Mini-Meditation Series: Self-Compassion
Self – Compassion practice:
Sit on a chair or cushion with your back straight & relaxed
Let your bodies be still,
Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down
Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently
Relax your body, clear your mind
On your next breath bring your attention to your heart centre
Put your hand on your heart centre
Feel the sensations for a moment
And repeat these phrases after me in your mind:
May I be healthy and strong
May I be happy
May I be peaceful
May I love myself just as I am
May I hold myself in compassion
May I be well
May my mind and body be in balance & centred
Reflect on the feelings arise here for a moment…
Then bring your attention to your breathing, come back to this moment
And slowly open your eyes and go on with your daily activities
Love & blessing
Gita
Open Field of Awareness (Six minutes guided meditation)
Open field of awareness meditation:
Let your bodies be still,
Let your eyes close, or gaze softly
Settling into its posture,
bring your awareness to how the body is feeling at this moment, just come home to the body. Body is really a concept you are hearing its sensations, temperature, tightness and so on…, connect to the sensations of the body
Just allowing yourself to settle back, and sit comfortably
If you feel sensation in your body, just softening your face, your eyes, your shoulders…
The sensations are simply come and go
In the space, we call awareness
Nothing to do, nothing to have, just bodily sensations arising and passing
Just like a twinkling star on the open sky
The sensations simply being known by awareness
How is it feel to be aware, to know you know
Nothing to do, nowhere to go, just be in the moment
Be present and aware, be here, now
Now I like to invite you to notice your thoughts and emotions
Any thoughts or emotions come to your mind, simply notice them, name them, let them be, and let them pass from the blue sky of your mind
Then simply come back to your breath, come back to this moment
Nothing to do, nothing to have, nothing to be
Just these mental sensations, bodily sensations coming and going
Like the twinkling star in the open sky
Is it possible to simply rest in the field of awareness, rest in knowing?
Just notice what is it like to know that you are aware, is it possible to rest in this spacious mindfulness?
Awareness that can hold sounds, thoughts and sensations
You don’t need to accomplish anything right now, just be in the moment….
Then on your next breath, kindly bring your attention back to your breathing, come back to this moment, come back to centre, and slowly open your eyes…., and finish this mindfulness practice session, and go on with your daily activities
Thank you
Gita
Mini-Meditation Series: Forgivness
Mini-meditation series:
Forgiveness:
Sit on a chair or a cushion with your back straight & relaxed
Let your bodies be still,
Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down look at the floor beneath you
Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently
Relax your body, clear your mind
Then on your next breath bring your attention to your heart centre
Put your hand on your heart, the area around your chest
Feel the sensations for a moment
Then on your next breath simply start to forgive yourself for any wrongdoings or any self-judgments you have had about yourself. Any strong feelings or actions, anything you have done which you think it was inappropriate, and silently say these phrases after me:
May I forgive myself for any harm that I have caused myself intentionally or unintentionally.
May I forgive myself for any strong feelings I have had towards people whom I know or don’t know, strong emotions like Jealousy, hatred, shame, anger, judgment, and so on.
Take a moment to notice where in your body you feel these emotions, the sensations maybe, be aware of them for a moment, kindly let them go…., and forgive yourself thoroughly.
Then bring your attention back to your breathing, come back to this moment
Come back to centre, and gently open your eyes and go on with your daily activities
Love & blessing
Gita
Mini-Meditation Series: Practice Grounding
Mini-meditation series:
Practice grounding:
Sit on a chair or a cushion with your back straight & relaxed
Let your bodies be still,
Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down
Take a few deep breaths in, and breathe out gently.
Relax your body, Clear your mind
Now take a deep breath and bring your attention to the touch points of your body
Your hands resting on your lab, your feet touching the floor
Ground yourself to the sense of gravity, your body’s weight…, and stay with the feelings arise here for a moment
Take a few deep breaths here, and let go of any emotions or bodily sensations experiencing at the moment…., breath them out and let them go….
Then slowly come back to centre, to your breath, to this moment…., gently open your eyes and go on with your daily activities!
Love & Blessing
Gita
Hand Model of the Brain by Dr. Dan Siegel
In this great video, Dr Dan Siegel explains how the integration between different parts of the brain work and how mindfulness meditation practices can help this integration to regulate our thoughts and behaviours. he explains how you can change the structure of the brain by knowing how the brain structured.
He illustrates what is the job of our prefrontal cortex and other parts of our brains, and how PFC integrates with the other parts of the body and what is the outcome of this integration!
He says: “ Prefrontal Cortex integrates Cortex, Limbic area, Brainstem, body and even the social world together. Now when you do a practice lets say like we have wheel of awareness practice as a form of mindfulness meditation or any kind of mindfulness reflective practices you are integrating your whole system, when you are not integrated it can become chaotic and rigid, it is like flipping your lid, so instead of living in harmony within yourself, and harmony and in connection to others, you are literally becoming chaotic with an outburst or rigidly withdrawn “
Mini-Meditation Series: Body Scan
Sit on a chair or cushion with your back straight & relaxed
Let your bodies be still
Let your eyes closed or leave them open gaze down
Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently
Relax your body, clear your mind
Take a deep breath in and breathe out any emotions, feelings or sensations experiencing at this moment…
Take another deep breath in, bring your attention to your forehead, your eyes, your mouth, your cheek, and your chin, feel the sensations there, and in your our breath, breathe out any tensions or any emotions experiencing at the moment and let your face become relaxed
Take another breath in and bring your attention to the middle body, your heart, lung, intestine, kidney, liver, In your out breath, breathe out any sensations experiencing there, relax and let go
Take another breath, and this time brings your attention to your lower body, your ties, knees, legs and toes. In your out breath, breathe out any sensations experiencing there relax and let go
Finally take a deep breath in bring all the air inside your entire body, and in your out breath, breathe out any feelings of tension, stress, pain or discomfort of the body and mind……, breathe them all out and let them go,
Then come back to centre, to this moment and go on with your daily activities, energized and relaxed!
Love and blessing
Gita
Mind Fitness: How Meditation Boost Your Focus Resilience and Brain | Daniel Goleman
Mindfulness Meditation is the exercise for your brain. As I always tell my students If you follow through and practice mindfulness meditation every single day… pretty soon you’ll see results. You will notice how your reactivity reduced, how your focus & attention increased, and how you can respond to any situation wisely, instead of react blindly!
In this video Psychologist and science journalist, Daniel Goleman talks about the difference between altered state and altered trait, and how mindfulness meditation practices can boost your brain:
“Altered states refers to a mode of consciousness or awareness that takes us out of our ordinary everyday sense of the world, sense of ourselves. We can enter altered states when we get intensely focused on something—deep concentration will bring you into an altered state, sometimes people like to talk how athletes get “into the zone” or they “get into flow”, those are everyday altered states, but they come from being intensely focused on some activity or in the moment itself. And of course, altered states can come from drugs or from being in an unusual physiological state. A fever can bring on an altered state. And of course, the ‘60s and ‘70s saw a huge upsurge of people interested in exploring altered states through psychedelics. So altered states are temporary conditions, and when whatever it was that brought on the special state of awareness leaves, then the state fades. So if you get into a flow state rock climbing, when you come down from the mountain, it’s gone—or whatever may have caused it: your temperature might have gone up, and put you into maybe not a pleasant altered state, but still an altered state. The temperature goes down, it’s gone.
Altered traits, on the other hand, are lasting changes or transformations of being, and they come classically through having cultivated an altered state through meditation, which then has a consequence for how you are day-to-day—and that’s different than how you were before you tried the meditation. And what we find in our research, as we say in the book Altered Traits, is that the more you meditate, the more lifetime hours you put into it, the stronger the lasting traits become.When we surveyed more than 6000 peer-reviewed articles published to date on meditation we used very strict rigorous methodological standards and we whittled them down to about 60, so maybe one percent of all those articles were really well done. And they document very strongly that altered traits are lasting consequences of regular meditation and it’s not that it’s the altered states that’s the point. If you look at the classic traditions from which meditation comes to us in the West, all of them talk about the quality of being, the person you’ve become. And we see it in the data in many ways. We see it in cognitive changes, we see in behavioural changes and most importantly we see it in neurological changes the neuroscience of meditation is really getting stronger and stronger. It’s pretty spectacular and it shows that brain function and perhaps even structure in the long-term meditators becomes different and becomes different in ways that are actually predicted in classic meditation texts. “
Contact us today to book your free online meditation session: info@meditationforallages.com
Mini-Meditation Series: Gratitude & Appreciation, Gratefulness
Mini-meditation series:
Gratitude & appreciation, Gratefulness:
Let your bodies be still,
Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down
Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently
Relax your body, clear your mind
On your next breath bring into your mind a few things that you are grateful for at this moment;
Your children, your partner, your profession, your health, the place you live, a hug from a friend, the sun on your face, some one’s smile,…, and so on
Notice how you feel, stay with the feeling arise here and reflect on them for a few more breaths
Then bring your attention to your breathing, come back to this moment
And slowly open your eyes and go on with your daily activities, happier and more content!
Try finding three things each day that you feel grateful for
Love & blessing,
Gita
Mini-Meditation Series : Mindful Listening
Mini meditation series
Mindful listening:
Sit outside in the nature with your back straight & relaxed
Let your bodies be still
Let your eyes closed
Take a few deep breaths in, and breathe out gently
Relax your body, clear your mind
Now take a deep breath, and gently listen to the sounds around you while breathing
Sounds of the birds singing
Sounds of the leaves moving by the winds
Simply listen to the sounds of the nature for a few minutes, and enjoy the experience!
Then slowly come back to center, to your breath, to this moment… gently open your eyes and go on with your daily activities!
Love and Blessing
Gita
What is Pain-body and how Mindfulness Meditation can help?
Pain-body is negative emotions, it is an accumulation of difficult life experiences that were not fully faced and accepted at the time of arousal. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain, and then after some years, you have a “pain-body”, an energy entity consisting of old strong emotions.
It lives in human beings, and it is the emotional aspect of egoic consciousness. When the ego is amplified by the emotion of the pain-body, you need to first recognize it when it shifts from dormant to active, then to be present for it, to observe and acknowledge it and let it fade away from your conscious mind.
Mindfulness Meditation techniques give the practitioner the opportunity to first understand its own Pain-body and become aware of it, then learn how to manage it properly. You can bring these emotions to present moment by observing your thoughts, emotions, and feelings while practising mindfulness, acknowledging them and letting them go at the time of arising.
Also once we understand that we have a pain body and need to be aware of it, we will realize that other people around us, each of them also have a pain body of their own. Therefore we become more compassionate towards them when we notice their pain bodies have gone up!
During your regular meditation practice, you may recall one piece of the memory of an incident from the past that it may happen to you years ago. You then look at it with your present eyes and acknowledge it and let it come into your awareness, then consciously allow it to pass from your conditioned mind. What just happened here is that the intensity of the pain body that just has been acknowledged, will be reduced from your mind and you feel lighter and calmer. It is like a heavy load got off your shoulder!
“The beginning of freedom from the pain-body lies first of all in the realization that you have a pain-body. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough alert enough, to notice the pain-body in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you.” Eckhart Tolle
Love & Blessing
Gita Nilforoush
Contact us today to book your free online meditation session: info@meditationforallages.com
