You get home from work and almost before your coat is off and the keys are hung up, the radio is on.
You go to a friend’s for coffee and the TV is on in the background.
You sit in your car and give in to an almost physical need to tune in to your favourite station or listen to some music.
What’s going on? [Read more…] about Why Are We So Scared Of Silence?
Are You Trying Too Hard To Meditate?
Who do you believe: those who tell you that meditation should be enormously hard work? Or those who tell you it should be effortless?
Discover the secret problem that most beginner meditators encounter and how you can fix it – right now – easily. [Read more…] about Are You Trying Too Hard To Meditate?
Meditation Bells: How Can A Sound Feel So Real?
{Bonus article from the 28 Day Meditation Challenge}
The week three meditation in the 28 Day Meditation Challenge includes the ringing of a Tibetan singing bowl – a meditation bell.
People on the course often report how vibrant and almost physical the sound feels.
Here’s a bonus article, to explain what’s going on – and how you can use meditation bells and singing bowls to help with your meditation and mindfulness pracitce. [Read more…] about Meditation Bells: How Can A Sound Feel So Real?
3 Secrets Your Heart Wants You To Hear About Meditation
Are you looking for ways to improve your heart health and reduce your risk of heart disease – or perhaps to recover from existing problems? Then here are 3 compelling reasons why meditation should be top of your list of strategies. These are the secrets your heart really wants you to hear about how meditation can help you.
{Bonus article from the 28 Day Meditation Challenge}
1. Meditation cuts your stress levels.
According to cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD, any condition caused or worsened by stress, which includes heart disease, can be alleviated through meditation. He’s been researching it for 30 years, so he ought to know!
We have all seen the archetypal stressed executive, keeling over with a heart attack, in the movies. It’s a proven fact that high levels of stress hurt your heart.
The body’s sympathetic nervous system (the ‘fight or flight’ part) kicks out extra stress hormones, including adrenalin and cortisol, whenever we’re stressed. These are designed to increase our heart rate, in an emergency situation. It’s intended to be a temporary measure. But many of us are running on adrenalin, most of the time.
You don’t have to be a city Exec to be an adrenalin junky. If you’re constantly running from one place to the next, scarcely pausing to catch your breath, surviving on stimulants like caffeine and sugar, then your adrenals will be working overtime and your heart health will be suffering.
Fortunately there’s plenty of research out there that shows daily meditation helps regulate the sympathetic nervous system’s stress response. It also helps us retrain our minds to think more calmly, so we don’t need that adrenalin rush to get things done any more.
Regular meditation – even as little as ten minutes a day – helps you feel less stressed, more calm and more relaxed.
2. Meditation can lower your blood pressure.
Back in 2004, Barnes, Davis, Murzynowski & Treiber discovered that regular meditation has a beneficial impact on your blood pressure and heart rate. Their initial research was with youths, but subsequent studies have found this applies to all of us.
Evidence indicates that psychological stresses, such as anger, anxiety and worry, contribute to the development of heart disease.
The body’s relaxation response, activated by the parasympathetic nervous system, during meditation, helps lower blood pressure and is good for your heart rate. The corresponding reduction in adrenalin and cortisol help you maintain this relaxed, more focussed state, beyond the end of your meditation.
Doctors are so convinced of the benefits of meditation for reducing psychological stress that mindfulness meditation is now being recommended to help patients suffering from anxiety and clinical depression. Recent trials showed it to be as effective as medication, for some people. And all of this reduces the stress on your heart.
Numerous studies (and millions of meditators, over the millennia) have proven that regular meditation helps you feel happier and more at peace.
3. Meditation can strengthen your heart.
Researchers at Margaret & H.A. Rey Laboratory in Boston, USA, discovered that there’s more to meditation than just a relaxation response. Their work showed that regular meditation can actually strengthen the heart, improving heart health, over time.
In addition, researchers have found that regular meditation practice can improve your breathing habits, by moving from stress-based upper chest breathing to diaphragm-based belly breathing.
The body is designed to ‘belly breathe’ – just watch a young baby for proof. But, over the years, we learn bad habits that cause most of us to breathe poorly, reducing the oxygen levels in our blood, meaning our heart and lungs have to work harder. Meditation practice encourages the deeper diaphragmatic breathing, which ultimately improves your heart’s health.
A research study by the University of Wisconsin found that regular meditators had a 47% reduction in death rates, heart attacks and strokes, compared with those who didn’t meditate.
Surely that, alone, is a good enough reason to start learning to meditate?
How To Make Meditation Work For You
Of course, meditating once won’t sort things out – just like going for a single run or eating a single, healthy meal. Gaining the benefit of meditation requires consistent practice, to develop your skill levels. But it doesn’t have to take long.
Researchers investigating the impact of mindfulness meditation on people suffering from clinical depression found measurable improvement in less than 6 weeks of daily practice.
We have found, through our online courses, that this it can take as little as one week to notice a difference, for many people!
And you don’t have to sit for hours. Even just 10 minutes a day, each day, can start to have an impact. Then, if you’re really enjoying the benefits of regular meditation, you can consider increasing the time.
There’s more to meditation than turning your legs into a pretzel and chanting Om – though you can do that, if you like!
A survey I conducted in December 2011 showed that the number 1 meditation myth was that you had to sit still for hours with an empty mind.
Few of us can even imagine achieving that. And the great news is that you don’t have to.
Ten minutes a day of silent sitting, using the correct techniques, can start to produce a difference. And if sitting still isn’t your thing, mindfulness meditation is something you can do any time, any place.
Top Tips For Successful Meditation
- Learn the techniques.
Ask people what meditation is and most of them will have a vague idea, but few of us really know where to start – or what meditation really feels like.
Find yourself a teacher (a local class, a recommended book, a CD series, an online course) and you’re much more likely to learn the techniques in a way that will actually produce results.
. - Don’t go it alone.
Find a class you can join, with an experienced teacher, or rope in some friends (real or virtual!). Moral support is the best way to create a new habit.
. - Don’t get hung up on which type of meditation to do.
Feel free to experiment. There’s no ‘right or wrong’. If you find a class isn’t working for you, look for another one. Meditation should be a pleasure, not a chore.
. - Be consistent.
Once you have made the decision to learn to meditate, do it! Don’t be lazy about it. If you want to experience the benefits of meditation, little and often is much better than blitz ‘n’ burn.
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Want To Try A 60 Second Mindfulness Meditation, Right Now?
Here’s a link to one of my favourite mindful breathing meditations – guaranteed to bring you back to the ‘here and now’, feeling happier and less stressed.
If you would like to discover how just 10 minutes a day of meditation could change your life, then you might like to join us on the 28 Day Meditation Challenge.
It guides you, step by step, through the essential skills needed to meditate. It also brings you proven strategies to help you keep yourself motivated and to learn how to handle the most common meditation challenges, finding simple ways of making meditation practice – and its enormous benefits – an integral part of your life.
How To Use Anchoring To Help With Your Meditation
How To Use Anchoring To Help With Your Meditation
- Would you like to be able to reach that ‘relaxed and alert’ state, quickly, easily and reliably, at the start of each meditation?
- Would you like to be able to move from the stresses and busy-ness of daily life, to be able to quieten your mind, in just moments?
- Would you like to be able to take your meditation calm with you, out into the noise of the ‘real world’?
All this – and more – is possible with a simple technique called ‘anchoring’.
What comes to mind when you think of the smell of freshly baked bread? Or when you hear the sound of the sea? Or when you feel the sun on your skin? Or when you taste a fresh strawberry? Or when you see a sunset?
Chances are that these triggers take you back to memories or change your emotional and psychological state.
We store our memories in all 5 senses. Accessing a memory in one sense brings back the other sensory components of that memory. For a strong memory, it triggers the same chemical reactions in the body as in the original event, taking us back to the emotional, mental and physical feelings of that memory.
How does that work?
Ever heard of “Pavlov’s Dogs”?
Pavlov was a scientist who proved that we can “associate an external trigger with an internal response”. In other words, we can train ourselves to automatically respond in a particular way, when we experience an external stimulus or reminder.
It goes on all around us. Advertising is a strong form of anchoring – adverts provide stimuli (images and sounds) in order to evoke a particular state (emotional response and desire to buy).
Sometimes anchors take us back to unhelpful emotional and mental states: for example, the feeling of “not again!” as your least favourite person approaches you in the office; or seeing an email from the MD…
It is possible to anchor a resourceful emotional or mental state, so you can use it whenever you want to.
That means you can anchor your meditating state – that sense of feeling at peace and relaxed – so that you can take it with you during the day and also return to it, quickly, whenever you next meditate.
Want to know how?
You deliberately create a neurological connection between the state you want to go back to and a stimulus or trigger (usually physical).
Here are 5 steps to anchoring your meditation calm:
- Are you really there?
To anchor a state, you need to be ‘in the experience’: seeing it through your own eyes, hearing what you would hear and feeling what you would feel. The experience needs to be intense.
The opposite of this is dissociated – watching yourself as though it’s a movie; not feeling the experience; completely detached from it. You have feelings about the experience, but you do not have the emotions of the experience.
. - Decide which state to anchor.
Think back to your favourite part of your meditation experience. What, precisely, do you want to capture? Once you know this, you can choose a memory that will take you back to that experience.
. - Choose your anchor stimulus.
Make it:- Unique – something you can control. For example, you wouldn’t anchor the palm of your hand – or it would trigger accidentally every time you shake someone’s hand! Disappearing back to a zen-like, blessed-out calm might not work when you’re at your next meeting with the bank manager…
- Repeatable – you must be able to control it and access it when you want to, so the bottom of your little toe perhaps isn’t the best spot.
- Memorable – make it something you wouldn’t normally do, which you will easily remember.
- People typically choose something like pressing a particular knuckle – or the act of sitting down in your usual meditation place.
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- ‘Set’ your anchor.
- Remember a time when you felt that state strongly.
- Allow the experience to intensify. You need to be associated in the experience – really be there, seeing it through your own eyes and feeling it in your body and mind. There’s no point in anchoring something that’s “wishy washy”.
- Pay attention to how the state grows. You’ll notice it increasing if you turn up the intensity of the memory.
- As it grows, apply your anchor – whatever the physical trigger is that you have chosen. Keep applying it, until just the point when the state starts to drop off. Then let go.
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- Test your anchor.
- Stand up and shake yourself a bit, to make sure you’re back to your ‘normal’ state.
- Now test your anchor. Use your physical cue. Notice how it shifts your state.
- Want to make it even stronger? Repeat step 4, with a more vivid memory.
You can even set your anchor during your meditation practice. If you notice that you’re feeling particularly relaxed and alert, do step 4 and create your physical anchor. Hold the point for 10-20 seconds, before releasing. Then, when you’ve finished your meditation, do step 5.
Note: your anchor doesn’t have to be a physical trigger. You could use a particular picture, a sound (like a Tibetan singing bowl) or even a smell, like incense or a particular aromatherapy blend. There’s more on this in Day 28 of the 28 Day Meditation Challenge.
NLP Secrets To Help You Meditate, Even When You’re Not In The Mood
[Bonus article from the 28 Day Meditation Challenge]
What we think impacts our emotions and our actions. In other words, our mind and body are inextricably linked. And if you’re not in the mood to meditate, you’re unlikely to get great results just by forcing yourself to do it. That’s where a few secrets from the world of psychology can come in handy.
Think about how you suddenly jump if you see something you’re scared of. Your mind sees the stimulus and produces a rush of adrenalin in your body. Mind affects body.
Similarly, if you’re really physically tired, it can be very difficult to think clearly. In this case, body affects mind.
How you feel affects how you think which affects how you behave.
Test Your Mind-Body Link
To prove how much positive thinking affects your body and mind, try this quick exercise.
- Sitting in a chair, say out loud the words “tired, weak, tired, weak, tired, weak…” As you keep repeating them, try to stand up. Notice how that feels.
- Repeat the exercise, this time saying “powerful, strong, powerful, strong, powerful, strong…” Notice how you almost jump out of the chair.
What was the difference?
What you were thinking affected your performance.
That applies to any activity we undertake, even meditation. If we expect to find it difficult, we will. If we tell ourselves we’re not in the mood, that’s exactly what we’ll experience. But if we expect to find it easy and to excel at it, we are more likely to succeed.
So if you try to meditate whilst feeling confused, frustrated and fed up, you’re unlikely to feel relaxed and you’re unlikely to enjoy your meditation. But using your mood as an excuse not to meditate isn’t a great idea, either!
Would you like to know how to manage your emotional, mental and physical state, so you can always have the frame of mind that is most appropriate to the task in hand?
Reminder: What’s A ‘State’?
Our state is our “way of being at any one moment” – it comes from our physiology (actions), thoughts and emotions.
The calmer your state, the easier it is to think logically. The more relaxed and day-dreamy the state, the easier it can be to be creative.
Traditionally, we believe that we can’t control our state. How often have you heard (or even used!) the phrase:
“he made me feel bad”
How, exactly?
How did the other person get into your head and force you to feel unpleasant emotions? How did they send you annoyed thoughts? How did they gain control over your entire hormone system, which runs the show on the chemical reactions that are our emotions?
They didn’t…
When we use phrases like “he made me feel bad”, we’re giving our unconscious mind the message that we’re the victim – we’re not in control; we don’t have any choice.
Alas – or perhaps fortunately – that’s not true.
Although we can’t always change our circumstances, we can always choose how to respond.
The fact is that our state is within our control. We can learn to control our mind. We can choose how to respond. So, if someone provokes us, we are still free to choose whether or not to get annoyed.
Similarly, if we’re not feeling in the mood to do something, such as meditate, we can always, always, always choose another mood. We can choose to feel in the mood to meditate. The rest of this bonus article will show you how.
States can be either helpful or unhelpful.
A helpful state is one that empowers us; it makes it easier for us to achieve our outcome.
An unhelpful state is one that holds us back; it makes it harder for us to perform.
Spend a few moments thinking about the states you regularly experience. Which would you say are helpful? Which hold you back?
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My helpful states |
My unhelpful states |
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Now, for each of your ‘helpful’ states, think of a memory – a specific event – that takes you back to feeling that way. Make a list.
Then, if you find yourself in one of your ‘unhelpful’ states, all you need to do is go back to one of the memories from your ‘helpful’ list and it will instantly shift your mood. The memory triggers chemical reactions in your body that impact your emotions. So happy memories can help you feel better, no matter what else is going on in your day.
If we “find” ourselves in a unhelpful state, there are a number of things we can do. If you’d like a ‘quick fix’, here are three really simple things you can do to improve your emotional, mental or physical state:
- Sit up straight – changing our physiology changes our state – remember the ‘powerful and strong’ test?
- Look up! Often, if we’re in an unhelpful state, we naturally look down to the kinaesthetic area of eye accessing, as we dwell on the feelings. Looking up brings us back to the visual arena.
- Smile. Yes, smile! Scientists have proven that, if we smile or laugh for more than a few minutes, it sends signals to our brains to release the endorphins in our bodies that occur naturally when we are happy. It lifts our mood.
Prepared to put in a little more effort?
The ‘anchoring’ technique in the previous bonus article can be amazingly effective.
Want to get up and really shake off that unhelpful state? Then watch out for the Day 18 message: How Wiggling Your Butt Can Help You Meditate.
Are You Trying Too Hard?
Who do you believe: those who tell you that meditation should be enormously hard work? Or those who tell you it should be effortless?
Firstly, dump the word ‘should’. It’s one of the most dangerous words in the English language and all it ever does is trigger those old friends of ours: guilt and obligation. Dumping the word ‘should’, in this case, sets you free to experience things for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Then, here’s the answer I give to the initial question, when asked by my students.
The harder you try, the harder it is. The less hard you try, the more you accept, the more you ‘let go & trust’, the easier and more natural it becomes.
Meditation can involve changing habits we have cultivated for a lifetime. We have spent many years practising being busy, thinking three things at once, multi-tasking and doing anything other than sitting still. Meditation and mindfulness can feel like hard work at first, but once you start practising for the odd few minutes during the day, it eventually becomes effortless – like a switch you can flick. Just imagine it!
Remember: meditation is about calming your body, mind and emotions, to reconnect with the ‘truth’ of your current-moment experience of life. It is about accepting your thoughts as thoughts and no longer engaging with the emotional conversation. It’s not about a totally silent mind.
If your monkey mind is playing games, rather than fighting it and feeling annoyed, imagine softening your body, mind and emotions – melt away the tension – stop resisting – accept. Let go of the effort. Just allow yourself to experience the results. Surrender to the fact that a state of meditative awareness is actually our natural state. This whole ‘busy-ness’ thing is learned behaviour – so we can unlearn it!
Yes, we really CAN train our mind to be more still and quiet. And it doesn’t need to be difficult or take years; it does take gentle, consistent effort and CHOICE.
Typical signs that you are trying too hard include a clenched jaw, a furrowed forehead, tense shoulders, upper chest breathing, breathlessness and even holding your breath during meditation. That’s why the first step of each meditation we do is to relax the body and then do certain simple breaths to release tension and relax the mind.
Meditation doesn’t have to be hard work, but it does require consistent effort. Just like learning a sport or a foreign language, you wouldn’t expect results if you’re just popping by once in a while. Dedication – gentle, relaxed dedication – and consistent effort will produce much better results than ‘trying hard’ ever could.
Meditation doesn’t require you to ‘do your best’ or ‘try really hard’. It simply asks you to show up, bring an open mind, practise the techniques, and let them work their magic.