Do you need to calm down? Is your anxiety or pain level too high, or your body reacting to stuff all over the place? Then, one of the techniques I recommend, and am using myself for food hyper-sensitivity, is meditation. You can read a much larger blog post about the steps I am taking to calm my hyper-sensitivity down here on TGF (I didn’t want to bore you all with it!), but it suddenly struck me this morning that many of you would benefit from this meditation programme that starts today!
Here’s a bit taken from that post which might suit some of my lovely Purehealth family:
My Fave Meditation Technique
I have read countless books on meditation, breathing, para-sympathetic triggering type techniques, watched many videos and lectures on neuroscience and availed myself of what seems like zillions of downloads. For this calming down stage, I found the one that works best for me me is the simplest and takes 15 minutes. Go figure. And I got it for free, so bonus!
Basically, even though they are really well-known celebs etc, they do know their stuff and Deepak’s credentials are second to none in this field. I have quite a few of his CDs etc now and there’s not one I haven’t liked. It might just be that he has a superb deep, nourishing sort of voice that I respond to. (So does P and that’s why I fell in love with him on the phone, which is a whole other story..). Anyway, the way it works is that they do free programmes and then you can purchase if you want to. I’m not sure if the free version goes after the 21 days as I bought it anyway so I could download and keep it. Either way, there are regular free ones and loads of resources on the main website too.
How It Works
Each day’s meditation starts with a little chat from Oprah and then a positive healing type message from Deepak. This is followed by a ‘centreing thought’ – an affirmation if you will – and then a 10 minute meditation where you breathe and silently say the day’s mantra in your head. The point of the mantra is that if you are focusing on that, you are not focusing on anything else and you can drift into what they call ‘the gap’, the stillness and silence that is so nourishing for our parasympathetic nervous systems. It takes practice, of course, as does anything worthwhile doing.
NB. You may be way beyond me here, of course, but bear in mind the lesson I am giving here is to start right back at the beginning and have the intention of not over-stressing your mind and body. To go right back to basics with meditation. Do you need to do that? I didn’t realise I did for months!
You can read tons on the t’interweb about meditation generally, and about mantra meditation specifically so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel there. I will say one of the best books about meditation types I have read is DavidJi, someone who actually who worked with Deepak for years and he explains the various techniques and gives you little trials to have a go with. The book can get a bit ‘deep and meaningful’ if you know what I mean, but I found the explanations about the various methods of meditation very useful and enjoyable. I’m sure there are other, probably better ones, but I haven’t read them and this one worked for me.
Suffice to say, he now rates mantra meditation, specifically primordial sound meditation (no, never heard of it either!!), as the best, having tried loads over the years. Useful to know. After I read that, I thought: ooh, I know a good mantra one; the 21 day challenge!
I’m sure there are others but that 21 day thing works for me. I repeat it twice a day, either doing the same day twice or moving on and just repeating the whole programme in a shorter time. I’m sure I’ll move onto others in time. One thing I do know is that I like meditating and find it very beneficial. Very calming.
One thing I did like about it specifically was the positivity. Again, cheesy, but I noticed how negative I had become in my own self-talk especially, but also to everyone else. So, I specifically wanted someone to talk to me positively. I also wrote down the centreing thought or something that was said on a piece of paper and stuck it on my notice board, repeating it every time I walked past it. And, I do think it made a difference.
In fact, there is even a part of the site where you can write down your thoughts and answers to some questions after each day’s meditation if you like – confidentially, of course – and I found that helpful. I didn’t do it every day but it has been interesting to go back and look at what I said last time. I find there is a definite shift in my thinking, which is nice to see. Not so negative. Most of the time 😉. Of course, journaling (writing stuff down to you and me), is a known technique for helping heal emotions specifically so that part of the programme is also good to do.
Free 21 Day Programme Coming Up on 3rd November 2014!
I was lucky that the Perfect Health programme came up as I needed it. I am happy to say there is a new 21 day challenge due to start on 3rd November. It’s called Energy of Attraction – Manifesting Your Best Life. You can see more about it here and join in if you like. It’s not a specific health one, although there is a lot of cross-over I find in these kind of things and it may just help you get into the habit of meditation or simply try it, as I did. Worth a look.