Today I am going to go into more detail of my “meditation” that is part of my self-care and morning routine. It is now a habit that I do first thing every morning.
As I said last week, I have recently been alternating trying to truly meditate (what I view as being mindful and focusing on my breath) with a self-guided breathing / prayer / gratefulness / visualization period. I alternate each type for 15 minutes every morning.
Here I am sharing the details of my guided meditation.
The original starting point for this sequence came from Tony Robbin’s “Priming.” You can look that up and watch or listen to it. I did listen to this for a while and then started doing it myself because I prefer the silence and my own guidance / pattern. I now set my timer for 15 minutes in the free version of the “Ten Percent Happier” app and then do this on my own. I like how the “Ten Percent Happier” app tracks the number of days I have meditated. They also have free 21 day meditation challenges that I have enjoyed. These challenges have helped me try some new things and gain exposure and lessons to different meditations.
My guided meditation has four parts:
- Breathing,
- Connection with God,
- Gratefulness, and
- Visualization of things I want.
Breathing
In my own self-guided sequence, I first do this breathing exercise that my boys just love to make fun of and imitate. I am sitting and with my arms over my head I pull my arms down and breathe out hard and fast. I do this 30 times and then I do five really big slow mindful breaths. I repeat the 30 fast breaths with my arms moving up and down two more times for a total of three sets.
Then I do a quick body scan to see how my body is feeling. I start at my head and consciously notice how the various parts are feeling. Am I tight anywhere? Sore anywhere? I get a lot of headaches so noticing if I have one, where it hurts and how bad it is.
Connection
I then try to really open my mind, my heart and my whole being to connect with God. It is difficult to describe but I literally try to feel my spirit and parts of myself reaching out and opening up to the space around me. I then repeat the mantra, “I am love. I am loved.” Sometimes I change it up, to “I am happy. I am healthy. I live with ease.” But lately the “I am love. I am loved.” feels best for me. It helps me connect to God. I imagine a beam of light filling me up when I say “I am loved” and think about letting my light shine outward when I say, “I am love.”
Gratefulness
I then do my gratefulness practice which I already wrote about in a previous post. This always feels so good and is a GIANT thank you to God and the special moments I want to remember and relive.
Visualization
I end with a visualization of three things that I want in my life. I pretend and feel like they are already true.
1) What do I want to be doing for my work. I imagine working with people I LOVE and enjoy and excite me. I imagine what I am doing and how a good client meeting feels and their appreciation of our work together.
2) I imagine standing at the Princeton Public Library and seeing my name on the New York Times best seller list and how awesome that feels. (Yes, like so many other people, I want to write a book.) I then imagine being at a party to celebrate the publishing of my book with my close friends and hugging my coach. I also imagine being on my book tour and presenting and connecting to people in the audience. I can feel how much I LOVE doing that. I love hearing people’s questions and learning about what people liked and disliked about the book.
3) The last part of my visualization is thoroughly enjoying my free time and laying in bed reading. I want down time and reading is one of my favorite things to do. 🙂
All three of these visualization parts are not too specific. I am not trying to figure out how they happen. They each are much more about how I feel doing something I love and want more of in my life.
I realize this may sound complicated or complex but it isn’t. I encourage you to create your own guided mediation with a script. You can easily create an audio file on your phone and start using it so it is in your own voice and focusing on what you want and doing it your own way.
If you would like to listen to an old recording of my guided meditation, here is a link to it. The written description above is more accurate to what I am currently doing but this old recording is where I started from and is fairly close. (To set expectations, this is NOT a professional recording. It was created for my own personal use. I debated if I should share it here. If you listen carefully you can hear my boys at some parts in the background.)
I would love to hear what you think of this or what type of meditation you do and prefer.
Sending Love and Light,
Tara
P.S. Describing the details of my own guided meditation feels a little embarrassing and scary to me. I hope I have not made too much a fool of myself by sharing this. My intention is to share something that may give you some ideas and hopefully be helpful or inspire you in someway.
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