Morning Meditation - Start Your Day Calm, Clear & Confident

This is a daily meditation to help you cultivate three essential nutrients for your mind. It will leave your mind clear, calm and balanced ready to face the day ahead with a sense of joy, happiness and openness.

Transcript

Welcome to this daily meditation.

Doing this meditation will improve your day and over time,

If you give it a chance,

It will improve your life.

It will help you to balance your mind,

Relax your body and make you more open to seeing the good in yourself and others.

You will develop a sense of calmness,

Clarity and contentment that isn't so contingent on external circumstances.

It will improve your relations with others and it will help you to respond to daily life in a more considered,

Effective and less stressful way.

This might sound too good to be true,

But remember the whole of your experience is actually filtered through your mind and your mind can be trained,

Just like your body.

So when you do start to train your mind,

You'll find that your whole world starts to change.

So let's jump in.

To start we'll connect with ourselves and just listen to what's going on.

So how is your body feeling today?

Gently scan your attention through your body,

From the top of your head to the tips of your toes.

No need to judge anything,

Just listen deeply.

How's it feeling?

Is it loose and relaxed?

Or is it tight and tense and in what places?

Just rest in whatever sensations you're feeling.

No need to push away any tightness or unpleasant sensations or to hold on to any nice and pleasant sensations.

Just let whatever the sensations are be there.

Just let them come and go into your awareness.

Well done.

Now you're aware of how you're feeling physically,

See if you become aware of how you're feeling emotionally because our emotions are actually just physical sensations that appear in particular signatures.

So just try and label what you're feeling right now,

Whether you're feeling anxious or you're feeling happy or you're feeling sad or even if you're feeling numb.

Whatever it is,

The emotion is just fine.

There might be more coarse or gross emotions and underneath there might be more subtle ones.

By labeling our emotions,

Their signals become heard,

They calm down and they stop driving us around subconsciously.

So what emotions can you sense right now?

And lastly,

How are you feeling mentally?

Is your mind relaxed,

Calm and open?

Or is it tight and scattered and closed off?

Just notice how your mind is today.

No need to judge it.

However you're feeling physically,

Emotionally,

Mentally,

It's okay.

Just welcome it all in.

No need to resist or push away any sensations,

Emotions or thoughts.

Just let them be free,

Free to come and go as they please,

As if they were guests in a guest house.

So now you're in touch with how you're feeling,

We're just going to calm the system down going in through the body.

So let's take three deep breaths together.

Breathing in through the nose into the belly and letting it expand and then breathing out and exhaling through the mouth for a count of five,

Letting all your muscles relax.

Breathing in for a count of five,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five and breathing out,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five.

Breathing in,

Let your belly expand and breathing out,

Let all your muscles relax.

Take a couple more in your own pace.

And so just like with soil,

You cultivate the soil before planting the seeds.

We've cultivated the mind and now we're going to plant three crucial seeds into the mind that are needed for us to feel happy,

Balanced and clear.

The mind often wraps itself up in knots doing one of three things that are correlated with these three networks in the brain,

The avoidance network,

The approach network and the affiliation network.

So the avoidance network is constantly looking out for threats,

It wants to avoid.

The approach network is constantly looking out for things it needs and the affiliation network is looking out to how our social status is.

We're involved in an environment when there was a lot of physical threats around and when it was important for us to chase after more resources because we didn't have enough to survive and it was important that everyone liked us because otherwise we might be ostracized from the group and not get the food and the care we needed to survive.

But nowadays,

For most of us,

We're in an environment where we don't have to worry about our physical survival,

Yet our body still reacts to modern day stresses as if it did,

But we don't need to.

And this is why it's important to get the most out of our lives,

That we cultivate a feeling within our body that is most conducive to the environments in which we live.

When we feel safe,

Satisfied and loved,

Our avoidance network is calm,

Our approach network is calm and our affiliation network is calm.

And then the mind becomes balanced,

Still,

Clear and responsive.

With each of these,

There's a simple process where we evoke the feeling,

We then let it be felt deeply in our bodies,

We magnify it and we absorb it and then we concentrate single pointedly on it,

So we're wiring in that feeling deep into our nervous system.

So let's start with the first vitamin,

Safety.

You can do this in one of three ways.

You can actually realize how safe you are right now,

You can bring to mind a memory when you felt safe or you can purely just imagine feeling safe.

It's completely up to you.

So we'll just start and go through each of these,

But you can play and just work out whatever feels right to you.

It's just about triggering a sense of safety.

So right now,

If you're breathing,

There's more right with you than wrong with you.

You might have a roof over your head,

Four walls around you,

Clothes to keep your body warm.

Whatever sense of safety you have right now from the environment,

Just seek in your bones.

Next you can try and just imagine a time when you felt safe.

It could be a time when you were in nature,

It could be a time when you're relaxed with friends,

Family or a pet.

Just try and bring to mind a time when you felt completely and utterly safe.

This can be difficult for some of us and that's just fine.

For me,

I find it easier just to imagine feeling completely and utterly safe.

Just imagine what it would feel like in your body if you had no worries,

You were just completely safe.

Magnify this feeling,

Let your body relax into it.

Maybe some parts will feel safe and other parts won't and that's just fine.

Just focus on the parts that do and then allow that to spread through the body.

What can be really helpful is to visualise a golden liquid coming down through the top of your head and filling you up from the toes,

Moving up through your ankles.

This golden liquid of safety just filling you up,

It's warm,

It allows any tension in your body to melt away.

Just allow it to continue filling you up through your thighs,

Into your buttocks,

All the way up into your torso and into your stomach.

How would your stomach feel if you felt completely and utterly safe?

Let this warm golden liquid move up into your chest,

Melting away any tightness.

Reach your shoulders,

Down your arms,

Up through your back and your neck and into your face and just give permission for all the muscles in your face to completely relax including your mouth and your tongue.

Any tension you might be holding in your jaws and your eyes and your forehead,

Just let this warm golden liquid completely fill you up and let your mind and body become completely engulfed with this sense of safety.

Let's just rest in that for a moment and allow it to be absorbed.

It's okay,

You're okay,

It's okay,

Just let yourself feel safe,

No need to push anything away and just rest in this deep sense of safety and let the mind and body become absorbed in it as we wire it into our nervous system.

Fantastic.

Let's move on to the second vitamin for the mind,

The sense of satisfaction.

Here we're going to allow the mind to calm so there's no need for it to run or chase after anything.

Safety stopped us from chasing or running away from anything and satisfaction will stop us running after anything.

So again,

You can choose one of three things,

You can just realise how you have everything you need right now,

You might have food in the fridge,

Water coming directly from a tap,

Warm clothes,

You don't need anything more to be physically satisfied or you can just try and think of a time that you felt completely satisfied,

Maybe again sharing some time with friends or after a meal or if you like what I normally do is just imagine feeling completely and utterly satisfied,

Like I don't need anything more.

It can be difficult at first but over time it becomes easier.

Any sense of satisfaction you can feel in the body,

Just allow yourself to concentrate on that.

So again,

Just imagine this golden liquid of satisfaction coming down through the top of your head,

Filling you up from your feet,

Coming up through your ankles and your shins,

All the way up your legs,

Into your buttocks,

Moving up into your stomach,

Into your chest,

Into your shoulders,

Down your arms,

Moving up into the neck and through the top of your head.

Just imagine your entire body feeling completely and utterly satisfied,

You don't need anything more and you don't need to be anything more,

You're complete,

Content,

Just allow this feeling of satisfaction to be magnified,

Let it sink into your mind and body and let yourself become absorbed into it as we wire this into our nervous system.

And let's move into the last vitamin of the mind,

The sense of connection and feeling loved.

This can be tricky for many of us,

That's okay,

But it will get easier,

So I'd just like you to allow yourself to feel loved.

We all deserve love and just give yourself permission to feel loved.

It might make you feel vulnerable and that's okay,

You're in a safe place right now.

Again,

You can use one of three things,

You can allow yourself to feel loved from someone you know right now,

You can allow yourself to bring to mind a memory of when you did feel loved,

It could be when you were a child with a grandparent,

A friend,

A family member,

A pet,

Or you can imagine being loved by an imaginary being,

Or again,

You can just allow yourself to imagine feeling completely loved.

Let yourself sink back into it and let the golden liquid come in again through the top of your head,

Filling you up with its warmth coming up through the toes,

This feeling of love coming up through your calves and your knees and your thighs,

Moving into your buttocks and your groin and your stomach,

How does it feel in your stomach when you feel completely loved?

Let your muscles relax,

Moving into your chest,

Up your back,

Into your shoulders,

Moving down your arms,

Into your hands,

Then moving up through the neck,

Into the face,

Allow your whole body to feel completely and utterly loved,

Let it permeate your body,

Sink into your muscles and your bones,

Let that feeling of love deep,

Just concentrate deeply,

Deep in that sense of feeling loved,

Let it wire itself into your nervous system,

Let's bring all three together,

Just allow yourself now to feel completely and utterly safe,

Allow yourself to feel completely and utterly satisfied and allow yourself to feel loved and connected to the world around you,

In the words of the beautiful poem Desderata,

You have a right to be here,

No less than the trees and the stars,

Just allow yourself to enjoy this,

This will become your base,

It will become your home and when you're ready just let go of any concentration,

Let the mind rest in what it's cultivated,

Let the mind do whatever it wants,

If it wants to think,

Let it think,

If it wants to sit still,

Let it sit still.

Well done for doing this and thank you for sitting with me today,

It's so important for us to develop this groundedness in safety,

Satisfaction,

Feeling loved,

As from there we can respond to the world in a healthy way,

We can have a sense of happiness that isn't so contingent on the external world and we can respond to it in much more effective ways and it's completely okay if we didn't experience these things in our childhood,

The mind is flexible and we can work with it and we can cultivate it,

So we can develop this space for ourselves,

By doing this everyday and developing these fundamental qualities,

It allows our best self to arise,

Our best self for ourself and for others in the world,

If you can do this everyday it'll start to deepen,

It'll spill over into everyday life,

You'll be calmer,

You'll be happier,

You'll be more balanced,

More responsive to life and develop better relationships,

If you can remember later on in the day,

Just to bring this to mind,

If you're feeling anxious,

Allow yourself to feel safe,

If you feel yourself running after something,

Feeling like you need to have something,

Allow a sense of satisfaction to arise and if you're feeling alone or disconnected,

Allow yourself to feel loved,

Just try and bring these sensations up whenever you can,

As you wire it into your nervous system,

I promise you over time,

This will completely transform your life,

Thank you for sitting here and developing this with me,

I hope you have a wonderful day and if you can,

Come back again tomorrow and let this deepen,

Take care and hopefully I'll see you later on tonight for the evening reflection.

Reviews

Wow. This was an exceptional meditation. Probably my favorite so far. Thank you for this so much. I deeply connected with this meditation and it made me feel so amazing.

Except for pronouncing the word Vitamin incorrectly, it was awesome. . . . Lol

Do you actually not think of a space for yourself when meditating for each prompt or is more of a suggestion to a stressed listener?

A lovely way to start the day, I will be back to this practice again. I am feeling so grounded, thank you 🙏🏼

That was incredible! Last week I recieved some really difficult news about my moms health and I had been feeling dissatisfied, unloved and a bit scattered. This was incredibly healing

Thank you Nick, that was so beautiful and calming!

Good. Went by fast. We must be in a place of satisfaction to be content and a place where we are not dependent on outside people or circumstances to feel ok

I love this and will be adding it to my morning routine❣️ Today is day 2 of doing it. Thank you so much❣️ Sending Love your way❣️💌💗🫶🏼🫂 Namaste❣️🙏🏼

Such a comforting soothing loving meditation you led us through. Thank you so very much..

This is a very lovely meditation to start the day. Thank you! 💙 ~*~

I feel wrapped in a blanket of love and light. What a wonderful way to begin the day. Thank you ✨🧡

Perfectly powerful. In prayer this morning to let an unkind friend go with love, from my healing, and not with any negative emotions attached. Very helpful. Thank you.

Having fractured my ankle on the very first day of my 3 week holiday here in Scotland, I very much appreciated taking in the vitamins for the mind of safety, satisfaction and connection/love. Thank you. I will return tomorrow for my next dose.

This was so powerful and healing for me as I realized that I can create a safe and loved and satisfied space within myself. I already have everything I need. Thank you so much.

Absolutely awesome way to start my day. I struggle with visualisation and the golden light but I stayed to the end and I felt wonderful. Thank you.

Such a beautiful morning meditation, a very relaxing and peaceful way to start the day. Will definitely be in my rotation. ☺️

I loved this meditation, can’t believe I sat this long. Thank you for this 🙏

A very grounding and soothing way to begin the day. You have a great voice, very calming. Thank you 🧘‍♂️🕉

Thank you for this wonderful meditation on the foundations of humanity and well-being: safety, satisfaction and love, covering me like a warm and comfortable blanket. Namaste 🤓🙏🏻

Wow this one really did it for me! I usually switch my meditation styles around a lot, but I’m gonna try this one every morning for a week and see how it feels 🥰 thank you so much for your gentle guidance!