Guidance For Meditating Well
The first point of meditation is to go into a deep relaxation. We are aiming to slow our brainwaves from beta to alpha and then to theta. When we access these slower brainwaves, we are calming and quietening the mind and taking our attention off our outside world. If we are calming the mind, we are calming the body and vice versa. We are giving our minds and bodies the opportunity to reset, reharmonise, recover, restore, reenergise, heal, grow, improve. Possibly, the Holy Grail of meditating is to achieve gamma frequency brainwaves where the mind and body achieve an extremely high level of coherence – as if having a complete reboot – but this is unlikely to be achieved without much practice, and not required if we learn to gently update and upgrade on a daily basis.
The second point of meditation is to learn to focus and hold our attention where we choose. We quieten the mind and relax the body by staying focused and not being distracted. In daily life, we are confronted and bombarded by so many distractions, challenges and tasks. The more we can learn to calmly put and hold our attention where we want it to be, the more in control of our own minds and emotions we will be.
There are many ways to meditate but they all share the same purpose of trying to become absorbed completely into the moment. Staying focused and relaxing are two skills that can be learned and improved with practice. Whilst some may find that they can enter into a focused state quite easily, most people will find that their mind wanders and they are easily distracted. Just like learning any skill, time and patience is required to continually move towards mastery.
Also, just like training an animal, we must persevere. The enormous benefits of meditation have been scientifically proven time and time again. Through training ourselves to be able to meditate well, we can expect to be able to relax more easily, be calmer generally, lower our baseline stress levels, think more clearly, enjoy more positive and peaceful interactions with others – all of which improves our health and well-being.
Meditating and being calmer in everyday life is a way to counteract the harmful effects of stress. Stress comes in many forms and is a very real and present threat to our health in this complex modern world. Meditation is just one form of exercise we can practise to lower stress and improve our lives.
N.B. At this point, I need to point out that there is a small minority of people who suffer a negative reaction with meditation. If you have experienced this, don’t worry. The most likely cause is that the brain is now feeling safe enough to start to try and process some material that has been kept locked away for good reason. Probably the best course of action would be to seek out a good quality counsellor/psychotherapist to help deal with unresolved emotions from painful past experiences. The benefits of meditation are still available to you but the overall point is to continually achieve a greater state of inner peace so, at some point, in some way, those painful emotions will emerge. Better to deal with them in a controlled way rather than have them take you by surprise.
When we meditate, we are aiming to reach a state where we are deeply absorbed in our own awareness. To reach this state, we need to stop thinking and analysing. We need to get past our thoughts, get past our bodies, get past our problems, get past our relationships, get past what’s going on in our environment, etc. etc. etc. If we find ourselves thinking, we need to gently bring our focus back to the task. Again, just like training an animal, if we persevere, eventually our minds will relent and become more focused. Some people find it easier than others and some days are easier than others but as long as we put in regular practice, we can all improve and reap the benefits.
It is useful to try and maintain a good upright but relaxed posture with a straight back. You can sit in a comfortable chair, kneel with a firm cushion under your bottom (about 6″ high) or, if comfortable, use a lotus sitting position, again with a cushion underneath to tilt the pelvis to help maintain a straight back. Lying down is not recommended as we are too prone to falling asleep. Meditation brings many of the benefits of sleep – like activating the immune system – but is different from sleep in that we are training ourselves to hold our attention and become uniquely aware of our own consciousness.
As mentioned above, we are aiming to slow our brainwaves. In normal adult daily life, our brainwaves are predominantly in beta, where much of our focus is outside of ourselves on our environment. (When we are feeling stressed, our brainwaves are in high beta.) Every night, before sleep, our brainwaves slow to alpha as melatonin is released, we feel more relaxed and our focus starts to shift more inward. As we drift into sleep, our brainwaves slow to theta where we enter a more internal, relaxed and dreamy state. When we are in deep sleep, our brainwaves slow to delta. When it is getting time to wake up, serotonin is released which then starts to increase the frequency of our brainwaves and we pass through theta, then alpha and then up into beta so we can go about our day. When meditating, we do not want to reach delta, but if we can get to theta we will be meditating well. (As hinted at above, there is another highly beneficial state we may learn to achieve with good practice. Gamma brainwaves look similar to high beta waves but occur when the whole brain enters a highly coherent state – the opposite of feeling stressed. When people experience gamma waves, they tend to report feeling immense feelings of love and connection, they may have what they describe as a mystical experience and their bodies may go into a state of super healing. All of these have been studied and verified scientifically.)
Below, I will be adding any recordings of meditations that I create. Two useful ways to help enter a relaxed and focused state is by focusing on the breath and/or focusing on what you feel in your body – a body scan. I find that meditating using a body scan has unlimited potential and I tend to begin with the breath and then guide you through a thorough body scan. Also, focusing narrowly inside ourselves whilst becoming aware of the wider space outside of our bodies at the same time is an excellent mental exercise that helps us relax deeper.
All you have to do is follow the instructions and have a clear intention of letting yourself go into as deep a state of relaxation as you can. If you find yourself struggling to relax, stay with it and go easy on yourself. Just like doing exercise, each time we do it we feel better afterwards but we don’t expect any one session to be the be-all and end-all. Enjoy treating yourself to some time out and try to make a commitment to yourself to practise and improve over time.
Generic meditation (40 mins)
Energy Centres meditation (50 mins)
This meditation is using the teachings of Dr Joe Dispenza who is, I believe, a modern-day pioneer, pushing humanity forward with a new understanding of how science and spirituality are coming together. He is explaining what eastern mystics have been saying for thousands of years but in terms of accepted modern scientific understanding. More importantly, he is proving what he is saying by demonstrating the power of what is possible when we focus our minds with clear intention. With the meditations he has developed and teaches all around the world, people are experiencing results nothing short of miraculous. He collects data on his findings and distributes it to the mainstream scientific community. These data clash with current scientific knowledge of what human beings are capable of and so these results can be too much for established scientists to believe. Many scientists want Dr Dispenza to fail because the conclusions are too challenging to their established beliefs.
For this meditation, you will need to understand and be open to certain ideas:
Energy centres: traditionally called ‘shakras’ (meaning wheels), these correspond to the hormonal centres down the centre of the body that contain a plexus of neurons (brain cells). Each energy centre, under specific circumstances (for example, when strong emotion is present), is capable of ‘thinking for itself’. One aim in our meditation is to relax deeply so that our energy centres come back together, open up the channels of communication, become coherent and work together for the good of the whole body.
The body’s energy: our body has electro-magnetic energy flowing through it and outside of it, just like the magnetic energy of a magnet or the Earth. We can’t see it, or feel it but it is there. It is this electro-magnetic energy that is measured when someone has an fMRI or EEG scan in a hospital. One of our focuses in this meditation is on this energy.
Dr Dispenza has discovered that a powerful way to enter a deeper relaxation is by simultaneously holding a convergent and divergent focus at the same time. This meditation will keep instructing to focus on the infinitely narrow and the infinitely wide at the same time.
Dr Dispenza explains important understandings about the quantum world, the subatomic, and how that relates to what can become possible in our lives. Essentially, every atom which makes up the universe is itself made of virtually 100% energy. That means that our minds and bodies, and everything in the material world, is really made of energy, not matter. Dr Dispenza explains, demonstrates and proves through the data he captures, that when we understand how this energy inter-relates, we become far more able to create the life we want rather than be passive observers. An important point to try and reach in our meditations is to get so in touch with ourselves as a pure energy, as a centre of consciousness, that we step out of this material world and enter the quantum universe. If we can get to the point where we are ‘nobody, no-one, no thing, nowhere, in no time’ then we are entering a realm where possibilities are unlimited, where space and time do not exist, and where the laws of quantum physics now rule.
Universal consciousness: caveat – this may be too much for many people. If it is too much for you to consider the idea that there is a unified loving intelligence that permeates the universe, maybe this meditation is not for you! Personally, I believe that science will one day prove that the energy of our consciousness comes from and is part of a greater universal consciousness that we can interact with if we know how. For me, meditating is a means to getting back and staying in touch with this guiding, loving force. It is not easy, it is not clear and I may be getting it badly wrong but I believe that some human beings alive today are showing us the way we can achieve so much more than mainstream experts would have us believe. Dr Dispenza realises that words are not enough to convince people. He is collecting the data to prove that what he is saying is true. In this modern age, we are rightly sceptical of those who proclaim to be the experts in whom we should be blindly putting our faith. When there is enough data, that challenges the current paradigm, eventually there is a ground swell and change in the understanding, beliefs, knowledge and awareness of humanity starts to shift. We all have a choice where we want to be in that shift in understanding. We can be at the front being part of the change. We can be in the middle going along with the masses. Or we can be at the back, kicking and screaming and fighting the inevitable change because we find it too threatening to the status quo with which we have become comfortable. I know where I want to be.
Meditation for Change (40 mins)
This is a specific meditation, again, based on the teachings of Dr Joe Dispenza who is helping people bring about wonderful and even miraculous changes in their life. Dr Dispenza collects the data on what people are managing to achieve in his workshops around the world and gives it to universities to analyse. There is a lot of scepticism about his results but he explains how he is no longer concerned with convincing the scientists and the sceptics; he is more concerned with helping those who are interested.
I have provided some verbal instructions and guidance at the start of the meditation. The important elements are: 1) start with a clear and specific change you want to try to bring about; 2) aim to relax as deeply as possible to access the subconscious programming state; 3) generate elevated emotions as strongly as possible; 4) imagine and feel as deeply and in as much detail as possible how that change will be for you; 5) remember to continue living with those same feelings and investing in the change even after the meditation has finished.