Start your day with Meditation
Daily meditation has many advantages: bring inner peace, focus, clarity, harmony, awareness. It keeps bad energy & stress away. How to start? For some people morning meditation is a long-established ritual, while for those just starting out it can seem like a whole world. In this article, I’m going to explain you various way to start your day with meditation. Then, you will find what’s the best match for you!
Various way to practice meditation
Did you know that there is not only one way to meditate? What if I told you that one of them is very simple, and will only take you 4 minutes, would you try it?
Very often, when I share that I practice and teach meditation, I hear “it’s not for me”, or “meditation is difficult”, or “it hurts when I sit on the floor for too long, so I can’t meditate for long”, or “I can’t stop my thoughts”. I can reassure you: meditation is not about stopping your thoughts… and you don’t necessarily have to sit in a lotus!
First of all, let’s talk about the many benefits of incorporating morning meditation into your routine.
Meditation, a time for yourself
Meditation is a moment reserved for yourself, during which you have the opportunity to be in relation with your body, your whole being. You can feel it, observe your breathing and become aware of possible areas of tension that you may have been unaware of before. Indeed, being aware of your tensions is the first step towards muscular and emotional relaxation.
Furthermore, morning meditation is an excellent way to create a protective bubble to feel protected throughout the day. It is likely that during the course of the day you may be confronted with various external aggressions, particularly of a sensory nature. For example, sounds, negative energies from certain people, smells, pressures in your work environment…
Or external disturbances can simply be physical. Such as bad weather that affects our bodies, such as humidity and wind, a change in atmospheric pressure or temperature, etc. Let us mention that our skin is a very sensitive organ, which has many receptors. These inform your brain about what is happening in your environment at all times. Every one of your senses is constantly called upon. And if you think about it, hearing and skin sensations are the senses that are hardest to ignore.
Starting your day with meditation allows your to…
In short, morning meditation allows you to return to “your home”. That is to say, to get back to your body, after the night’s sleep during which your mind has gone on a dream journey! You will feel more centred within yourself and therefore less affected by the outside world.
As you become more aware of what is happening around you, you gain more understanding. Indeed, when you are more centred in yourself, you are much calmer. It is therefore possible to filter the information you receive, to decide what to do with it. You then begin to have more control over your mind. In conclusion, you become your own master!
It’s a nice way to create your protection bubble to feel supported all along your day. Indeed, during our day you may face various aggressions : sounds, negative energy of some persons, some pressure at work… or just the weather who affect our body because of the humidity, the law pressure, the heat… Our skin is very sensitive and we have many receptors who give informations to our brain about what’s going in its environment : it’s constantly communicating. Same for each of our sens, but the hearing and skin sensation can never been ignored.
If you start your day with meditation, and go back to your body/house, you can feel less affected by the outside : you are conscious of it, you feel and observe, and you can control you mind because you understand what’s going on, and can filter the informations you receive and decide what to do with them. You are your own master !
How can I start my day with meditation ?
A very easy way to do it, especially if you’re in a hurry, is choosing an action that you have to do every day. Let’s say washing your face. Let’s do each action with your full consciousness, more slowly to start.
First, you open the water, you put your hand under the water. You feel if it’s hot or cold, lot of pressure or not : observe your physical sensations without changing anything. If you use a glove, how do you take it ? Which movement are you doing to wash your face ? Then you rinse the glove, you put it back to its place. You take a towel, you dry your face. You close your eyes, what do you feel ? Don’t look for answer, just remain in your sensation and feeling, no judgement, no comment.
Just be here and now and observe a daily action, that’s it. You may realize that when you are focus on doing an action with all your attention there is less space for your thoughts. It’s getting much more quiet inside yourself !
Try with any action : put your cloth on, wash the dishes… any simple things. It’s not especially taking longer to do the action, you are just more aware.
What’s happening when you meditate ?
Observation
You experiment various stage during meditation. This is why I suggest a progression, starting with the OBSERVATION of a daily action without changing anything.
Relaxation
Then, you may want to take some time before sleeping to lie down to observe your breathing, how each part of your body is moving, the sensation of the air in your nose going in, and out, the speed, the temperature, the color it could have, the texture… This is the first stage of RELAXATION. The mind calm down, the emotions get released, the muscles let go any tensions…
What’s happening in your brain during your morning meditation
Your brain is creating some waves of various frequences. This wave are generally fast when you start to meditate. You may be in gamma waves, which are faster (36Hz and more). When you are learning something, your brain creates this kind of waves. The more stressed you are, the faster the vibrations or the wave may be… which is one of the reason why you may feel tired actually, or sometimes can’t sleep properly : your brain need some rest as well !
When you are awake and in a normal stage of consciousness, your brain wave frequence is called the beta waves (13 to 36Hz). When you calm down and meditate, you rich the alpha waves (8-13Hz) : you are awake, physically and mental relaxed. If you reach a stage of deep meditation, you may rich the Thêta waves (4-8Hz).
Observe your thoughts
After the relaxation, you may be able to OBSERVE your thoughts, if you have any. They are here, you see them, but you don’t change anything and accept their existence. They have their own life, don’t judge, let things be. You slowly get more aware of yourself, your own environment.
It’s totally ok if you need to move to do some meditation : trans, whirling, free movement, walking in the street, in nature… You can have eyes close, eyes open, everything is fine. You need to do what is confortable for you : this is your time. You also can observe a tree, the wind in the leaves… Let the images comes to you : see without watching.
Creative thoughts
The further you go, the more you can access to deeper level of consciousness. You can access to visions, intuitions, creatives thoughts, messages from univers.
Unity and harmony
Then, you may reach a stage of pure love, unity, harmony with yourself. You are a human being, part of the all : the illusion of the separation slowly drop. The time and space slowly disappear. You are here and now.
Disappearance of ego
Your ego is not longer here : you know you are but your conscience is larger than a human being. Life is infinite, death in only the end of a cycle. Everything become the conscious itself.
This experience is wonderful : the instant of grace when you met what can be called the divin. A powerful love and light surround you, for me this is the ecstasis. This last generally few second in the real 3D time but you feel this is much longer… If you have any resistance left, in that time everything drop to simply be pure harmony, pure love : a magical experience who deeply heal and transform you each time. This is when you can feel the existence of your consciousness, this energy who will remain after your death in the immensity of the cosmos.
It’s not easy to describe as for me this is a personal experience between you and your self, and with the univers. This is why in the Sufi philosophy we talk about “the quest of the self ” or “the quest of the divin” and the way of love. For me this is a very precious time for myself, on which I know I activate my self healing process and improve my wellness. I reached a stage where I have fewer thoughts everyday, often nothing at all… and this is such pure happyness and wellness because it leave space for creativity and existence itself.
Do you own experience and please feel free to share it, whichever stage you experimented. No judgement, we all have different way, pace…
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_/|\_ Enjoy meditation _/|\_
Music © Naoshi Matsumura
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