Meditation & Coffee - Clear Mind

A beautiful blue sky visualisation to start your day with focus and clarity - and why “clearing your mind” is a meditation myth (and what to do instead)! Bring your massive cup of Monday coffee and get clear on the week ahead!

Transcript

Hello! You are listening to Meditation and Coffee, The weekday meditation podcast that helps you start your day off calm, Aware, Intentional, Focused and most importantly, Awake. Because did you know that the word Buddha actually means awakened one? I'm Hannah, Your host and founder of the online meditation community Breathe Like a Badass, And I am obsessed with starting the day with good coffee and seriously simple meditation. As a trained meditation teacher and a female entrepreneur, My mission is to help anxious yet ambitious women cut through overwhelm, Negative self-talk, Constant comparison and fear so they can get the calm, Clarity and focus that they need to build happy, Fulfilling, Freedom-filled businesses and lives. Meditation is not magic, But it's a pretty good place to start. So whether your coffee is a shot of espresso, A latte decaf or even a tea or a chai, I invite you to join me every weekday to start your day off right. FYI, These sessions are recorded live on my Instagram page, At Breathe Like a Badass, So if you'd prefer to join in and watch them live, You can do so there every weekday morning between 8 and 8. 30am London time. The videos are also available after the lives on my IGTV page. Now, On to the meditation and coffee. Good morning lovely people, We are live on another meditation and coffee session. I'm going to post in the comments what we're talking about today, But we've got a really easy. . . There we go. . . We've got a really calm and gentle but hopefully effective meditation practice this morning. My cup of coffee is gigantic, It is Monday morning after all, What can I say! Hello to people joining, I hope that you're well, I hope you are going to be joining us today for our meditation. I'd love to have you. So today's meditation is going to be using another nature metaphor, Which is something that I looked at last week, And as I said then, Nature metaphors, Like talking about trees or the sky or the breeze or things like that, Are really effective in meditation because they really bring the outside to us and make us feel like we're in nature, Which is always a calming thing pretty much. And also eco-therapy, Which is kind of what it's based on, Has been proven to be really effective in helping people deal with their stress and talking about their feelings in a way that is helpful to them and allows them to just deal with their anxiety. Like many people, I feel the same way, If I'm having a difficult day or my mind feels full or busy or I'm having a lot of stress, Sometimes the best thing is to just go outside, Even if it's not a nice day, Just go outside. And I'm really blessed where I live to have beautiful trees and quite a lot of nature around me, Even though I live close to London. And sometimes it's noisy and there's traffic and planes and things like that, But even getting outside and noticing the trees and the breeze and the sky sounds like kind of cliche, But it has been proven. This eco-therapy, Using the outside, Nature therapy, You can call it that as well, Has been shown to improve our sense of wellbeing, Give us a sense of calm, Help us with anxiety and allow us to articulate our feelings and understand what we're feeling in a way that maybe we wouldn't be able to if we were just focusing on being indoors all the time. So as I say, I do have my huge cup of coffee with me this morning. It is Monday, Like I say, So I am going to be sipping on this as we go through the meditation. There are no rules in my meditations. You can do what feels comfortable for you. But we are going to start. So if you are going to be joining us, Please give yourself permission to be here now, Getting into a comfortable seated posture. You can put your coffee down and you can keep it in your hand, Whatever feels good to you. And getting into a comfortable position and maybe you've just woken up. So feel free to stretch, I feel like I need to. My neck feels a bit tight today. And once you've done that, Coming into a position that feels good and comfortable. Balanced. Keeping yourself upright, Keeping your back away from the back of the chair. And allowing yourself to rest where you are. Taking some deep breaths in, In through the nose, Out through the mouth. And as you breathe in, Allowing yourself to stretch out, Open your chest, Take up a little bit more space. And as you breathe out, Dropping your shoulders, Allowing the skin of your face to relax, Allowing the skin around your eyes, Your jaw, And your neck. And your shoulders again, Relaxing and coming to sit. Noticing what it feels like to be sitting, And giving ourselves permission this morning to just be. To be sitting here. And noticing what it feels like to be sitting. Now, It is a beautiful day here in London, Blue blue sky, Gorgeous. But even if it wasn't, I would still be doing this meditation because it is a brilliant way of training our attention, Increasing our focus, And beginning the day with a cool, Calm, Peaceful mind. Now, As you're sitting, I invite you to close your eyes if it feels comfortable. You can keep them open if you like, Just leaving your gaze a bit in front of you, But I would recommend closing your eyes if it feels safe. And as you continue to breathe, Bringing to mind a blue blue sky in your mind. Whatever that means to you, Whatever first comes up, Bringing to mind a clear blue sky. And as you're sitting there, Get curious about the blue sky. What colour blue is it? Is it light blue, Deep, Almost purple? Are you looking at it through a window, Or are you actually outside looking at this blue sky? Are there trees nearby or is it just a sky? And as we sit here noticing what it's like to feel the expanse of this beautiful blue sky, Anytime you get distracted, I encourage you to see your thoughts as clouds travelling across this blue sky. So your mind is likely going to pull you away or start thinking about something, Getting distracted, Something you need to do today, Something that you forgot about perhaps, Or whatever it may be. And I encourage you to practice seeing those thoughts, Seeing those distractions as clouds just travelling across this beautiful blue sky that's in your mind. You're watching the thoughts, But you're not part of them. And you don't have to let yourself be dragged away by them. And as soon as you notice them, As soon as you realise that you've been distracted, Choosing to be curious about your thoughts and seeing them, As I say, As little white fluffy clouds moving across the horizon. Perhaps your sky is full of clouds this morning, Perhaps you're very distracted. In which case you can imagine that the blue sky is above the clouds of your distraction. So maybe what we're trying to do is just let the clouds sink in our mind and know that the blue sky is still there above the clouds. And if we can tune in to the blueness and the clarity of that sky, We might find it easier to drop the distractions for the time that we're meditating this morning. So I call this meditation clear mind meditation, But we're never trying to completely clear our mind when we meditate, That's a myth. If you're distracted it's completely normal, We're not aiming for zero thoughts, We're not aiming for blank slate brain, Very very unlikely. What we are doing is training our attention. So we're not trying to empty our mind, We're trying to focus it very specifically on one thing. And today this one thing is that blue sky. And every time you get distracted, Every time you notice that your focus has wandered, Try again, Bring it back. Zero judgement, Zero problem. Building that feeling of the clear, Forgiving, Open, Warm, Peaceful, Calm, Wide blue sky. Continuing to breathe, Don't forget to breathe. And as you breathe perhaps the breath is helping you to stay focused on your blue sky, That image in your mind. And as always with meditation if you find that you're very distracted on a particular day, You can always come back and focus on your breath. Your breath going in through the nose, And out through the nose or the mouth. So if you're having trouble with the blue sky visualization this morning, And no worries, Bring it back to the breath. We're building a sense of just watching. Watching the blue sky, Bringing our attention back to it every time a cloud or a whole sea of clouds distracts us from that blue sky. And as you continue to breathe, Remember that you're remembering to relax your muscles. Sometimes if we're focusing hard on something in meditation, We tense without realizing. So maybe you're focusing so hard on the blue sky that you've actually started to furrow your brow and lift your shoulders and become tense but I invite you to remember to relax and keep a kind of light easy focus rather than a deep tense concentration. Let it be easy. Let it be calm. Let it be as it is. We're not trying to force it, We're not trying to make it do anything. We're just coming back again and again to that blue sky which is always there waiting for us underneath us. Coming back to it for two whole breaths. So noticing the blue sky in your mind as you breathe in through the nose. Allowing yourself to breathe in and be open, Expanding those lungs. And as you breathe out, Allowing yourself to soften and relax and keeping the focus on the blue sky. And let's do one more breath together, So in through the nose. And out through the nose or the mouth. Relaxing those muscles, Coming to sit. And noticing that serene blue sky. And if you had your eyes open, Sorry if you had your eyes closed, Feel free to open them. Come back into the room. Taking a bit of a stretch if you feel like you need it. Taking a sip of that coffee if you feel like you need it as well. And noticing how you feel now compared to when you first started the meditation. Always a little nice note at the end. So like I say, The blue sky visualisation is great because it's using nature as a metaphor. It's allowing us to feel as if we're going a little bit outside, Even if we're sitting indoors we can still get a bit of that beautiful, Peaceful blue sky that we maybe see on a gorgeous summer's day. But it's also a way of understanding that meditation is about training our attention. We're not trying to empty our mind, We're not trying to clear our mind. Like yes, I call this meditation clear mind. And maybe it does help us get more focus and clarity and feel more peaceful, Absolutely. But when we meditate we're not trying to empty our mind and just think of nothing. Very, Very advanced technique to do that and it's very rare that we would even want to do that in the morning at the moment when we're just starting our day. So instead what we're trying to do is train our attention onto something specific. So in this meditation we used our breath and we used the blue sky. But for other meditations it might be your body, It might be sounds, It might be smells or sensations that you can feel on your skin. So whenever we meditate that's what we're doing, We're training our attention. We're not trying to force our mind to be empty or make ourselves stop thinking. Ain't never gonna happen. Our brains are thinking machines, That's what they do. So instead we are choosing to train our attention to one thing or a couple of things and learn how to let go of the things that are distracting us in the same way as we notice the clouds or we leave the clouds underneath the blue sky and we continue to bring our focus back to the blue sky over and over again no matter how many times we get distracted. And again that builds compassion because we realise, Oh okay I'm distracted, That's fine, That's just what this is. This is the practice and bringing it back to the blue sky. So thank you so much for joining me, Thank you very much for being here. It is a beautiful day in London so hopefully I'll get a bit of my own blue sky for real later in the day. I invite you to enjoy your coffee and spend a few minutes just on how you're feeling now at the end of that meditation. And yeah let me know as well as usual DM me on the Instagram if you would like me to focus on anything this week. I can do a meditation especially for you if you like. We've got all week so let me know, DM me if there's anything in particular that you're working on this week or anything that you are finding difficult. And thank you so much for being here, It's such a joy to do these sessions. It's my favourite time of day, Starting the day with some coffee and meditation. So thank you so much for being here again and I will see you back here tomorrow morning for another session of Meditation and Coffee. Thanks so much and yeah have a wonderful day. That's it for today, Thanks so much for listening and spending your morning with me. If you like this podcast and you are as obsessed with coffee and maybe meditation as I am, Please go ahead and leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you normally listen as it helps spread the word and get the message out to more brilliant women just like us who need it. You can also share with your friends on Instagram tagging me at Breathe Like a Badass. I always love to see you there. If you like this and you'd like to hear more from me and Breathe Like a Badass on how to use meditation to get the calm, Clarity and focus you need to build a happy, Fulfilling, Freedom filled business and life, Head on over to my other full length interview style podcast just search Breathe Like a Badass anywhere that you normally listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you for the next one.

Reviews

Me too, I start my day with coffee and meditation, thank you for this meditation!