21 Day Meditation

This 21-day meditation is the perfect challenge to give yourself.  Accessible and no experience needed. We start right at the beginning and gradually develop it. Ever thought about meditating, now is the time. Be kind to yourself, meditate for ten minutes a day.

Meditation can help you to concentrate, be present, calm your mind, sleep better, feel better, basically improve every function of how your brain operates.  If the brain and nervous system are happier, this is also great news for the body!

We start where we are, right at the beginning. Becoming aware of thoughts and trying to follow the breath. This is meditation, just waking up to the present moment.

Your journey starts here!

Already the process has begun and you are learning how to concentrate better. Getting used to time in silence and discovering yourself. Beginning the relationship with your breath.

Follow the breath.

Our meditation object for this class is using sound. Sound can be useful as it brings an open and expansive attention to our meditation. We start to learn how to work with it.

Simple, just listen to the universe!

We continue our work with sound, exploring what is sound and what happens when we ‘hear’.  Starting with a small area of concentration and gradually widen it more and more.

So, what is hearing?

Meditation in a simple way is learning to pay attention to sense experience in the present moment.  We have introduced two ways of doing this, sound or feeling for the sensation of the breath. This class develops the work with the breath.

Back to the Breath!

Where do we feel the breath? what is happening when we breathe?  How does the breath shape us? We explore all of this, and we don’t have to go anywhere, it’s happening all inside us.

Be curious, investigate.

This class blends the best of working with sound as the meditation object and following the breath. We learn how to be both expansive and concentrated with our focus.

Find infinite space inside your own head.

So much of what meditation is is just noticing distraction. Noticing we are lost in thought and coming back to the object of meditation again and again. This is how we grow our mindfulness.

Notice distraction, simple?

Watching the breath is a bit like watching a wild animal. We want to do it softly, from a distance. So it doesn’t know we are there and it doesn’t change its behavior.

Softly, softly follow the animal.

Body awareness is a big part of meditation and this is the focus of this class.  We practice doing a body scan. We explore and investigate sensation in our own bodies.

Discover your own body.

More work with body awareness and body scanning.  Learning to identify and let go of tension in our bodies. Understand the universe by understanding your own body. This is some of the benefits of meditation.

Go deep, go wide.

Something different today.  We try lying down meditation. Traditionally there are four meditation postures to represent the movements of life: sitting, standing, lying and walking.

Explore your body and breath in a different position.

Don’t fall asleep!

Back to the seat and back to the breath.  We have longer in silence. Learning to meditate is a bit like learning to play a musical instrument. Difficult at the start, requiring practice, but making sweet music in the end.

Find your instrument.

Standing meditation is what we try in this class.  Standing up can bring a very different quality to the meditation and your level of attention.  The focus of the meditation moves to the feet rather than the breath.

Stand to attention.

The time in silence is growing now.  Your concentration has grown a lot even if you are not aware of it.  Just being able to notice our thoughts shows that our awareness and concentration are improving.

Keep going!

Meditation is a bit like being a baby, experiencing things as a baby does… just simple sense experience before we had words before our mind had labels to stick on everything. Pure, raw experience.

Go back to basics.

We experience the last of the four meditation postures - walking meditation.  We move slowly and we feel the sensation around the feet, as you lift the foot, as you move it through the air and as you put it down.

Just walking, nothing more.

The periods of silence are growing and you are getting accustomed to following the breath at your navel. We are back doing seated meditation, growing with it all the time.

Enjoy the silence.

Another form of meditation is contemplation practice. You mentally call up a positive state of mind, by imagining someone (or a pet) who makes us feel very positive. Or it can be a place or a remembered experience. When we have called the feeling up we rest in it.

Practice positive mental states.

We have had a wide experience of many meditation techniques now. For the last two classes, we are staying focused on the breath at the navel. Learning to concentrate on something that at first seems very boring but with time becomes so interesting.

Nearly there!

Congratulations.  Well done for completing the challenge.  Enjoy your last meditation session. There is a short talk at the end that tells you how to keep going with this.  Hopefully, you have felt some of the benefits and formed a positive habit. This is something you can keep growing for the rest of your life.