Introduction To Meditation

In this intro to meditation, I will break down the practise so you feel more comfortable being a beginner and share some tips you can utilize to become a curious observer of your internal experience and guide you through a brief meditation. Utilizing various techniques or practises such as meditation, you can decrease stress, reduce overthinking and ultimately learn how to experience life in a new way where you have the opportunity to feel your best so you can strive to live a long, healthy and happy life. I hope you enjoy! x

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this guided meditation. My name is Laura Plahuta and I am going to be your guide for today. This is going to be a meditation for you if you are brand new to meditation and if that is you then congratulations on embarking on this very very neat journey to really start exploring a little bit more about the relationship that you have with your thoughts and your emotions and your behaviors and really having a greater self-awareness around the way that you move through life and possibly starting to become aware of some of the reasons why you may not be achieving some of the things you would like to achieve in life or why you're not feeling the way that you want to feel in your everyday life and really starting to create conscious changes around how you show up in the world so that you can start creating different outcomes. So if this sounds like something that you are interested in if you are wanting to live a different life you're wanting to feel differently then stick around this is gonna be an awesome journey. So at the beginning of every meditation what I'll have you do is I will have you just finding a nice quiet space where you are able to really just be with yourself. You know find a space where you feel comfortable you can either do it sitting down you can do it laying down. I personally love doing it when I'm laying in bed and I'm just getting really comfy cozy under the blankets. You can dim the lights turn the lights off if you want to get some candles lit or anything like that to really create the environment to get some essential oils and you're more than welcome. And so once you have that all set up then we will go ahead and get started. So with meditation it is very common when you have not done meditation very often that a lot of us and I know this is for me in the past as well very mind dominant where our thoughts are just rolling and rolling and rolling and there is never peace. Right you hear people talking about inner peace and that is literally what happens when you can feel in your body this sense of harmony. It's just like there's no problems in the world everything is okay and in order to actually feel that there has to be silence in the mind. And it's more of just a sensation of feeling and because our minds have been conditioned to be very overactive in our society and from other things around some experiences that we may have had in our past that we haven't quite fully processed that stored in our body it can create thought loops or emotional loops that keep us in perpetual states of discomfort where maybe we are wanting to be able to really step outside of that and start experiencing new more pleasurable things in life. So with any of these practices it really is just gaining a greater awareness of what's actually moving in your mind if you're somebody who overthinks quite a lot your mind won't really sit still and invite you to grab a pen and a paper and have that with you as you are doing these practices. A lot of the time when there's a lot going on in our minds sometimes it really helps to be able to just put it onto paper and I like to think of it like a like a pinball machine where the ball is just kind of banging around inside and it's going crazy and then as soon as you allow it out onto paper then that ball then gets to settle and you can actually see it you can acknowledge what's there you can actually take action on maybe some of the things that you're really wanting to take action on that you may have been procrastinating on. So having a pen and paper with you for this is also very welcomed and so we'll start by just inviting you to just start taking some nice big deep breaths and so when we're taking these nice big deep breaths a lot of the time when our body is in this fight-or-flight state which we can often be in a in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight you may notice that you're breathing very shallowly in the very top of your chest so just tuning in to the way that you're breathing noticing whether it's just the very top of your chest that's it's moving in and out or whether you're breathing right from the very base of your belly if you've ever seen a baby breathe they breathe with their bellies it's just bringing awareness and just noticing how you're breathing and one of the statements you'll you'll hear me say quite often is oh isn't that interesting and when we say oh isn't that interesting it's not a judgment it's more of just an observation where you start becoming the third-party observer of what's happening inside of your own body and with that we can really start having this this non-judgmental place of awareness where we can start creating changes within ourselves that allows us to create incredible new outcomes and we start learning to what sometimes we call a self-parent or really just becoming the leader of our own selves and start leading ourselves in a way that feels good to us and start creating changes that we actually want to make opposed to the alternative of us making changes because we feel we should or we feel other people want us to so this is really an empowering process where you start get to start making these changes for you so just bringing that awareness to the breath and so when you're taking these breaths I want to invite you to start at the very base of your belly which means below your belly button kind of like where your bladder is and allowing your belly to expand out with the inhale through your nose and then allowing your ribcage to expand and then allowing your chest to be that very last thing that rises and then exhaling through your mouth I'm just letting it all go I'm just taking some time to practice this good you may notice some tension in your abdomen where sometimes I know that for me as well when I'm feeling very stressed or very tense my belly also feels stressed or tense so this is a way that you can also check in with yourself throughout the day to see how stressed your body is so just now bringing awareness into your belly does it feel like they're it's very tense or does it feel very relaxed like you can really move in and out freely like a balloon just using that same statement of oh isn't that interesting my belly seems to be very tense right now I was not interesting I seem to be a little bit stressed right now my belly seems to be very tense right now I was not interesting I seem to be a little bit stressed right now oh isn't that interesting my belly seems to be feeling very very light right now I'm very expansive I'm just seeing if you can put words to your experience good and so now starting to slow down your breath a little bit seeing if you can allow things to slow down a little bit more slowing down that inhale there's no rush there's nowhere you have to be and then slowing down that exhale as well every breath just allowing it to slow down a little bit more there's a lot happening in your mind inviting you to just hit pause and just take pen to paper and just write down all of the things that are coming through maybe to do lists there may be different stories just allowing it to free flow onto paper and then coming back to this practice good beautiful so this time on your inhale at the very top there's going to be a little pause that you have let me just see if you can notice the stillness at the top of your breath before you exhale out that next breath I'm just taking those nice slow deep breaths and seeing if you can notice that little pause a little moment of peace at the very top of your inhale good doing that a few more times nice and slowly nice and slowly and this time noticing as well on the exhale how there's also this brief moment of a pause the bottom of your breath as well and seeing if you can notice that stillness there as well before you take that nice big inhale now I'm just noticing if with every breath it starts getting easier to have that belly expand I'm just tuning back into your body with how your body's feeling I'm just using that same sentence oh isn't this interesting my body seems to be feeling just bringing awareness to how your body now feels mindfulness and meditation really doesn't have to be hard it's really just intentionally taking this time for yourself and over time this is where you really gain greater awareness around that connection between your mind and your body and there's many other cool techniques we could do as well so you continue to be consistent with this practice and explore what your body is actually capable of really will help you allow you to tap into your intuition more into your ability to determine what is right for you and what doesn't feel very good to you maybe something you want to be able to say no to with confidence and the whole intention of this is so that you can really start filtering through what maybe you picked up from your family from your friends from your culture from these expectations that really don't feel aligned to you and really more fully with confidence being able to start stepping into a life that feels really good to you that is your most authentic life that you're excited to be able to live every single day so thank you so much for being here with me for this practice today I'm sending you so much love and I hope to see you on the next one and if you have any questions from this feel free to add me on social media and send me a dm or you can do it right in the insight timer app until then I will talk to you later ciao ciao enjoy your day and continue practicing this every day is going to be a different experience and that's okay every day when you check in you might be feeling something slightly different and that's okay it's really just about bringing that awareness finding acceptance in all of your beautiful multi-dimensional nature as a human being