Pour Yourself a Meditation Cocktail
Meditation has got to be the undisputed and undefeated champion of the world in Seems-So-Easy-But-Actually-So-Difficult-istics
Why is it so hard to sit still and focus on one thing so that your mind becomes clear and you get a break from the relentless thought stream that you’re awash with every minute of every day?
That question can only be answered by you. And you’ll only find the answer when you look for it through meditation.
I would offer the theory though that we are attached to our thoughts, because our thoughts are our way of making sense of the world, planning for the future, and distracting ourselves from the parts of our lives that we’re not so happy with. If we shut that down for a few minutes, it feels scary.
So if you want to begin a meditation practice, don’t wait for when you WANT to meditate. It’s a discipline, kind of like brushing your teeth. You just have to roll up your sleeves and get it done.
How though?
Thought waves
Thought waves: Trying to stop your thoughts is about as practical as trying to stop waves crashing onto a beach.
Instead, we must simply observe them for what they are.
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Just My Advice (take it or leave it)
Begin with guided meditation. There are so many great apps out there — Headspace, Insight Timer, Waking Up, to name a few. I actually recorded a Free guided meditation for you, which you can get HERE.
Then perhaps look into the different styles of meditation out there.
The following sections of this blog describe a few types of meditation which I have personally practiced and studied (by studied I mean they were covered in teacher trainings I’ve done, I dabble in them, and I’ve maybe read an article or two about them — I’m by no means an expert!) My personal meditation practice is a blend of these. And that’s step 3...
Once you’ve tried a few guided meditations and a few styles, take what works for you and get rid of the rest so that you can go into each meditation practice with the tools you need to get the most out of it at that time, depending on what you need at that time.
Meditation cocktail!
Meditation Cocktail (n.) The opposite of an alcoholic cocktail, which is often used to distract the mind and numb the emotions, a meditation cocktail may lead the consumer to observe their thoughts and face their uncomfortable emotions.
Some meditation ingredients you might like in your cocktail
Not the 10-day meditation retreat called Vipassana but just the style of meditation that involves simply observing.
You may observe the sounds around you, or the feeling of your body making contact with the earth, or the sensation of your breath going in and out.
You can focus on your thoughts, step away from them, and let them go, over and over again. Whatever you do, just try to keep your mind focused on something which you observe. There’s to be no judgement or desire to change anything.
This is my personal favourite because I believe through the act of simply observing what’s around us without judgement, it hones within us a skill that we can take into our everyday lives.
We learn to see things as they are and accept them, rather than passing some sort of judgement on them, or desire to control them or change these things. Whatever “these things” may be.
Zazen comes from Japan and involves keeping your eyes open, although you must look down at the floor in front of you and clear the space around you, and close all windows and doors, to minimise distraction from your senses.
The mind's focus should be on the breath. It’s emphasised to sit in a position that allows for full breathing, so sitting tall but without rigidity.
You count your breaths from 1 to 10 and then back down to 1.
Surprisingly difficult! When you catch your mind wandering, you begin again at 1. If you get to the point that you’re able to repeatedly count up to 10 and back down to 1, then you may not need to count anymore.
If it sounds easy, just try it.
I bet you can’t count 20 breaths without your mind wandering.*
*Adell owes you no money if you can do it. Adell does not promote gambling ;-)
Just as it sounds, this style of meditation is simply visualising.
I’ve mentioned before that we are ALL very good at visualising and we do it all the time when we WORRY. But obviously this form of meditation is taking our worrying skills and turning them around to imagine nice things happening!
This is a fun one, because you can visualise anything your imagination can come up with. It’s not day dreaming or getting lost in a fantasy though.
The aim is to focus your visualisation on something that will be useful to you. If you’re feeling anxious, perhaps your visualisation is that you’re walking through a woodland and feeling in detail the soft earth under your feet. You can hone in on the minute sensations of the dappled sunlight warming your skin as it glows beyond the leaves over your head.
Visualisation is a matter of painting a picture around your psyche, and placing yourself in a scene to illicit a feeling or a sensation of calm, peace, confidence, strength, or self-worth.
There are a lot of guided visualisation meditations out there if you can’t think of a scene you want to paint yourself into.
TM is a branded style of meditation. It has seen its share of controversy; its celebrity endorsements and high price to receive a personalised mantra have given rise to some calling it a cult.
But thousands of people have found incredible power through it, and would aver that it is, indeed, transcendental.
In TM you are given a mantra by a certified teacher and that mantra is for you to keep to yourself. It’s usually a couple of syllables that are meaningless, and for 15-20 minuets twice a day you recite the mantra over and over to yourself.
The practice offers many people a chance to achieve “deep inner calm” and “clarity of the mind” as well as alleviating and ameliorating many serious issues such as depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, and others, according to their snazzy and somewhat-sales-y website.
Also this is my blog so I’ll say what I want.
I think the Transcendental Meditation brand is a little extreme to charge so much money to teach people something that’s really so very simple: reciting a meaningless couple of syllables. If you want to try TM, say something like So Hum or Sat Nam to begin with. See how you get on with it.
I haven’t had the personalised instruction from a teacher though so I can’t speak with any experience or authority about what it’s like to receive your own personal meaningless mantra. Maybe one day I'll eat these words.
But for now, I’d also suggest perhaps starting with the 15-20 minutes, twice a day, prescription of reciting your mantra, but also keep in mind that it’s YOUR meditation practice and YOUR life and you, like me with this blog, can do what want. And so maybe that means doing it three times a day for 10 minutes, or once a day for 5 minutes, or whatever feels right for you.
And that’s the gist of this blog altogether; just take things that work for you, so that you can find a moment of peace and clarity.
For me, I often begin my meditation with a Vipassana style of simply noticing how I feel, what thoughts are coming up, what I’m worrying about, and where I’m holding tension. If I’ve got a big day ahead of me, I might then employ visualisation to envisage how I’d like it to pan out. Sometimes my mind just won’t calm down and I find that using the Zazen method of keeping my eyes open can help, but I’ll add to it a TM twist by reciting a mantra. Although I personally prefer to use mantras that DO mean something to me, such as “I am love” or “I am enough”.
Meditation cocktail. Cheers!