Guided Meditation - Awareness
Close your eyes and take a big deep breath. And another. And another. Let yourself come back from wherever you’ve been today. Start to let go of all of the roles you play to the people around you, and all of the responsibilities you have. Consciously set them aside. Notice your body. Say hello. And give yourself another deep breath. Start to turn on your awareness within yourself.
An Intro to Meditation
Meditation gets a bad rap - most people think that meditating is sitting at an altar quietly by yourself and stopping your thoughts for hours on end. Most people also say that they’re “not good” at meditating. None of this is true. Meditation isn’t stopping your thoughts (if you figure out how to stop your thoughts, let us know and we will turn ours off too) - meditation is simply NOTICING your thoughts. And there are actually a lot of different ways to meditate - you can be seated and meditate, or you could do a walking meditation or even while you’re doing the dishes. All it requires is NOTICING what you are doing and practice staying present.
There is no right or wrong way to meditate and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
Let’s move through a simple breathing exercise that you can try at home, at work, or wherever you happen to be - this one is great for any time you are feeling stressed or anxious and are having trouble calming down:
“Take a seat or lay on the floor in a place you won’t be disturbed. Silence your cell phone and anything else that would distract you.
Close your eyes and take a big deep breath. Let yourself come back from wherever you’ve been today.
Start to let go of all of the roles you play to the people around you, and all of the responsibilities you have one by one. Consciously set them aside.
Feel your body on the chair you’re sitting in, or the floor underneath you. Notice the places where your body is touching your body. Or where your clothes are touching your body.
Notice the air on your skin. Start to notice the air moving in and out of your lungs.
Gently start counting how long your inhales and exhales are. On your next exhale, see if you can make it one or two counts longer than your inhales. So if you are inhaling for 3, 4 or 5, you are exhaling for 5, 6 or 7 counts.
You can play with making your exhales longer still, just make sure that it’s not so long that you start to strain or lose your breath. Breathe like this for 20 rounds or more.
When you’re ready to come out, first notice your body on the floor. Your clothes on your body. The air on your skin. And notice any changes in how you’re feeling from when you started.
Slowly start to wiggle fingers and toes, and whisper a little thank you to yourself as you move into the rest of your day.”
Here are some other easy meditating hacks we love:
Download a free app (like the Insight Timer) and turn on a guided meditation in the morning while you’re still in bed or at night to fall asleep
Loving kindness meditation one your morning commute - internally sending every driver you see or passenger on your train love and wishing them a good day
Singing in the shower or the car
Making dancing like a crazy person to your favorite song part of your morning routine