The full moon lunar eclipse in May puts a huge cosmic push into expression and creativity that are birthed from a place of truth. It’s time for us to show up fully in the light, placing our most inward feelings into manifestation in the world.
With the moon in Scorpio, there will also be no hiding place for what is deceitful or inauthentic. As we see feelings expressed into life, we may get some surprises when it comes to existing structures and relationships in our personal lives. We are to take these are wise guidance, as we make choices going forward.
Meanwhile, the sun in Taurus shines a light into our hearts and what leading a life founded on what feels easeful, loving and like home to us, truly is. Certain things have been building inside at an intimate level and now is the time to release them into lifer, supported by the energy of the cosmos. This is a loving energy which puts a glow around all you have been working towards and hoping for in terms of your daily health and lifestyle and your individual offerings.
Allow yourself to move with this universal energy and be an open channel for spiritual and creative downloads. This is an exciting and pivotal time for conscious and spiritually-connected humans.
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The full moon is a time of powerful illumination and energetic charge. Certain stories in our lives seem to climax at these times, while others begin. If we want to be in a receiving state to soak up the energy and direct it to where in our life it is needed, then meditating during full moon is a gift. It allows us to harness, assimilate and benefit from these cosmic energies in positive ways.
Whatever you might have been looking to clear and release, whatever visions and dreams you still have waiting inside of you to manifest, wherever within you there are things asking for compassion and acceptance, and those blessings you wish for your loved ones and the wider world, this is a powerful and magical time to bring them into your meditation.
I will guide you gently and deeply into your own deep experience, to fill your being with this cosmic light and allow it to support the healing of what needs to be healed and the expansion of what is ready to grow.
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.
“I really want my child to meditate. How can I encourage them when they don’t want to?”
Your child is probably expressing constantly a desire, a need, a craving to meditate.
It all rests on our understanding of the word “meditate” and where that comes from.
A lot of our ideas about meditation come from a historical context that has nothing to do with our own lives now and was never meant to apply to lives like ours. These meditations were designed by and for monks, to keep them veering from vows of renunciation of the energies of life in the world.
What is appropriate for a celibate male living centuries ago and who had no connection to the world is almost certainly not going to rock your child’s world – or yours for that matter. Nor was it ever meant to.
Maybe when your child hears you say “You need to meditate” they are filtering it into the same category as “you need eat to broccoli, do your homework, stop playing on your Ipad, go to bed earlier, take a shower”?
Ie. “You need to do something boring that someone else wants you to do and that has nothing whatsoever to do with your life of fun and play and adventure.”
This is not a great way to introduce your child to a practice which could be joyful, exhilarating and transformational all their lives long.
Your child is signalling a response to a spontaneous call to meditate…
…every time they sit at their desk and instead of doing homework start to daydream, fiddle with something or get distracted by an object, a thought, a sound that absorbs their attention.
…every time they come home from school, fling down their bag, and run outside to climb a tree faster than you can say “change out of your uniform”
….every time they get out their Lego and get completely absorbed in building an imaginary town of coloured bricks, while you are begging, pleading, negotiating, commanding them to take a shower, do a chore, study for a test.
…every time they play with the dog, get on Minecraft, jump on the sofa, turn a pile of cushions into a den, make up a song, tell a tall tale, rough and tumble with each other or the dog, stare into space, zone out or steadily lick down an ice block as if the ice block was the only thing that has their attention.
All these are healthy, instinctive ways children automatically re-centre from their lives of scheduled action so that their parasympathetic nervous systems can do their important renewing, restoring work.
To understand this, roll back the years to when you were a child, maybe seven or eight years old. What made you feel happy, peaceful and relaxed?
What things did you do spontaneously that made you feel joyful and vitalized?
Were you a star gazer, a cloud watcher, an artist, a dreamer, a fort builder, a puzzle-lover, a tree climber, a surfer, a rider, a quietly knowing soul?
Anytime our attention is spontaneously absorbed by something, we are in a state of meditative awareness. We are innately wired to experience these moments so that we can collaborate with the body’s intelligence – the work of our parasympathetic nervous system to rest and restore us by filling us with the healing energies of life.
Meditation works best when we recreate the conditions for this kind of spontaneous experience. As adults, we can unwittingly condition ourselves away from our natural spontaneity and what instinctively pleasures us. Our kids, however, have this one nailed. When we were children we were all closer to our natural, healthy instincts and indeed our natural healthy instinct was to keep ourselves as close to that state as possible. That is why we were drawn to wherever our attention found itself absorbed, that is why we engaged in pretend play, that is why we stayed in our bodies and climbed, jumped, danced and lived in any way we felt moved to do. Life seemed compelling then and we kept our vitality high. This is what we want from a meditation practice.
We have it the wrong way round when we want to guide our children into meditation. Our children are the best meditation guides around. When we meditate in their world, an alchemy happens, and we recapture our own. We find lost parts of ourselves again. It’s very powerful.
Here are some ways to start sharing some joyful and fun natural meditation practices with your kids. If none of these sounds good, explore your own and please join the conversation so that I and other parents can get to explore them too. It’s fun to play and great to journey!
Top Tip: Always start with where your children are (Tired? Hungry? Need to move and energise? Need to rest? ) and with what they love (Lego, video games, sport, art, music, dancing, reading and so on) and you can’t go wrong.
Soothing Sky Meditation
Go outside. Lie on your backs on the grass. Really feel the wide curve of the stable earth underneath you, supporting you. What does that feel like? Gravity can feel like it is drawing us down into a hug from the earth. Our muscles and bones relax. And then there is a slight push up from the earth, which holds us. This might be a good way to feel the embrace of life: to feel held, grounded, supported and on a firm foundation. You can spend some time sharing with each other how good it feels to lie on the solid earth. Then let your gaze drift to the sky. You may feel like you are breathing in the sky, drinking it in or watching the clouds make particular shapes. You may feel like you are floating away. The sky has its own moods just like we do – sometimes dark and stormy, sometimes bright and mild – but always in motion. You can watch the moods of the sky change, shift and pass and appreciate them as the different colours and textures of life. No mood is a “bad” one, but part of a tapestry which is continually showing new threads and colours. After a while, if it feels right, you can share where you went in your sky-travels.
Bubbles
Make some bubble mix from detergent and water and find or make something to blow through ( a simple wire bent into a circle is fine). Blow bubbles to your heart’s content. Notice where they drift, where they land, how they hold the light and how they burst. Surround each other with bubbles and get completely heady with bubbles and then sink down somewhere and imagine a bubble around you. A sphere of energy 360 degrees around your being which is luminous. What does it look like? How big is it? Is it close up to you or further away? Inside this bubble you are protected and nothing from the outside can penetrate unless you say yes. What do you want to bring inside the bubble right now and what would you like, for now, to leave on the outside? Many of the kids I teach say the first thing they want inside is chocolate! What pets, activities, loved ones, prized possessions? What qualities – such as peace, strength, confidence, joy? (This meditation is an adaptation of my dear teacher Camille Maurine’s meditation for claiming your inner sovereignty from Meditation Secrets For Women. HarperCollins)
Play Meditation
This is a simple one. What games does your child most love playing at the moment? Young children might guide you to play a character in their imaginative world. Really go for it, enter into it, forget any other world exists. Countless clinical studies show that deep play is exceptionally healing and transformative. Older children might like to jam with you playing instruments and making music, creating a science experiment or some art, dancing or playing a sport. What makes this meditative is simply to be guided by their instincts without controlling, editing, judging or filtering their experience. Follow their lead and be willing to get absolutely absorbed in their world.
Widen your Perspective
In our 21st century lives we are all very forward focussed, looking at phones and computer screens. And even when walking down the street, research shows we use the front of the eye almost exclusively. We tend not to lookg to either side. We have neurons and synapses in every part of our eyes, albeit fewer at the edges than in the centre, and if we don’t use them we lose them, dulling our experience of life and making us feel less alert and disconnected from the “big picture”.
This is a meditation to open one of the senses to literally take in more life. Rest your gaze lightly somewhere ahead of you where it is comfortable. You can blink, but try not to move your eyeballs. Start by steadily widening the periphery of your vision to the right and see how far you can see, how much you can take in from the right. When you think you are seeing as far as you can, try and go a little further. Do the same to the left. Then above you and below you. Then all directions at once. Then sit for a moment with all the new sensations and share what you are experiencing, if that feels right.
When we open at least one of our senses as far as it can go, we feel a stronger connection to be alive.
Feel the Best Parts of Your Day
This is a nice one to do at the end of the day and is similar to a gratitude journal without the need to write. Many children do like to journal or draw their experiences but many others have had enough of that activity at school and we want to make sure we create a natural balance for our inner rhythms.
Try beginning with questions along these lines
“Was there anything that made your heart feel full today?”
“Did anything that happened today make you feel excited?”
“Did anything happen today that felt different?”
“That made you feel curious?”
“That made you feel in wonder or awe”
“That made you want to find out more?’
“That gave you an idea?”
“Did anyone do something particularly kind today?”
“Did anyone say anything to you that made you feel good?”
And so on. Notice all these questions guide your child towards their feelings. You can enhance this sensory embodiment by asking them where in their bodies they feel things when they have these memories from their day. See how they move their arms and other parts of their body while they talk and get them to repeat these movements or “mudra” establishing a muscle memory of the experience. Then suggest they breath the feelings through their body, as if breathing them in – like smelling a beautiful flower or a delicious meal – infusing themselves with this quality. Like our muscles, our cells have memory, and the deeper we make a cellular memory of a life enhancing experience, the more quickly we can bring that back when we need the resilience it provides. This exercise is an inner strengthening. It a great one to do before sleeping as once activated, the nervous system can keep bathing in these healing and renewing energies while your child relaxes in sleep.
I would love to hear your discoveries and ideas! Here’s something my 11 year old came up with when she was about seven. “Mummy, I have discovered if you say ‘excited excited excited’ over and over again you get this really incredible feeling that wants to burst out of your body…”
Try it – it works!
Photography by Juliet Wioland. Cannot be reproduced without permission.
When I was a little girl living in Oxford, England, we used to go for a fortnight’s holiday to France every year, staying in a simple villa near a beach. Our lives in the city morphed into days of salty water, bright, bright sunshine, smells of bakeries, peaches and French cigars. The difference in the language, the food, the supermarkets and even the types of cars people drove made everything feel so exotic and all of this contributed to a feeling of special atmosphere, of having been lifted out of ordinary life, that I felt even at the ages of eight or nine years old.
But it is the coming back that I remember. As we switched from driving on the right hand side of the road, crossed the time/space boundary of the ocean between Le Havre and Southampton and found ourselves suddenly, increasingly, in more and more familiar territory I would press my face against the car window and feel something so profound it stands out to this day.
I had a sense that while nothing had changed, everything had.
That while we were only away for a mere two weeks, something inside me had shifted and the territory around me, though familiar, seemed to have shifted too.
It is fascinating that whenever we leave the routine and familiarity of our day to day lives and for however short a period time, we experience a sense of life touching us differently. As human beings, we take the energy of life deep inside us every time we breathe, and this creates a particular atmosphere inside us.
The scenery is enhanced somehow – the sights, sounds and smells more vivid. We can experience different parts of ourselves when we are away from home – feel new things blossoming and old things asking to be released. The common components of many of our holidays are the same and they include feeling relaxed, having more rest, doing more of what we love – reading, enjoying special company and meals, playing – and having an emerging expanded sense of time and space in which we feel comfortably at home.
We often have more immediate access to sources of intuition and inspiration, guiding us to having thoughts about things we want to do in our lives or change in our lives, when we get home. In short, our creative ability is ignited.
And with all of that, in this easeful sense of pleasure, a strong belief, an understanding – a knowing – that we can embody these feelings and experiences consistently, not just while we are away. Because they are closer to our natural state. We can take them home with us and they can take us home to ourselves.
But how? And when we step out of alignment with our natural state, how do we find our way back?
The Tantric meditation tradition has shown me that there are numerous techniques and practices to relocate me in this natural body of love. From accessing imaginable ability (meditating with photos and music and tastes and memories of your holiday) to using cellular memory (which is like muscle memory) to keep the vital energies that have been awakened coursing through our beings daily. These practices are simple, life enhancing and joy bringing. They involve meditating with our real selves and understanding how the overall sense of authenticity and belonging we often feel when we are away are, counterintuitively, showing us where our home truly is.
Practice
Next time you are away from home and feeling a sense of wider perspective and deeper self connection, explore through a journal or your own thoughts and meditations what those feelings are and where you are getting them from. When our beings are relaxed, our real needs and desires – the callings of our soul- come forward. On holiday, we can understand better what we have been missing in our lives and begin to explore how we might recreate that at home.
Write a list of some of those life enhancing qualities you have discovered.
Your list, for instance, might look a little like this
While we can’t recreate the exact conditions of time away, once we identify the specific soul nourishing components, we can be more mindful of bringing them into our lives, even in bite sized pieces. It’s amazing how small gestures towards ourselves can turn on inner lights. For instance, just going to the library or bookshop and getting a good book and placing it on your bedside table so you know it’s there; taking an extra five minutes for yourself here and there; going to bed earlier, taking up a new activity you enjoyed on holiday, gazing at a beautiful view.
It’s an interesting thing and the truth that when we start giving ourselves the things that nourish and nurture us, the response in our being is so positive we are encouraged to give ourselves more and more. And the harvest we reap from planting all these little seeds is higher vitality, deeper meaning and a peaceful and joyful experience in precious lives.
Recently I’ve been spending time in schools as well as one to one with children, exploring their meditation space.
When it comes to meditation, kids know best.
Children are often so much closer to their natural, healthy, instinctive state than we are as adults, that they make wonderfully creative meditators and their meditation experience is rich.
It would be an easy trap to fall into, when offering children meditation, to offer it from the framework of what we as adults think they “need”. Usually this framework is more about what we feel we need. A lot of children therefore learn to meditate with quiet and stillness and focussing and this can work against their natural state. I don’t know about you, but most school aged kids I know are “in the office” 24/7. There can be a relentless vibration of being marched -or commanded – from task to task. “Get up, brush your teeth, put your clothes on, have breakfast, get your stuff together, get in the car…GET. In. THE. CAR”. And from this schedule into the school schedule – with a little time-capped “Play time”, and then into after school activities based around structured learning and performance – Martial Arts, Dance, Sport, and so on. And then homework, dinner, get-ready-for-bed and bedtime. And in the morning, it starts all over again.
How are we going to allow our children opportunities to get back into their own natural instinctive rhythms of being, doing and resting?
That’s where making sure their meditation space is a proper sanctuary for them – in other words, it is all about them and their needs, cravings, individuality, dreams and desires – is key.
Silence and sitting still and concentrating on breathing or following the teacher’s demonstrations of stretching, it seems to me, are the last things our children will be craving and won’t provide the opportunity to recover and restore that is needed. And if any of us aren’t getting what we crave in meditation, then meditating at all is a waste of our time and energy. More importantly, it could even be injurious – in the same way as forcing your body into a yoga pose that isn’t right for it would be.
We come to meditation to nourish our souls, restore our beings and come back into our bodies. If your soul had been subjugated to this amount of imposed-structure, wouldn’t it be craving a chance to be in a free space again of deep play and freedom to roam?
A child who has been sitting the majority of the day and supressing the natural urge to move that all children are intimate with probably isn’t going to want to sit. A child who has been asked to pay attention to a variety of externally imposed experiences might well be craving a spontaneous, individuality-affirming inner experience. Kids are close to their imaginative instincts. Daydreaming is refreshing, it takes us home, and about as soul nourishing as it gets.
Our children are great teachers for us on how to meditate. It’s a fun and rewarding space to explore with children and see what their ideas are. Here are five of the most popular among the children I work with.
What Do You Need?
At the start of any meditation time with children, cue them immediately that this is their space, their time and they are in their power here. Effectively, hand the baton back to them so that they know they can and should have their own experience in meditation – this is not another thing that’s going to be imposed on them from the outside – this is about them coming home to themselves. Let them know that they are already meditation experts and that when you were a child, you were too, but as an adult need some tips. Ask them” “if you could be anywhere right now, where would you be and what would you be doing?” This is a great pathway back into their beings. Ask them, when they are thinking and talking about their “perfect right now” what feelings of “things waking up” or “lights going on inside them” they have and in what parts of their bodies. This is a way of teaching children how to self tend.
2. Move & Groove
Get a few ideas from the kids on what music they like. Create a playlist and then get them to vote on which piece to play. Invite them to move in any way they feel…moved to! Moving or dancing to music can be a great way of getting bodily into one’s inner rhythms.
3. Shake It Out
Little do we know how much children’s emotions are responding, below the radar, deep inside them, to things which are happening in their daily experiences of life. Emotions like resentment, fear, frustration, disappointment and exasperation are all emotions expressed time and again by the children I work with. First, we bring the emotions into awareness – the healing state of attention alone. Then we affirm is good to know how you feel! Then we get them to shake it out in any way they like – with as much craziness as feels right to them. I have seen children just use their hands and arms and others use their whole body in a crazy dance. They love this one!
4. Voice It!
Taking it one step further. So often, children want to voice how they feel but are afraid that isn’t allowed. Energy then gets trapped in parts of their being to an uncomfortable degree – often their throats, chests or in their bellies. This is a practice to empower children’s voices, to release unhealthy blockages of emotion and to give the kids a chance to let it all out vocally. It is great to focus on feelings of vibrations when we use our voices in harmony with our feelings. Get them to notice words and feelings as they vibrate through their bodies. Singing, chanting, sighing, humming are all expressions of feeling the music of life. This is Mantra practice for kids.
5. Mythical Worlds
Probably the best gift we can give our children is simply to allow them their right to dream. And dream and dream and dream and dream. Dreaming is a deep instinct and like all our instincts, deeply connected to surviving and thriving. You can honour daydreaming by exploring together some of the great contributions made to our lives by “Dreamers” – artists, architects, songwriters, musicians, inventors, people who have transformed world situations from a dream of peace and harmony. We need to dream and we can’t be scrimpy with ourselves when it comes to dreamtime. After the movement and voice meditations, children will feel relaxed and in their beings – the perfect context for settling back into their inner world of adventure. You could even get them to tell stories of their day dream, or draw pictures afterwards, if they are inspired to share.
Above all: make it friendly, make it fun, make it about them, not you. Let them guide you, teach you, inspire you. I love this comment from a teacher whose class I went into recently: “They came so alive when you unlocked some things in them! It was wonderful to see them getting so much out of the session. Personally this session had a big impact on me, I went home and started painting again after a 5 year gap!”
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.
The World Is A Peaceful, Kind and Loving Place
The world is still kind.
Nothing has changed that.
Seven billion people are still peacefully going about their day.
.001 % are murdering others
If the world’s population were able to stand in one room, this fraction would be less visible than a grain of sand.
The powerful feelings that rise in our hearts when we witness any kind of cruelty is a manifestation of the supreme presence of Goodness. These impulses of love, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of cherishing all life ARE the universe. So we can be thankful we feel these things, we can infuse ourselves with this naturally arising love and kindess and cherishing of life and in doing so, raise that vibration into the world. The world which remains loving, kind, luminous and flowing with grace.
(Gratitude to my teacher Dr. Lorin Roche for our conversations about kindness.)
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.
The beauty of meditation is once you have decided you are going to meditate, you don’t have to decide anything else. You can start to relax, let yourself be, and enjoy the journey.
Here are seven things to consider as you take your journey, to make your meditation as delicious and rewarding to you as it can be.
Be Yourself. In the words of the old song “There’s no one else to be.” You don’t have to strike a lotus – or any other – pose to be a great meditator. Meditation is rich when we cherish, rather than resisting, our instincts. This can be the best “me time” you ever have so make it work for you.
Be physically comfortable. Meditation is a time when the parasympathetic nervous system does its awesome job of rest, repair and re-set. It works best when we cooperate with this process – that means listening to your instinct to relax. Some people feel more relaxed when walking in nature or swimming in the ocean. Others feel most at one with themselves when they are dancing. You might like sitting but there are many who get sore sitting for long periods and prefer to lie down. Make yourself super comfortable and at ease so you are not “holding on” physically or resisting yourself in any way. We are not meant to be “enduring” in this space – meditation is where we come to heal suffering, not increase it.
Delight in your senses. Our senses are pathways to all our rich connections with life. Rather than trying to shut out background noise, actively bring the outer soundscape inside yourself. Keep your eyes open if you prefer and watch the clouds making shapes in the ever changing sky. The same with taste, touch, smell. Allow yourself to be absorbed in each sense as it arises. This way you can absorb and be nourished by the elixir of the universe through all the pathways you have been gifted with.
Greet everything that comes up with a loving heart, moment by moment. Think about when you invite an old friend into your home for a chat. Do you open the door partially, then ask them not to talk about things, do you make them feel uncomfortable? No of course you don’t. You want them to feel welcome, make them comfortable, and give them all your spacious attention so they can talk about all that is going on with them. Give your thoughts, feelings and sensations the same active, loving attention. They are coming into a healing space – open the doors of your inner temple wide and give them a positive greeting.
Make it delicious and compelling for yourself so you will want to come back again and again. “You know what you love.Go there” (Sutra 98. The Radiance Sutras. Dr Lorin Roche.) We all have experiences where life seems to resonate with us in very personal ways and thinking about what you love to do, where you love to be, whom and what you love are all ways to get straight into your own soul. This can be the life force infusing your meditation – spending a few breaths filling your being with this state of love – savouring your aliveness.
Practice not flinching as you feel any tension in your body and your mind. As we start to relax and release tension, we feel everything we have been tense about. This is a natural part of the healing rhythm of meditation. Let yourself feel fingers of fatigue, the buzz of stress, the tugging from any unwinding – this is all Prana (life force energy) moving freely through your body. As you feel it, you heal it – things shift and you other notes and nuances are free to come through in your spontaneous meditation.
Try tiny bite sized moments of meditation throughout your day. 21st century meditators find great efficacy in this. We are really busy people and while we crave the relief and release that comes from meditation, we often get put off by the idea of “having to find the time.” Five minutes, absorbed in a loving moment with yourself and life can be all it takes. Cloud watching. Letting your mind drift, unfettered. Cherishing a few feel-good breaths – big inhalations, relaxing sighs. Eating a few squares of dark chocolate slowly, luxuriating in texture, flavour and the awakening of your pleasure centres. Having your favourite daydream. Pausing to really listen to a song that stirs you deeply. A series of spontaneous meditative moments arising during the day can be as deeply nourishing – if not more so – than one long session.
In this meditation, I offer the experience of tasting and savouring a small bite of chocolate to open the sensory pathways – a fantastic way to expand inner and outer awareness and to fill all the levels of your being with an experience. I use the example of chocolate as so many people find it pleasurable, but you can use any food or drink that you especially look forward to savouring.
In life we often race through pleasure and yet dwell and ruminate on pain. As one meditator recently said to me, “We press the fast forward button instead of Play.” We often make pleasure something we have to “earn” or “deserve” and in doing so, undermine our enjoyment with feelings of anxiety over worthiness.
Life is full of special treats. On some level, all of life is a treat, a gift, an invitation for us to fill our beings with experiences of wonder, awe, gratitude, thrill and adventure from a place of feeling natural with ourselves. We are invited all the time to suffuse ourselves with these experiences and let them play on inside of us long after the experience is over.
This meditation is really about savouring all the flavours of life, not just a few. When we meditate this way, we really get to feel so many inner awakenings and to sense an expansion, an illumination, on the inside. With this style of meditation, every touch of life becomes almost psychedelic. Colours, flavours, sights, sounds, touches infuse us and we feel touched by all the fingers of life.
This practice is also great if you are someone who loves being in the “highs” of life but feels a crash afterwards which leaves you feeling a little flat, empty or lost. In this meditation, we learn how to sustain all the sensations of the experience, long after it has gone, using the great meditation secret of “infusion”.
There is so much to this meditation – which I offer as a practice frequently in my classes and workshop – that the feedback from meditators afterwards is incredible in its range of experiences, surprises and spontaneous arisings. I have quoted some of the feedback I have heard after the chocolate meditation, at the end of this piece.
To take this meditation a step further, you can actually meditate on savouring all the flavours of something you love to eat or drink but without actually having that thing available. This is using imagination to awaken sensory pathways and inner life and is incredibly powerful. The last time I offered this meditation to a class, there were two people who cannot eat chocolate. They each instead, imagined they were sipping a glass of their favourite wine. You will see their feedback along with the others at the end of this piece!
Practice
Take your chocolate, still wrapped, and place it in front of your gaze. Look at it for a few moments, savouring the feelings that come with the anticipation of unwrapping it and then biting into it. Let your attention bask in whatever feelings, thoughts and sensations come up as you pause on this threshold. These may be eagerness, curiosity, excitement, anticipatory pleasure or a feeling of gratitude for the self-awarded permission to enjoy yourself and feel pleasure. That itself can feel relaxing and a relief to your nervous system.
Then slowly unwrap the chocolate, listening attentively to the sounds the paper makes as it crackles open, feeling its texture in your fingers, watching it unfold and beginning to sense any scents that come up from the chocolate as it is unwrapped.
Be luxuriously unhurried with this opening and revealing. Be aware of any emotion, visualisations, sensations in your physical body and memories that arise as you unwrap it.
Then lift it to your nose and reach inwards and outwards with your sense of smell to experience the full scent of chocolate. Be aware of your sense of vision, smell and hearing awakening, opening and expanding when you give them all your attention.
Now take a small bite from the chocolate and hold it on your tongue. Don’t chew it yet. Let it melt in your mouth for a few moments, feel it and taste it as it spreads around your mouth. Savour the melting and the spreading for as long as you feel you want to before you chew and then swallow. Allow yourself to feel fully everything awakening in your body and your mind – your pleasure centres, taste receptors, the readiness of your intelligent digestive system as you salivate, the feeling of your throat receiving the chocolate as it moves down inside you. Savour the swallowing.
Eat the whole chocolate this way and notice the rhythms of the experience within you moment by moment.
When the chocolate is finished, rest there in the afterglow. You will find the taste, the texture, the feelings of eating the chocolate remain with you long after the actual chocolate has gone and you rest in pleasure, enjoying all the awakened energies inside you, body sensations, feelings in your heart, thoughts, dreaming, memories. Pause in pleasure here, with curiosity and wonder, for as long as you like.
This meditation is of course about much more than chocolate. It is about savouring and cherishing all of our instincts and about savouring and cherishing all the flavours of life. Savouring the feelings of anticipation before you even unwrap the chocolate is “pausing on the threshold”, a practice in life which is very rewarding and very conducive to nervous system repair and balance. Paying attention to all thoughts and feelings as they arise is king in the practice of meditation – that way we learn to know, understand and tend to ourselves and all of our needs and most cherished desires. “Savouring the afterglow” is about “infusing” and processing an experience. We know that nothing is truly over – that the cells in our bodies hold every memory, experience, thought and feeling. This is true of every exciting, pleasurable, life-affirming, surprising, hilarious, joyful, poignant, tender, loving moment or experience you have ever had. When you have an experience that lights you up, take time with it and in its afterglow (reflecting on it, journaling about it, meditating with it) as if bathing in essential oils. By calling into the sacred, infinitely tender glow of your awareness, the full range of your senses, emotions and bodily sensations, you can be filled with and nourished by life itself.
Some Experiences reported by “chocolate meditators”
“I often eat several chocolates in a row without really noticing them. This way, one chocolate is enough, more than enough. I was totally fulfilled and satisfied by it.”
“I could still taste the chocolate, even hours later.”
“I had a memory from childhood, when crinkle cut potato chips first came out, of eating them that way – taking tiny nibbles with my front teeth – being so excited about this new taste and texture and wanting to make every part of it last.”
“It made me think of that scene from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory where Charlie unwraps his first bar of Wonka chocolate…that scene always gives me goosebumps.”
“I went to other places for a while. I actually went to Mars for part of that.”
“I was amazed at how long something that wonderful could last and how deeply I could take it in.”
“I can’t believe how much I experienced inside myself just by eating chocolate.”
“I feel refreshed and invigorated.”
“Tt really made me think about how I rush through everything in life and in doing that, don’t really enjoy it as much as I could.”
“If I sipped wine like that, I am sure I would drink less and this would be good for me.”
“I imagined I was drinking a top shelf shiraz. I poured the glass and when I offered it to my nose to smell, my nose actually tingled! I really do feel like I have had a delicious glass of wine.”
