Simple Mantra Meditation

This is the simple mantra meditation or japa. We are using the mantra OM as our anchor and focus, combining it with the breath. This meditation will reduce the activity of thoughts and emotions. This meditation is recorded in Ubud Bali, and you can hear the sounds of the kites in the air, the wind, and birds, Balinese people doing their morning business. 10 minutes introduction and 10 minutes meditation practice. Recommended for beginners.

Transcript

Hello lovely,

Welcome to this 10 minutes meditation.

And we are doing a simple mantra meditation.

The simple mantra meditation is a classical meditation from the yogic tradition.

And mantra means the calming of the mind.

Manas is the mind,

The thinking principles.

And Tara means calming of.

So mantra,

The calming of the mind.

And we are using a special,

A very simple mantra for it.

This is the mantra Om.

The mantra Om is an abstract mantra which has no direct translation.

But it means the whole universe.

It means the sun,

The moon,

The earth.

It means you and me.

But it means also my ego and my higher self.

All the good things and all the bad things.

We are honorizing,

We are connecting,

We are tuning into everything with this mantra.

But anyhow,

That's not so important what it is meaning.

And you could use any mantra for this meditation.

Or any positive affirmation that you are repeating.

And the profit of using the Om is that we don't have any re-judgment to it.

It has no special meaning.

It is not like when I say I am peaceful as positive affirmation in my meditation.

It's good for me to think positive.

But we have a judgment or a categorization for this I am peaceful.

Maybe today you don't feel very peaceful so you would have maybe resistances against repeating this positive affirmation.

So using something abstract which has no special meaning for us will help us even further to calm the mind.

How does it work?

We are sitting in our meditation position on a pillow,

On a carpet,

Or on a chair or on a meditation bank.

And you want to sit with a long spine and the head is going up towards the sky.

And your chest is a little bit open that you can breathe freely and deeply.

And in our seat we want to become motionless as much as possible.

We want to sit as comfortable as possible so that the body can become as motionless as possible.

During the meditation whenever there are thoughts coming up you want to notice them and then you want to come back to the repetition of the mantra in your mind.

So you don't need to judge yourself about the many thoughts coming up and you don't want to be disappointed about it.

This is a normal behavior of our mind,

Bringing up new thoughts every few seconds.

But you want to notice them and then you want to stick with the mantra.

You bring your attention back to the mantra.

And you are making it a little bit easier by combining the mantra with the breath.

And this is the same for emotions.

Whether with the thoughts or with the emotions we want to follow them,

We don't want to dive into them.

We want to recognize them and notice them and see,

Ah,

They are there.

And we leave it okay,

It's okay.

And then we bring our attention back to the mantra.

And this will cause that our mind will bring up less and less and less thoughts over the time.

The more often we are shifting our attention from the upcoming thoughts to the mantra,

The more the mind will calm down.

Okay,

So sit in your meditation position.

Let your sit bones sink into the pillow.

Let you remove the hollowness of the lower spine.

And then give length to the spine.

Let the crown of the head go up towards the sky and tap the chin a millimeter to the chest that you really can feel the length in your neck.

So the back,

The neck are in one line,

Very straight.

Make sure you are not leaning against the chair or against the wall that you see sit freely.

Close your eyes.

And first of all,

Please your mind to calm down for the next ten minutes in the meditation.

Then relax your body.

Take a deep inhale,

Bring the shoulders up to the ears and roll them back down.

Let your chest is nice and open,

Nicely open.

With the exhale,

Release the tension out of the body.

Relax your hips and legs,

Shoulders,

Arms,

Hands and fingers.

Inhale one time deeply again.

Get that concentration and exhaling,

Exhale up to double the time of your inhale.

Release the tension out of the body.

Maybe one more time.

Inhale deeply,

Fill the lungs.

Gather the tension and exhaling,

Release the tension that stream out of the body.

Your jaw relax the rows of the teeth separated,

The tongue not sticking at the roof of the mouth.

The muscles around the eyes soft from the inside and also your forehead relaxed.

With the next inhale,

Guide the breath all the way down towards the pelvic floor.

With the inhale,

Let the belly expand,

Relax the abdominal muscles.

And exhaling,

Exhale longer than you inhale,

Contract the abdominal muscles,

Bring the belly button a little bit behind the ribcage.

Inhaling,

Relaxing the abdomen,

The belly is expanding slightly.

And exhaling longer than you inhale,

Contracting the abdominal muscles.

Don't inhale more than usual,

Maybe a little bit slower than usual.

Now repeat a positive affirmation three times.

Maybe I am peaceful.

Maybe I am full of serenity.

I am patient.

I send out love to all living beings.

Now let your breath flow completely free without controlling it any further.

And then bring up the mantra on.

Inhaling,

Say in your thoughts on.

Exhaling,

Say on.

Inhaling on,

Exhaling on.

Inhaling on,

Exhaling on.

Exhaling on.

When thoughts are coming up,

And even when it's many,

Just notice them.

Don't follow them,

Don't go into them.

Don't let your mind wander around.

Notice the thoughts,

And then playfully bring your attention back to the breath and the mantra.

Inhaling on,

Exhaling on.

The same when emotions are occurring.

Notice them all,

And then come back to the breath.

Inhaling on,

Exhaling on.

Repeat this as often as necessary.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

The next five minutes in silence.

Leave your eyes still closed.

Let go of the mantra.

Observe your breath for a couple of inhales.

And then inhaling,

Raise your arms above the head,

Interlace the fingers,

Turn the palms to the sky and stretch the body.

Bending a little bit to the right,

Opening the left flank,

Bending a little bit to the left,

Opening the right flank.

Coming back to the center,

Lower your arms,

Twist the spine to the left,

Looking to the left,

Over the left shoulder.

And then twist the spine to the right,

Looking over the right shoulder.

And then come back to the center.

Take a deep breath in and then gently open up your eyes.

This mantra meditation is a basic practice to calm down the mind.

Our mind is used from our everyday life with all the information,

With all the stress,

With all the input it has to digest,

To bring up every few seconds a new thought.

Normally,

Most of the time we are not even recognizing the thoughts,

They are just there automatically and they are vanishing again.

Then we are starting with meditation and suddenly we realize,

Wow,

There are hundreds of thoughts and they are coming every few seconds.

This is our active mind.

It is really like showing a monkey a trick.

When I show the trick often enough to the monkey,

The monkey understands the trick and it is performing it later by himself.

And that is the same with the mind.

The mind is bringing up new thoughts and it is distracting me from the breath and from the mantra and I may follow the thought for a certain time and it is completely okay.

And then I realize,

Oh,

My thoughts are taking me somewhere else.

But I want to be with the breath and the mantra and then I come back to the mantra,

To the breath and then maybe after a few seconds we get distracted again,

Thinking about the last dinner we had with our friends.

And then we are bringing the attention back to the breath and to the mantra and the more often we are repeating the process,

The more our mind understands that these thoughts are not necessary and it will bring up less thoughts over a certain time.

Simple mantra meditation with the mantra OM,

With the abstract mantra OM.

If you like this meditation,

If it really helped you to calm down the mind,

Then please practice with it.

It is a nice meditation technique and it is for me when I have long practices,

I do something like this in the beginning of the meditation before I just go to the observation mode to really allow the mind to calm down.

If you wonder about the background noises here,

I am in Ubud Bali,

I am on my terrace and I had to record the meditation during the day.

And what you can hear in the background is the wind and the banana leaves,

The kids and the adults in their everyday life,

Maybe sometimes a scooter.

And maybe you hear this atmospheric background noise,

They have this very beautiful tradition here in Bali that they let kites up in the air.

And they are between,

Some are really huge,

The biggest one was 6 meters but many are 2 or 3 meters.

And between the front sticks they put a ribbon and this ribbon is under tension and then it is vibrating in the wind making this atmospheric sound and it is nearly everywhere in Bali.

Especially in the cities that you hear all day long this atmospheric sound.

Okay,

I hope you feel refreshed and relaxed and calmer and more,

You have more serenity and patience now.

And I thank you so much for joining me with this meditation.

Have a nice day,

Enjoy the day.

Thank you so much.

Reviews

So beautiful. Thank you so much Simon.