conflicting viewpoint that might threaten to take her out of her innate free spirit. She also knew how quickly an external viewpoint can feel like an internal knowing.
Which it is not.
It just feels like knowing.
Especially if you have heard certain words over and over again, or told them to yourself regularly. They can start to feel like unquestionable reality.They can become encoded in you but they are not you.
How can we break the code and rewire things back to where they truly are?
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Aibileen cast these words around Mae Mobley like a spell of protection. A sacred reminder. A reminder so incandescent with the truth that any time Mae might stumble or wobble on her path and lose herself, the cell-memory of these very words would bring her home to herself.
This is the thing about words. And Aibeleen Clark knew this. They are not just symbols. They are not mere sounds. Words sparkle with energy and create powerful vibrations in our cells.
How quickly they can become a part of our being. Change the course of our day.
And here’s the good news, the great news. The amazing, liberating, life changing thing about words you need to know.
If words are so powerful as to seduce us into believing things that are false and misleading, and the truth is more powerful still, think about how powerful words which are true can be.
As powerful as it is possible for anything to be.
That expression “Speak the truth and the truth will set you free” is spot on.
And underneath all those layers of inherited or imposed self doubt and self judgement you know without a shred of doubt all you need to know.
That you are special. That you matter. That your unique soul deserves to shine.
You are more than enough. You are perfect. And your goodness flows through you like liquid gold.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Whenever you need a reminder, find the words you already know.
Listen to your soul, to what your instincts and individuality tell you and start to notice the voices that challenge that so you can create uncontaminated space around your truth.
Breathe, tune into yourself. Listen to your soul and interpret what it tells you.
Cast those words like a spell of protection around you every day.
Every time you give yourself a benevolent, gentle reminder of what deep down you already know for sure – you are creating the ultimate medicine. Actual inner medicine that is redemptive and healing.
You have your own words, but let me tell you this.
You are more than enough.
You spill over with goodness.
You are valuable.
You are important to the world.
You can relax. You’ve got this.
In your deepest personal space, you already know.
In this way, in every moment, you can welcome yourself home.
Are you interested in exploring a meditation practice that is so vibrant and enjoyable that you will want to do it every day of your life?
Join Alison Potts for this 2-hour meditation workshop and learn a practice where you are allowed to be who you are and are encouraged to learn how to love and enjoy your mind, rather than judge or limit its activity. In this workshop you’ll learn an approach to meditation which celebrates your individuality and instincts; brings a feeling of deep connection to yourself and life; imposes no rules on your practice (you don’t even have to sit still!); and activates the parasympathetic nervous system to allow for healing, integration and renewal. Suitable for first time meditators and those with a regular practice. Cost $45. Click here to book.
The theory of a daily meditation practice to deliver those well-documented benefits of health and happiness is great. In reality though, many people just can’t see a fit for a meditation practice in their own minds, bodies and lives. The cliché of meditation – an image of someone sitting in lotus at 5.00am in quiet solitude for an hour – is not only unattainable for most of us but, if we are honest, not necessarily appealing.
We live lives of action, love and adventure. We extend ourselves, like an octopus, in at least eight directions at once. Our lives work best when we feel relaxed and alert, dancing deeply with the natural rhythms of action and rest, fulfilled by the action phase and made whole in the rest phase. We need meditation but we need an approach which answers the inner call of our very unique selves to meet the outer call of our particular lives and which answers a need, delivers a result and does so quickly and effectively.
At its most powerful, meditation isn’t about running away and hiding from life, only to go right back into the very onslaught you were retreating from. It is about allowing your mind-body system to do what it knows how to do in a way that suits you and your life best so that you can love more strongly, express more freely, relax more deeply and remember why you are alive. Meditation does not lose its profoundly sacred aura when it is approached in personal and and accessible ways. People have been meditating with their own personal instincts and rhythms since the beginning of time. This is the Practical Magic of this ancient practice and it is the perfect approach for modern lives.
Did you take a holiday this summer? In your relaxed, renewed state, did you rediscover the you that you most want to be and think to yourself: “I like this Me and I want to keep her/him?” Did you feel ideas and plans flowing from your state of holiday grace? And when you got back, how long did that sense ofintimacy with your desires, your best self and that anything is possible last? This is the holy grail that meditation done with the right approach, can create the path to. We are our best selves when we are alert and relaxed in our lives of action. Vacation Meditation is the perfect medicine for those times when we feel depleted and demotivated – and you don’t even have to leave home!
This is so simple and yet so powerful and I’d love for you to try it.
It only takes three breaths.
It can be done at any time, anywhere.
The Take Three Breaths meditation is for any moment in life where you feel the need to pause and check in with yourself.
You might be at a crowded, noisy airport, office or your own home. You might be stuck in traffic. Or you might be in the middle of a challenging conversation and need to centre yourself.
You can make it a special, regular moment of sanctuary just for you to enjoy – maybe sitting in a favourite spot in your home or outside or gazing at the sky or water if you love to do that.
It is lovely to take a Three Breaths moment with yourself at the very start and very end of every day.
The call to meditate is the call to notice and deeply feel how life’s energies are flowing in our beings right now.
Our primary relationship is with ourselves. As in any relationship, there is a craving within us to spend more time with ourselves. As with a lover, we feel the urge to connect, to discover and simply to “be with”.
Try it now.
Each breath is a full cycle of an inhale and an exhale.
You might have your eyes open or closed.
Take three conscious deep breaths and as you do so, let your loving attention move straight into your heart space.
Our breath enjoys a fullness there.
Take your time with each breath. Luxuriate. You might find yourself softly smiling as you meet yourself again.
You may have a sense of gazing or feeling or diving within. You may have a sense of being at an inner meeting with your eternal self, your unique essence. Or you may simply feel the peaceful, groundedness of the moment.
This three breath technique is both a union and a reunion.
It can become a delicious, supportive, self-connecting practice we can bring into our lives, several times a day, every day.
This simple and super feel-good practice has all kinds of benefits which reach beyond that moment and infuse our lives. It builds an emotional confidence. Your unique being feels nurtured, heard and seen. You know you are there for yourself.
I’d love you to try the gift of Take Three Breaths and let me know what you find.
We often think there is something wrong about owning our humanity – as if we are supposed to be something else – that we are supposed to be not what we are. Yet our humanity is everything we have and everything about it is inspiring – that we have bodies, thoughts, feelings and sensory pathways. That we have curiosity and a sense of wonder, the capacity to learn and grow, the ability to express and create from our own unique self. That we have each other. That no one on earth can be who we are and yet we are connected to everyone else on earth by the humanity we share. It’s not permission to be ourselves we need. Being human is our birthright. It’s learning to be okay with the amazingness of that.
Have you ever found yourself gazing at the most beautiful sunset or mountain or spectacular coastal view, yet been unable to take in the beauty because you were feeling so miserable inside? I know I have been in situations in life where I have been struggling so much on the inside that being in the most magical place in the world has not been able to lift my mood. I know how exquisitely painful that contrast is between inner and outer landscapes. It’s the sense of loneliness in a crowded room. It’s a heartbreaking rejection from life itself. How isolating it feels to be amidst beauty but not feel welcome there.
We often talk about making a sanctuary for ourselves to meditate in. We talk about choosing a favourite spot, in our home or in nature. We talk about making our special place, our inviting, super-comfortable. We suggest bringing in special objects to make it inviting – flowers, candles, oils. We might play music that we love.
The thing is, we can create the most welcoming and inviting space in the world for ourselves, but it all falls down if we are not providing that welcome and invitation on the inside. It’s our inner sanctuary that really matters. That’s the one we carry around with us. That’s the one that need to be available to us to dive into when life is calling us in challenging ways.
How can we take the beauty into a space which has no welcome, whose gates are closed even to the gatekeeper? We open that space when we welcome all of our life force – welcome thinking, welcome breathing, welcome emotion, welcome sensation. Not just tolerating it, but greeting, touching, embracing, enquiring about and cherishing everything thing flowing through us it with our tender attention.
Creating an unconditional welcome for ourselves in meditation can be a challenging practice and a journey, but a profoundly powerful and rewarding one.
Imagine loving yourself and life that much. Imagine how much beauty you could take in and how that beauty – all of life’s pulsating energies – could flow through you, refreshing, renewing and restoring you to that awareness of the sacredness of life, the sacredness of you.
It’s a practice we can do every day when we meditate. Learning not to resist ourselves, understanding where we might have a tendency to do so. Learning to greet whatever is calling us from our hearts. Learning to feel, learning to listen, learning to care. Just as with the beautiful outer scenery, being inspired, being moved, being overwhelmed with awe at the life-force within. All of these things are in the architecture of the inner sanctuary we want to claim for ourselves and we are the architect. Every time we say “I welcome my whole self”, we are placing a building block for our inner temple.
Both meditation and life are much easier and more joyful when we create this healthy, supple, free and sacred personal space. This is the very opposite of detaching, deleting, annihilating or alienating any part of ourselves. We can thrive in a meditation practice like this and thrive in life. It’s so, so important.
This continually evolving practice of self welcome has changed my life and truly allowed me to receieve the fullness of every one of life’s moments.
The truth is life’s energies are always welcoming us. What we have to remember is the skill of welcoming them back.
I think after all that is what our attention was made for, what it’s sacred purpose and its gift is. To keep welcoming ourselves back.
When you were a child, were you a space gazer, a cloud watcher, your vision resting on something, entranced, your mind drifting and dreaming?
Did a parent or teacher or other child ever ask you to “snap out of it”, “concentrate” or “focus”?
When you see a child staring into space, do you decide they must be bored and need something to do?
Ever been in that heavenly, dreamy, drifty, relaxed state of being – your mind roaming freely, unfettered and unfiltered – when someone suddenly snaps their fingers across your face?
Not nice, is it? Our nervous systems get a nasty jarring.
Never interrupt a daydream.
Daydreaming is part of our mind-body system’s intelligent healing processes. We need to let that happen.
Neurological studies show more than half our thoughts are daydreams.
When we dream, we heal.
When we dream, we process.
When we dream, we solve problems intuitively.
When we dream, we become inspired.
When we dream, we give ourselves space and time which our souls cry out for.
When we dream, our brains take a rejuvinating vacation.
When we dream, we innovate and create.
In the dream space, there is no filter, no censorship, no inner criticism. We let ourselves off the hook and our minds are released to do greater, deeper things.
We do our best thinking when we are not thinking about thinking.
No one creates anything special when they are “trying to create”.
Some of the world’s best inventions came when people weren’t even trying to invent.
Most art, poetry, plays, movies, video games and all the big ideas were “dreamed up”.
The drifting, dreaming mind does not lack discipline…the discipline called for, from us, is to put those snapping fingers away, release any value judgments biased towards “focus”, “concentration”, “control” or “mind mastery”.
And then we can unleash in ourselves all the treasures of the dreaming space.
Einstein was a daydreamer and a genius. He said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Let your children dream.
And let yourself dream, too.
And see where it takes you.
Happy drifting.
We all have preferences. Preferences are our individuality
Animals have preferences – a certain spot on the sofa, certain kinds of touch, certain food.
I don’t like coconut but I adore avocados. Climate-wise, I prefer warmth to the cold.
We are supposed to have preferences. They come from our essential nature. We strengthen when we know intimately what our preferences are and respond to them – know when to say yes, when to say no, when to join in, when to stand alone and when to compromise.
Preferences are instincts. All relate to our individual nature, our unique essence. We can fall out of connection with our instincts when we say too many yeses when we feel a no, when we join in when we really don’t believe in the community we are joining, when allow ourselves to be drawn into conversations, when we give our power away in whatever fashion. In a meditation practice where we cherish every instinct, listen deeply to every inner calling, we can bond with our innate, instinctive self again and that changes everything in life for the better.
At some level, our preferences are actually reporting on what our internal organs prefer, what our internal organs need to be balanced and happy.
Honouring our preferences as instincts creates healthy boundaries for ourselves. Think of our boundaries as like connective tissue, like a “second skin”. That’s our aura. Boundaries are infinitely nuanced. How much energy do I have, how much time, which part of myself have I lost or stopped tracking and how I can find and reclaim it?
Individuality, preferences, boundaries – all are ultimately about honouring our individual nature. When we meditate from our individual nature, when we live like this, we live in harmony with ourselves. We are less likely to get into fights with ourselves in or outside of meditation.
And that is the ultimate path to inner peace.
*Read on if you’d like some tips for meditating with your own individuality and personality:
– What would make meditation feel most easeful and natural to you: sitting in a chair? Lying in the grass or on a sofa? Walking, dancing, moving? In the shower, the bath or the ocean?
– What are your favourite songs or pieces of music? See how you feel if you meditate with these playing?
– Do your eyes feel like being open or closed?
– Do you want to meditate on a particular issue or affirmation? Or with your breath, or with your sense of taste or smell (using food or a fragrance you love). Or do you simply want to let your mind drift, daydream and unfold?
– How long do you want to meditate for today? When does it feel like enough? When does it feel like too much?
– If your instincts are telling you to fall asleep during meditation, don’t resist them. Most of us are chronically sleep deprived. We can enjoy a deep meditative rest. Studies have shown these are more refreshing than a night’s sleep.
– Do you want to meditate with others or by yourself? Use a guided meditation or let your inner guide take you on an adventure…
– Do you feel like moving, singing, shouting, crying, laughing during meditation? If so, can you embrace that expression of inner flow and go with it?
-…and so on and so on. For every individual on this earth – and that’s about seven billion of us – there is unique way into personal meditation. Listen to your instincts, play, experiment, journey, get curious and explore in your personal space. Own it. Make it yours.
Welcome Home.
At times of new moons, we are extra-supported in moving forward in our lives in ways which feel truer to our individual selves and nature.
However, does this ring true for you?
Does it tend to happen that, whenever you feel in a space of manifesting new creations and forging new pathways which you know are going to bring you closer to what you makes you feel peaceful, happy, healthy and most alive… “The Voices” come up? The gatecrashers at the party. The critics, the queriers, the nay-sayers, the fear-mongers, the ridiculours and the saboteurs? The ones you feel with every bone in your body don’t belong here and yet someohow make themselves feel so comfortable and welcome. Maybe they are saying
“this will never work”
or
“you don’t deserve this”:
or
“Feel that dose of tension and fear and insecurity we have brought with us as your party gift? Clue: this is a warning about what will happen if you make these changes.”
I’ve got good news.
This is meant to happen.
It happens to everyone.
It is a sign things are really shifting – when you can see the beings inside you who have, in the past, created the very obstacles in you that you wish to address now as you make plans to shift and grow and move forward.
When this happens, you can welcome it. You can make these seeming enemies your allies.
As adults, within each of us are the Old Tribe Rules and The New Tribe Rules. When we are children, it is wired into our sense of survival that our brains imprint and encode what our tribe tells us is true about life. “Don’t expect to much, you will only be disappointed.” “Don’t shout, don’t be too loud.” “Be brave, don’t cry.” “You may want to be an artist, but artists don’t do well in life – get a real job.” “Be careful.” “What a silly idea.”
And so on.
These are the Old Tribe rules.
As adults, we get the glorious and also challenging opportunity to create a new tribe with new rules that allow us to be fully ourselves – from small changes to new changes.
We need time and some self attention to allow our brains to relax into the new ways so they can encode them, just as we did the old rules.
This is where meditation comes into its own. When we are children, all of this encoding is unconscious. It happens automatically and surrupticiously. It creates literal physiological neural pathways. We just imbibe what the members of our trive tell us and show to us, over and over again until it travels in our bloodstreams.
As meditators, we are conscious and awake. Meditation is a state of relaxed alertness. It is the perfect space for healing the wounds we were caused by old programming and to form new neural pathways. Science has evidenced this again and again. So you can trust this process of being awake and holding space within you to get a good understanding of the voices that are coming up – where they really come from, what they really want for you. Originally, however it was manifested, they were there to protect you from something.
So one thing you can do, is to reframe them by seeing them as old protectors who leap up to help you because they are from the old tribe and that is what they know.
You can do this by saying, every time you feel that tension in the background, ” Thank you for trying to protect me but I don’t need that protection now. That was how the old tribe did it. In my tribe (or my family) we do things this way.”
You can be very specific:
“In my tribe, we encourage and support each other.”
“in my tribe, we know there is space for everyone to do their own thing and no one is a threat.”
“In my tribe, it is not selfish to care about ourselves.”
Or use the word family –
“in my family, we don’t tell each other to shut up.”
You can even add…
“…in fact, I am not even going to tell you (the Voices, the feelings of tension) to shut up.”
I have used this enlightened technique for years. I still do. Let me tell you, it is very powerful and joyeous athe more you practice it, the more you can be at peace to forge your own destiny, no matter what wants to “speak up.”
Meditation gives us space, it gives us choices, it shows us things tnhat give us powerful understanding of ourselves and our lives. The trick it medtate effortlessly – which means creating the space where you can honour and allow everything that comes up for healing – rather than use even a smidgeon of effort to resist, block or silence any part of yourself.
I will soon be recording a guided meditation for Creating Space For Yourself.
“I have realised that you can have a thousand lives in one life.”
It was my birthday recently – quite a “big” birthday, as they say. I find myself reflecting on my life to date and on these words in my head, spoken to me by one of my dearest friends, who passed from this earth in his fifties. He really did live his thousand lives in one life and remained happy and free even through extremely challenging times – he was a huge influence on me. These words are profound. I believe you don’t have to colour code yourself in life, you don’t have to stick to the one route. Changing direction isn’t something shameful, it’s what every adventurer does.
Walking a number of different paths is the life of the explorer. Feeling the spectrum of emotions is the life of the heart. I have had thousands of lives in this one life. I love both the familiar and the comforting. I also love the unknown, the unpredictable and surprises. Sometimes I want to snuggle into my comfort zone for a while and that is perfect. Sometimes I want to push out of that same zone and feel a little bit terrified, a little bit thrilled, and that is perfect too. I want to grow, and when there are growing pains, I want to rest. Sometimes I want to take my time, sometimes I want to dive in. Sometimes I want to know all the answers, sometimes I want only to feel the tantalising mystery of life. I keep learning – every day. I have learned above all, that to fully appreciate and explore these thousand lives, I need to honour my impulses and instincts. They are the soul’s messengers. No one can tell you how to live but you. Anyone can tell you to enjoy your life, but it is your permission to yourself that counts. Have great days. Full days. Fully-being-you-days. That is my birthday wish for everyone.
Your meditation practice can and should evolve. We know that we are in a dynamic flow of life. Both our outer and inner worlds are defined by motion in every sense. The universe is not static, creation is not static, we are not static – we as humans are active, creative, evolving, transitioning, changing.
Women especially experience profound changes in their hormonal patterns and physical beings at different times of life. This means that no one technique will work for us forever. We need to be constantly exploring and developing meditations for ourselves that keep us in healthy, in balance and full of mojo whatever stage of experience we are in. We need to be athletes – sensitive to how we need to prepare and live in order to move with strength, flexibility and artistry enjoy the sport in our individual life. In this sense, meditation is a place we can go to in order to receive nourishment and personal training uniquely matched to our own spirit, and to all the ways in which we we want to express and create and receive in the dynamic flow of our own rich lives.
Right now is a great time to enquire into your own heart and ask it what it needs and what no longer serves it, to live the way you want to live going forward. For example, would you like more peace in your life? What do you need in order to live a life of more peace and what do you need to cut away? This kind of pruning is natural and healthy and brings more growth…as any gardener knows.
It’s different every day.
If you are tired or feeling overwhelmed, sometimes balance can be hard to find.
If your body is sick or injured, it can be hard to be balanced.
But our inner selves, deep down, know they have a centre. A homing signal. A grounding point. A place of deep stability where we can not only be held, but which can hold all that we experience.
I am interested in physical balance as I have chronic health conditions that challenge balance, yet have also learned – through these – the gift of FINDING balance. Coming into centre, wherever I am at.
From a meditation point of view, I am interested in “balance” too. When we allow our inner lives to come forward and be seen and heard- so often we see “opposites” at play. Things that we may mistake for “conflicts” calling for resolution, but are in fact the natural rhythms of the opposites of life, as day is to night, and sun is to moon, youth is to age, sweet is to sour.
In meditation, I have begun to think of “balance” as harmony. As coming into a healing rhythm within oneself, where nothing needs to be fought against or avoided.
Try it. Try relaxing into all the “opposites” within you. Let them speak to each other and be heard. Let them dance in a rhythm of moving together and dissolving away.
Be with your wholeness in this way.
Then afterwards, notice how you feel in relation to yourself and the world.
Think about balance – how does it feel to you?
Home
Harmony
Rhythm
Wholeness
Centre
One-ness.
….this I have learned. Every day balance means something slightly different. Every day we can find it a-new.
