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Over the years I have meditated on and off. When my mind is too active or things are too busy I find it’s easy to talk myself into not meditating.
The Meditation Project - My Experience
After making the commitment in January to meditate every day for at least 20 minutes something has changed. First, the chatter (or stream of thought flowing through my mind) has reduced significantly. When I started the chatter was constant, now that stream seems more subtle and sometimes my mind is totally quiet. Second, I notice that I am not triggered as much by events as I was before. I’m more relaxed and centered. Third, when I meditate I feel like I’m in an incubator (don’t know how else to describe it). I’m totally at peace, my mind is totally relaxed and often I don’t want the experience to end.
This is last post in this series about basic principles of meditation. These ideas have come from my own experience and I’m sure will evolve over time. For a sitting meditation I’ve talked about becoming the observer of your thoughts, breath and emotions. A greater awareness of your ego is another step which allows you to go deeper. And finally learning to direct your thought and emotion toward the positive is one of the basic principles of the Law of Attraction.
Walking Meditation
To bring this experience full circle the next step is to start to apply these techniques into your daily life. This is what I call a Walking Meditation. Most of us run on autopilot for most of our day from our jobs, running around after the kids or doing errands. Rarely do we take time for ourselves to become centered.
Here are a couple of suggestions.
Next time you get into your car. Let’s say you’re driving to work. Turn off the radio, cell phones or any distraction. Focus on your breath and observe how your body feels. Focus on your thoughts. What are you thinking about? Allow the thought to come in, be aware and then let it go… go back to your breath. Get into the practice of bringing your awareness into the present moment. You can practice this at any stage during your day.
If I’m in a business situation (let’s a say a board meeting) quite often I’ll bring my awareness into that moment. I’ll look around the room and observe who’s in the room, the general mood or feeling and then I’ll then bring my attention to myself and become aware of my breathing, my thoughts and so on. This tends to make me more centered, focused and alert to whatever is going on.
Life can get pretty distracting and it’s easy to go back into autopilot. However if you practice a little bit at a time you develop an awareness muscle that can help you to be more centered as you go about your day.
This is the end of this series of posts on the Basic Principles of Meditation. Stay tuned, my E-Book will soon be available and more interesting posts to come. Be sure to subscribe to my blog in either in reader or via email below.
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