Meditation

I wanted to talk a bit about meditation in case some of you are balking at the idea. Meditation has been my greatest ally in opening and strengthening my intuition.

There are many ways to meditate and only you can decide what is best for you. I find I work best when I take a few minutes out of every day to clear my mind and center my energy. But I've been working with meditation for many years now and can easily get myself there. Guided meditations or music worked best for me in the beginning. Some people prefer to chant, others do meditative walking. Sometimes the only time I can spare for meditating is in the shower! You can find the time if it's important to you.

I've found that YouTube is a great source for guided meditations. You don't need one that goes on forever and it doesn't matter what the meditation is about. Any will help you to silence your mind and open up that part of you that we're trying to get to. As long as you enjoy the meditation, that's all that matters.

Now, when I began my meditation training, I didn't have youtube. I want to share with you how I started and what has happened since. I started with a CD of relaxing music. I chose the second song off that CD and set off to train my mind to meditate. I began by making sure I would not be disturbed, I made myself comfortable, I would sit or lay down depending on how I felt at the time. Then I started the music. I didn't worry about what my mind was doing, my main goal was making sure my body was relaxed. So I began a muscle relaxation. This is simply tightening and releasing the muscles. I began at my toes and worked my way up. You can find these on youtube as well. I did this once a day every day for quite a while. But, the funny thing is, I began to enjoy it! I started looking forward to this 5 minute break that was all for me. It was like my mind craved it. It didn't take long before the beginning sounds of that song forced my entire body to relax on command. Even to this day, the opening notes send me right in. This is what I mean by training your mind.

Now, once my body knew to relax during this time, I had to do the same for my mind. Since my body was relaxed, I had nothing to focus my mind on. At first, I had all kinds of thoughts racing around. All I did was breathe and let them float right by. I tried to not hang on to any thought, just to be in the present moment and listen to the music. Let the music guide me. Sometimes I would see colors, mostly my mind would take the mood of the song and go on an adventure in the forest. These were my favorites because I never knew what was going to happen. It was like having a story read to me. Soon, I was able to change songs. I simply put on my training song until my body relaxed and then I would change songs. So, you may need your training song for some time, at least 6 months, so make sure you like it. If you begin to dislike it, I would change the song, that might set your progress back, but you will get nowhere if you are hating what you're listening to.

So, what kind of music? Something without words! No words, unless it's someone guiding you into relaxation. We want it to bore the pants off your logical mind. Classical is fine (unless you are a musician that plays classical music), new agey stuff is great, animal sounds, rainfall. Anything that is relaxing to you. This training is all about relaxation because that is the basis for meditation.

Of course, you can jump right in with what you find on youtube but I highly recommend beginning with a muscle relaxation EACH TIME you meditate. You won't have to do this forever but we are training your mind right now. It doesn't have to be long, 5 minutes is fine, just enough to relax all those muscles. Then, on days when you have more time, do a guided meditation after that.

I encourage you to empower each other to meditate, to ask for help, or to share your favorite way of meditating. Feel free to post links to meditations that you find helpful.