Meditation & Coffee - Meditation For Burnout & Exhaustion

A simple breathing exercise to help you shut out distractions, stresses, burnout, exhaustion and noise, and get still - even if only for a few minutes. To be enjoyed with your morning cup of coffee, tea, decaf or chai.

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.

30 a.

M.

London time.

The videos are also available after the lives on my IGTV page.

Now,

On to the meditation and coffee.

Good morning,

Good morning.

We are live on another meditation and coffee sesh.

If you don't know,

These are the sessions that I've been doing every day this week so far.

In the mornings,

Meditations with my trusty cup of coffee that I start my day with.

And yeah,

For those of you that don't know,

I'm Hannah.

Hello,

Hello.

And I'm a meditation coach for ambitious but anxious women,

And I use meditation as a way of helping us to get back to what's really important and go underneath all of the noise and the distractions that our daily lives can be,

The busyness and the struggles and the overwhelm,

The overthinking,

The anxiety and all the rest of it that can be very apparent,

Especially for ambitious women,

Women that are creative and care about the stuff they put into the world and really want to do a good job and that is amazing and incredible,

But it can also be quite tough on us,

Especially if we're anxious anyway.

So that's why I do what I do.

And these coffee and meditation mornings,

And I can see there are a couple of people joining,

So hello,

Thank you for being here.

It's great to see you.

These meditations are really just a way of starting the day with intention and groundedness and gratitude and taking the time out to just sit with a cup of coffee and spend that time thinking about how we want to feel today,

Dealing with whatever comes up,

Practicing being kind to ourselves because maybe we've woken up in a weird mood or a bad mood or we don't feel great or maybe we do,

Maybe we're ready to go and we're ready to go headlong into whatever it is we've got to do,

But we want to do it with intention and we want to do it with grounding and gratitude and we want to take some time to just enjoy and taste and appreciate the warmth and the comfort of the morning coffee.

And before I start this today's meditation,

I wanted to explain that often,

For me,

Meditation isn't purely a relaxation tool,

It's not just about kind of finding,

You know,

A hack,

A calm hack,

Like having a massage,

It's also about getting in touch with yourself,

Being aware of who you are and what you need,

Being alert to that and that's why I wanted to do these sessions and call them meditation and coffee because coffee obviously wakes us up in the morning,

A lot of us look forward to it and use it as a way of kind of perking ourselves up and starting the day,

But the word Buddha originally translates as awakened one,

So I kind of love that,

I kind of love how we're using coffee,

Yes,

As kind of the Western tool that it is to perk ourselves up and get ourselves going,

But also we can use the principles of meditation,

Especially the principles that maybe I have learned from my Buddhist studies,

Although you don't need to be a Buddhist to do anything that I teach you,

And really combine those two things to start to practice waking up,

Not only for your day but also to yourself and what you need and being kind and calm and in touch with yourself and what you really need to start your day off feeling good and being kind to yourself because that's really what this is,

Because the only way that we can practice cultivating a sense of clarity in our mind and a sense of peace and a sense of knowing why we're doing what we're doing and who we are,

That we can find in stillness,

That we can find in mental calm,

The only way that we're going to do that is if we also approach ourselves with kindness and stop trying to tell ourselves that we need to be different to who we are and that we should be there so we could have done that or why haven't on all the rest of it,

It's getting in touch with who we are and what we need and that's why today's meditation is called meditation and coffee for burnout because I think a lot of people that I've been speaking to recently have been feeling pretty burnt out.

I know that myself I'm pretty tired I've been working a lot,

A lot of us have been stuck in our houses because of COVID and we maybe haven't had any time off,

We haven't had a holiday that we would normally have had so far in the year and so burnout is a big thing and I'm not trying to suggest that one meditation session is going to cure burnout but I think we can start by just taking the time that we have in the morning with our coffee and getting still and getting quiet and not starting the day with the onslaught of emails and work and responsibilities and to-do lists that we maybe otherwise would which can contribute to our burnout and make us feel even worse and actually give ourselves permission to just sit and be to stop the onslaught of all of the noise and the distractions.

So without further ado I would like to invite you to get into your position for meditation and it can be anything,

It can be a position that feels comfortable to you,

It doesn't have to be the perfect cross-legged position so just any position that is upright,

Supported,

Grounded and as you get comfortable make sure that your back is supported and upright and that your chin is keeping yourself in an alert position.

If you like you can close your eyes,

You can if you want to or you can leave them open and I'd just like to invite you to come into the space and drop down giving yourself space to just get grounded and still by breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth and noticing how that feels so air in through the nose and out through the mouth and as you do this today I invite you to really let yourself breathe out through your mouth as if if there was someone sitting next to you they'd be able to hear you breathing out and really as you do that just give yourself permission to let go,

Drop the shoulders,

Relax the skin of the neck,

Relax the skin of the face,

The skin under your eyes,

Your forehead,

Your shoulders,

Any tension just breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth giving yourself permission to breathe out dropping down into the space and just relaxing.

Imagine that you are glitter and you've thrown glitter up into the air and now you're letting it sit,

You're letting it come back down,

That's what we want to feel here.

Grounded,

Relaxed.

And like I say with burnout we maybe have a million thoughts flying at us,

We may be feeling exhausted and overwhelmed like we can't do another day and if you find yourself getting distracted that's totally normal,

Just bringing it back to this feeling of breathing and as you breathe out letting yourself drop,

Letting yourself breathe out audibly,

Giving yourself permission to breathe,

To be and breathe.

Sometimes we don't even,

If we're stressed and we're busy we sometimes forget to breathe deeply and just giving ourselves that space to breathe in and out.

Now as you continue to breathe getting into a rhythm that feels good for you,

Getting into a whether it feels deep or shallow today,

Doesn't matter just breathing in a way that's comfortable,

I'd like to invite you to notice and get still noticing the spaces between the breaths as well as the breaths.

Now this can be a great exercise for cultivating calm and quiet and stillness.

If you imagine that your stress is like pebbles being thrown into a pond,

It's very busy and you're getting stuff done but the pond is very,

It's gonna be all messed up and you're not gonna be able to see the water and it's maybe gonna churn up some stuff so it's gonna be busy but it's not gonna be calm and in this meditation we're just trying to get back to a space where the pond is still.

So breathing in like you were before but at the top of the breath before you breathe out holding it in stillness for a couple of seconds.

So I'm gonna do that with you breathing in.

Noticing the breath filling your lungs,

Holding it at the top.

Breathing out through the mouth,

Holding it at the bottom.

Breathing in through the nose,

Holding it at the top.

Breathing out through the mouth,

Holding it at the bottom and continuing to go at a rhythm that suits you.

Now you don't have to breathe at the same speed that I am,

Excuse me.

The secret here is to find a way that works for you.

So you're not trying to breathe in super,

Super deeply unless it feels good.

You're not trying to force yourself to breathe in any particular way.

You're just noticing your breath going in through the nose,

Holding it and breathing out and holding it in a rhythm that works for you.

And as you may notice when you're doing that is that the space in between the breaths can be a real opportunity for stillness and the concentration that it requires to breathe in that way in itself can help us to shut out just temporarily the things that are stressing us out,

The things that we're thinking about,

The distractions and the stillness that comes from noticing the points in between the breaths can really feel like we're restoring calm to that pool of water that I mentioned earlier and just feeling a little bit more serene and realizing that even as we breathe there are moments to notice and be still,

Be grounded and give ourselves permission to not do something every single second of the day.

We can just breathe,

Hold it,

Notice it,

Be still and breathe out and even just that simple breathing in and out can be enough to restore calm and remind ourselves that we are good,

We are fine,

We are okay and that we have permission to take up space and be,

Regardless of how much work we get done,

Regardless of how stressed we maybe woke up feeling and that's it.

So I'll give you a bit of time just now to continue to practice that breathing so we'll go in through the nose,

Hold it,

Out through the mouth,

Hold it and as you're holding it it's not a kind of like,

Holding it,

Gasp,

Gotta be good,

Gotta hold it in,

Oh it's not a restrictive holding,

It's just a noticing what's there when we give ourselves permission to be still.

So it's more of a breathing in,

Stop,

Notice,

Breathing out,

Stop,

Notice and some people might appreciate counting so maybe if you like to count when you breathe,

Some people do,

You could breathe in one two three four,

Hold it for another four,

Breathing out maybe for six,

Giving yourself space to breathe out even more,

Two three four five six,

Breathing in four,

Hold it for four,

Breathing out for six and you can do that as part of a formal meditation session kind of like we are now or you can use that breath throughout the rest of your day when you find yourself getting stressed or overwhelmed and using that sense of breathing in,

Holding it,

Breathing out,

Holding it.

So if you had your eyes closed I invite you to open them,

Give your head a little shake,

Shoulders up,

Shoulders down and that is a great technique that I love that really helps me when I'm feeling burnt out and when I feel like I just need to shut out the world for a second and give myself space to just be still and breathe and that's all this is.

So I wish you a very happy Thursday.

I hope that you enjoyed that,

Let me know if you have any comments or questions and also I really hope that if you're feeling kind of similarly to me but burnt out that you can find pockets of your day today to come back to this breath and realize that you don't have to be doing something every single second of every single day to feel good,

To feel worthy.

So maybe today you read a book instead of doing that thing that you thought or maybe for every email that you send you give yourself five minutes of breathing time or something like that.

I know it's not always realistic but we can try,

We can insert pockets of calmness into our day and feel better for it.

So thank you for being here,

Thank you so much,

This was fantastic,

I really appreciate you guys,

I really appreciate you being here and doing this meditation along with me.

So thanks so much and I will see you tomorrow.

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 whatever 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

Absolutely lovely. I felt a change in my mind body and spirit - thank you

🤩

Thank you!

Really enjoyed this a lot! Simple yet effective. Thank you!

Wonderful & im going to share this episode with my daughters 🙏

Love. No pressure to force myself x thank you

Great! Really helps not to overcomplicate meditation, too.

Thank you. You saved my day! I am on my way to work and changed my mood from “helpless” to “my day will be great!”. 🙏

Namaste

Just what I needed this morning. 🙏 Thank you! ❣

Was really relaxing and needed. Was feeling the symptoms of burnout for a couple of days and just a few minutes of this helped awake me and find my self compassion again.