Meditation & Coffee - Just Watch

A simple practice to help you show up exactly as you are, without judgment, and notice your mind and body with curiosity, and bring some much-needed compassion and ease the start of your day! There is a short talk before the practice.

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 BreatheLikeABadass, 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 live on my IGTV page. Now, On to the meditation and coffee. Good morning friends, I believe that we are live. Hello, Hello. It is Thursday, I believe. I had no idea what day it was when I woke up this morning, But it is Thursday. I'm just posting the name of what we're doing today into the comments so that people can see. So for people that aren't watching this, I've just pinned the title Meditation and Coffee, Just Watch. Now that isn't necessarily an invitation to just watch what I'm doing today. It's about our own mind, It's about watching our own thoughts and our own feelings and showing up just to observe them as they are. Didn't sleep very well last night, Had a really horrible nightmare, Don't really know why that was. So I woke up feeling like I hadn't really slept much and feeling quite agitated. And obviously my first reaction, Like many of us, Was to try and resist it, To try and push it away, To tell myself, Oh, You know, That's it, That was just a nightmare, Or it was just a bad night's sleep, Or you've got stuff to do today, I don't want to feel this way, And try and push it away. And I think a lot of us do that, A lot of us resist what we're feeling, We feel like we shouldn't feel it, We feel like we don't have time to feel our feelings, We don't have time to notice kind of what's really going on with us because we've got stuff to do. And this is something that I say a lot about meditation is that I always encourage you not to see it as something else on your to-do list, To see it actually as a break from your to-do list or as a way of stepping back from your to-do list or your anxiety and noticing what's here when we just show up for it. And I think I said it a few days ago on another session, I said, Well, You're not trying to be anything different to how you usually are when you're meditating. You're not trying to force yourself into a particular box or a particular mood or telling yourself that you can only meditate if you have the perfect state of mind before you go into it. Because nine times out of 10, That isn't going to happen. So what you can't wait until you're ready to meditate or you feel like it before you do it, Because then a lot of the time you wouldn't do it. And in fact, Even if we sit down to meditate, Not feeling great, Again, There's no pressure there. There's no pressure to force yourself to feel a certain way. We are literally practicing the act of showing up, Noticing what we see, Noticing what we feel, Noticing what comes into our mind as we sit. And then actually practicing the sometimes difficult response to that, Which is compassion. And allowing ourselves to be who we are, Which is sometimes really difficult. Sometimes we don't like what we see, Or we just get annoyed ourselves or feeling really rubbish or just tired and distracted. But meditation is not only a practice in awareness, And it's not only a practice for for deep relaxation or Oh, Aren't I so wonderful and great. It's also a practice for accepting yourself in the times when you don't feel wonderful and great. It's a tool for accepting yourself when life does feel hard and you are exhausted and or even if you're just distracted and you you don't particularly feel much like meditating. It's kind of a tool that's always there for you waiting underneath all the rest of the noise. And there are some ways that you can practice that. And today, We're going to simply do a simple meditation. And we're going to practice one technique only, Which is really designed to help you practice this, This sense of awareness of how you're feeling. But also just compassion and curiosity and trying to practice not getting, Not getting caught by it, Not getting dragged away by it. So I'm going to take one last sip of my massive cup of coffee before we begin. Let me know what you are drinking. Drop me a comment or Yeah, Drop me a comment if what you've got with you coffee or a chai or tea or anything. I did actually think that maybe this morning I was going to have a peppermint tea. Because I still felt kind of a bit sluggish from yesterday. So I might have this cup of coffee and then maybe get a peppermint tea. But for the meantime, Got my coffee. Okay, So to start the meditation today. I invite you to just sit how you are how feels comfortable. Equally massive coffee. Amazing. Love that. So yeah, Put putting down your equally massive coffee perhaps. But no judgment if you don't. And like I say today is a practice in showing up as you are without judgment. So again, You don't have to sit in any particular way to meditate unless you want to. So literally you can sit cross legged, You can sit on the sofa in a comfortable way. Just letting yourself drop into position in a way that feels like Oh, Okay, Cool. I'm here. I've arrived. Nice. So dropping into position and allowing yourself to notice how your body feels right now. Just notice it. Allowing yourself to drop into position. Feel the weight of your body. Breathing in normally. Allowing yourself to take a full breath in through the nose. Clearing those sinuses allowing the breath to head into the rest of your forehead and your jaw. Dropping as you breathe out through the mouth. Dropping your shoulders. Relaxing the skin around your eyes. The cheeks and your jaw. And your neck. Now, For this meditation, I invite you to close your eyes if it feels comfortable. But we are practicing awareness in this meditation. And if you feel as though you can be more alert and aware with your eyes open, Or if at any point during the meditation, You would like to open your eyes, Please do feel free. So closing your eyes if you like if it feels comfortable, But also you can leave them open if you'd like. And continuing to breathe and noticing what comes up or what it feels like if you literally just focus on the breath coming in through the nose at the nostrils. Holding it for a split second at the top. And relaxing as you breathe out and noticing the breath as you breathe out. And we're going to count the breaths up to ten. And when you get to ten, Go back to number one and start again. This is a great way of allowing us to build focus on just this one breath right here right now. So I'll start it with you. So breathing in for one. Breathing out for two. In for three. Out for four. In for five. Out for six. And keeping on going until you reach number ten. And when you reach ten or when you get distracted, Starting again at one. No judgement at all. Starting again at one. And if you get distracted, Which you very likely will because that is just what happens when we meditate, It's very normal, In fact it is so normal as to be a genuine part of the process. So what do we do when we get distracted, When we notice a distraction? Okay, We start to note it. So this is a technique called noting, Where you literally notice and make a very gentle mental note about what you've noticed, What you're thinking. So you're sitting in meditation, You're focusing on your breath, You're working on your focus and concentration on one breath going in and one breath going out. And as we practice that, What we're doing is we're noting whenever we notice a thought that is distracting, Or something else pops into our awareness, Like even a bird singing, Or something that we remember that we've got to do that day, Or a conversation that we had yesterday that's distracting us, Any physical or mental distraction that takes us away from the breath we can notice it and be aware of it and rather than thinking, Oh I did it wrong, I got distracted, Oh crap I need to bring it back to the breath, We're not applying that mindset to it, Instead we're noticing the distraction and saying, Oh okay, Yep, That's to be expected, I notice I'm distracted. And then there are several ways that you can notice it. So you can just notice it with the word thinking, Or distraction. So imagining that you're putting a label on it when you notice, Oh okay, Yeah, Thinking, Thinking, Or distraction, Distraction, And bring it back. Or if it helps you, You can actually say what it is that you're thinking about. So we're not trying to avoid our distractions, We're not trying to bat them away, Pretend that they don't exist, We're noticing our distractions with curiosity and compassion. Okay, Yeah, I'm distracted, Cool. So, For example, I can hear birds outside, If they distract me I would say, Oh yeah birds. Or conversation with a friend, Yep, Yep. Hmm, An itch on my knee, Right, Yep. Tension in my head, I notice that, Okay. So you see, As you notice things, You're not trying to bat them away or empty your mind or pretend that you're never going to get distracted, You're just noticing. And you're giving it a label, Acknowledging it, Yep, Cool, I see you, And then coming back to the breath and to the awareness. So I'll give you a little bit of time just to do that and practice that. And the goal here is not to do this with a sort of tight attitude, It's just to be able to do it with a kind of hyper-aware, Catching yourself out every time you get distracted, Okay. The attitude is to approach it with gentleness and calm, And like I say, Stepping back from the situation rather than trying to be super on top of it. So you're not trying to catch everything, Every single thought or every single thing that you notice and be like, Right, Yeah, Got it, I need to give it a name. Instead what we're doing is just noticing it come into our frame of reference, Come into our awareness, And very gently go, Oh yeah, I know what that is, Oh okay, Yeah, Uh huh, I see you, Okay cool, That's fine. Right now I'm meditating though, But thanks for that. You see how the difference between, Oh I'm distracted, Crap, I'm bad at this, And oh yeah, Okay, No, That's cool, I notice, Yep, Fine. But right now I'm meditating, But yep, Nice, Thanks. You see it's like a subtle difference in how we approach our mind, How we approach our distractions. And that really is about building compassion, About recognizing that you will get distracted, And that our minds do take us off down the garden path without us realizing, Without asking permission. And what we're practicing is a sense of curiosity and a mind where we can just watch, Just watch it happening without getting dragged away. A nice metaphor for this is if you think of a busy road, And you are standing on the side of a busy road, And the cars are going backwards and forwards, You're watching the cars going backwards and forwards, And you can be like, Oh yeah, There are cars, There's a blue one, Or there's a Honda, Or whatever, Or that one's going too fast, Or that one's really old and needs repairs, That one's a big van, Or whatever. You can make these observations about the cars without being caught up in them, Without getting hit by them, Without running into the road trying to stop them. You're just at the side watching without judgment. And that's what we're practicing when we meditate with this technique. Whenever we get distracted, Bringing it back to the breath, Bringing it back to the focus. So I just remind you to relax your posture again. It's very easy when you're doing this to furrow your brow or have tension in your face, So I remind you to again relax your brow, Relax your jaw, Relax the skin of your face, Relax the skin around your eyes, Drop your shoulders even more, Breathe into it. And when you're ready, You can open your eyes if you had them closed. Come back into the space, A little bit of a stretch maybe, And noticing how it feels now compared to when you first started. Taking a deep breath if you need it and allowing yourself to just take up space and notice the practice and give yourself a bit more time and space. So thank you so much for joining me today. Let me know if you have any questions or comments about this meditation. It is a practice. If you found that it did not work for you today, You're too distracted or it's a technique that you haven't tried before, No worries. You know, This is how it works. We show up, We try a practice and then we keep trying it over and over again. That's just how it works. That's how we do it. So from my massive cup of coffee to yours, I wish you a very good day. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Hope that this practice was in some way helpful and with all of these practices, I like to introduce you to a technique and then yeah, You are welcome to practice this technique whenever you need. You can do it for a lot longer than we did today or you can do it for a lot shorter if you need it. So thank you so much. I'm really glad that you guys enjoyed it. Really appreciate you being here with me and yeah, Like I say, If you have any questions or follow up issues or anything you want to ask me, Drop me a comment on the IGTV video when it goes up after this or come drop me a DM. Love to hear from me. As I say, From my massive cup of coffee to yours, Have a wonderful day and I will see you here again for another session of meditation and coffee, Same time, Same place tomorrow morning. Thanks so much. 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.