Meditation for Modern Living: Forget Clearing Your Mind

1. Introduction and Welcome!: Hi everybody. I'm Morgan. Some of you might know me from embroidery classes and crocheted classes that I've taught here on skill share. My life has taken quite a different turn since then. I now have a Master's in Applied Psychology with a specialization in counseling and guidance. During my Master's degree, I was really able to focus on what I am most passionate about, which is mindfulness. In this class, we are looking at meditation. We're examining what it is, what it can look like, and what it doesn't have to be. We are going to talk about breathing mindfulness and break down three meditation practices. Doing a visual meditation, a progressive relaxation meditation, and a mantra meditation. This class is designed for beginners or for anyone who is already practicing mindfulness or meditation, but wants to change it up a little bit or think about it in a different way. I understand how busy life can get. I am a single mom of three and I work full time. I really do understand, but I've also found a way to incorporate these practices into my daily life. And it really has made a tremendous shift for me. I've created a schedule that's meant to be flexible and work with you. So you can incorporate some of these practices even if it's just 5 minutes a day For those of you who are going to be moving on after watching this intro and taking the class, thank you. I can't wait to get started. For those of you who decide maybe to come back at a later time, that's okay too. But we can at least create a moment of peace in your day with a couple deep breaths. We're going to breathe in through our nose and out through our mouth. And we'll do it a couple times, you can breathe with me. And we're going to breathe in through our nose and breathe that through our mouth. I'm going to do it again. Breathe in through our nose and breathe that through our mouth. For those of you who are continuing on, we're going to talk about what meditation is and what it doesn't have to be. 2. What is Meditation?: I think there's an unfortunate misconception of what people think meditation has to be and what it has to look like and what it has to feel like, and what the goal is. In fact, I think the greatest thing that we can work toward is being able to incorporate meditation and mindfulness practices into our busy life. Along with all the thoughts that are running through our head on a constant basis. I think if we can do that, we've truly accomplished something. Okay, let's break the mold of what we think meditation looks like. When I say meditation, what comes to mind? For me, and I think for many of us, we imagine the serene landscape, a monk sitting on a mountaintop. Birds are chirping, the sun is setting, his face is relaxed, eyes are closed, hands are in his lap. I imagine that he has no thoughts running through his mind. Now, can meditation look like that? Of course. It of course, but it doesn't have to. How often are we able to sit on a mountaintop? How often can we clear our minds, if at all? We have to learn how to incorporate practices where we are so that we're not needing to plan vacations or plan for a time in the future or plan for a hiking trip to the top mountain. If you even like hiking in mountains and being outside, you don't have to create those opportunities for yourself in order to incorporate these kinds of practices. They should just be able to happen in the life that you're living each day. I would also argue that when you're sitting on top of the mountaintop, most likely you're already at peace. Now, we can use meditation practices and mindfulness practices to be present in that moment and help us be one with what is happening around us and be present. However, I find that the most helpful, the most helpful times when I'm able to use meditation and mindfulness is when I'm not at peace. When I'm at work and things are piling up and I feel like I'm putting out fires and I can't catch my breath or when all through my children are hungry and it's bedtime and I have nothing else to give of me. And I'm exhausted and I just want to go to bed. But I can't do that. If we can train ourselves to create moments of calm in our most hectic moments or in the moments when we're exhausted or depleted, our battery is run dry or our well is overflowing, We can create calm even just for a few minutes. We are on our way to creating longer lasting and bigger changes. First, let's talk about what meditation is not. Meditation is not about clearing your mind. You don't have to clear your mind. You don't have to have a blank slate. If we are just focused on clearing our mind and having a blank slate, we can actually become more stressed when that doesn't happen, because realistically, especially when we're first starting, that's not going to happen. Thoughts are going to be coming into our mind, especially when we are still in quiet. And if we're not used to being still in quiet, those thoughts are going to really bombard us right in the beginning and that's okay. There are practices to help you achieve moments where we are watching our thoughts drift away. And we're going to do one of these, it's called leaves on the stream. If your intention going into your meditation is to try to silence some thoughts, is for some peace of mind. There are practices where we can help you do that. However, that is not the goal for all meditation practices. In fact, some are actually going in with the of figuring out what are you thinking of, what is racing through your mind. We want to observe the thoughts that are coming in and figure out what is going on within us at that time. There's also mantra meditations, which we're also going to do, in which we want to focus on specific thoughts. The complete opposite of trying to clear our mind. We actually want to fill our mind with a very specific thought. You cannot fail in meditating, you just can't. It is a practice. Some might feel more productive than others, but that's okay. More that you do it, the easier it will get to achieve what your intention is going into it. Another misconception here sometimes is that there is a goal of meditating and then the goal is enlightenment. The goal of meditation is the meditation itself. You're not working toward something else. You're doing it. You're achieving it every single time that you take the time and energy and intention for yourself to do that meditation or mindfulness practice. You're already achieving the goal by doing it. We're not trying to work towards something else. Let's talk about what meditation is and what our goal is in this class. Really what it is. It's finding moments, it's creating moments. And it's saying to yourself, yes, I deserve this time and this space to check in with myself. What is my body doing right now? What is my mind doing right now? What do I feel? It's creating stillness. It's creating peace. It's creating energy. No matter what the intention is going in and the intentions will be different. It's putting yourself first and finding those times so that we can say, okay, regardless of what's happening around me, I am in control of my body. I am in control of my thoughts. This is how I'm going to check in with myself and take some of that control back when it feels like everything else can be out of control. 3. Breathing with Intention: Your breath is a powerful thing, and it's something that we take for granted, or we don't take a lot of notice of, just because it comes naturally. And we do it literally every minute of our day and night. But if we take the time to be intentional with our breath, we can harness some of that energy and some of that power and use it to be calm or to have peace. Or we can use it in conjunction of thoughts, breathing in positive thoughts, breathing out negative ones, truly is something that at our disposal at all times that we can harness and tap into anytime we want to. When we talk about breathing in terms of meditation, we're talking about breathing intentionally. We're deciding when we're taking our breaths, that doesn't always happen. Once we start getting in a rhythm of breathing, there are some meditations where it just falls to the background and we focus on other things. But a lot of the time we're intentionally breathing along with movements or along with thoughts. When you're breathing, we want to try to avoid breaths where our shoulders rise and fall. We don't want to be breathing like this. We want to try to keep our shoulders relaxed as possible. And obviously, our body or chest, our shoulders, they're going to move as we're doing deep breaths. But what we really want to focus on when we're breathing is filling our center. We're going to fill our core with our breath and push that air out of our core When we breathe out. I like to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. But there's many practices where you do not have to breathe that way. For instance, I do yoga and Bicrm. You only breathe in and out through your nose. Each practice is different. I implore you to do what's most comfortable for you, but I find in med, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, really focusing on filling the breath and exhaling the breath in your core is most helpful when you're breathing with your core. You can place your hands so that when you're breathing, you can feel this center, your core expand and then contract with your breath. When we're breathing in, we want it to be as if we're filling a balloon with our core. We breathe in, then when we breathe out, we contract and we push all that air out. 4. Box Breathing Guided Practice: Now there's different techniques we can use that just focus on breath and just focus on breathing. One of my favorites is called box breathing, or square breathing. This is four steps. It's very simple and it's timed. Sometimes when we try to slow down our breath, but we're already elevated, it's hard to say. Okay, so take some deep breaths, because if we're already breathing heavy, they might come quickly, and that's not helpful. Doing square breathing or box breathing forces us to slow everything down, because each breath and moment in between each breath is actually timed. There's four steps to breathing or box breathing. First is the inhale, then there's a, then the exhale, and then another hold. It's the four steps, like four sides of a square or a box. There's all sorts of different timings that you can do where inhale and exhale is longer than the hold or vice versa, or the inhale is longer than the exhale, or vice versa. I think just starting off with a four second inhale, a four second hold, a four second exhale, and a four second hold is really the best way to get started with this. Also, it's easy to remember, It's 4 seconds each, four steps. We're going to do it together. We're going inhale for a count of four. We're going to inhale, we're going to stop at the top and hold. Then we're going to exhale and hold, and then we continue again. We're going to try this. We're going to do it several times in a row and we'll check in and see how we feel afterwards. The goal of the intention of this is to decrease, they force some calm and regulate our breathing. It's creating some control over our breath in that timed moment. It does work for me, I hope it works for you too. 5. What is Mindfulness?: You've probably heard me say the word mindful or mindfulness 100 times already. Let's just take a second to talk about what that is. Being mindful is just being present in this moment and acknowledging what is happening inside of ourselves. What is happening with our thoughts, What is happening with our feelings? What is happening inside of our body? What do we physically feel? What do we emotionally feel? We do so without any judgment. Regardless of what the thoughts are that are entering our mind, regardless of how our body is feeling or what emotion in that moment, it's all okay. It's all accepted without judgment, even if we're doing a practice and the same thought is running through our head over, and over, and over and over again. We don't judge that thought, We acknowledge that it's there, but we do not judge it if our body feels stiff or we have pain somewhere. We just acknowledge that the feeling is there. We acknowledge, oh, my back feels stiff today, which it does. We acknowledge that it's there, but we do not, Judge. We don't try to change it, we don't try to alter it. And we certainly don't feel bad or guilty or frustrated, whatever thought or feeling that we're having, we just acknowledge that it's there. When I think about mindfulness and I'm teaching mindfulness, I like to think about it as if we are standing on the shore and we're watching the ocean. And the waves are coming. And some of them are small and some of them are big, Some of them are gentle and laughing, and others are rough and crashing on the shore. We are the observer, we are standing, watching all of this happen, just like ours, just like our emotions, just like the sensations within our body. Some are small, some are big, some are gentle, rough, just like the waves. They come and then they go. We don't stand on the shore trying to change the waves. We can't, we can observe them happening, we can watch them happening. When we are in a mindfulness practice, we're not trying to change what's happening within us. We're not trying to change our thoughts. We're not trying to change what's happening in our body. All we're doing is being present in that moment and observing them. If we can watch ashore and we can watch those waves coming and going, and acknowledge that we cannot change them. But we can observe them. We can acknowledge them. We can see that they come, and we can see that they go. We can do the same thing within us. We acknowledge our thoughts, we see them come. We also acknowledge that they will pass all of our thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences in life. They come and then they go. Just like those waves and mindfulness is really just about being present. So we can observe what is coming, what is staying, and what we are letting go. 6. 54321 Guided Practice: One of my favorite mindfulness exercises is called the 54321. It's a sensory experience. What it does is helps you be present in the moment. It helps you experience what is going on outside of you and also within you in that exact moment. 54321 can also be a way to lock into a memory or to fully experience a moment that is wonderful and that you want to remember. Let's say you're traveling or you're having an amazing or watching fireworks, or you're on top of a mountain, you're watching a sunset, or you're at the beach, You're with friends or family, and you really want to tap into a moment fully. It also helps us remember that moment because we can tap into what we are sensing, what our senses are experiencing in that moment. The way we practice this is the 54321. We're looking at five things that we can see. Five things you can see anywhere, wherever you are. Then four things that we can touch. Four things we feel that could be things we can reach out and touch. Or things that maybe we're feeling on our skin. Like the sun, warmth, the breeze, three things that we can hear. This one tends to be the most difficult for me, so you have to be very silent and still. And really think about what you can hear sometimes that could be internally our breath, our heartbeat, or it could be things that we're hearing around us. Then two things that we can smell. So what are we smelling, whether it's outside or inside? It could be our perfume or shampoo, or it could be things that are around us, and then one thing that we can taste. Let's take a look at what this looks like in practice. Just the video I took in Lake Como this past summer. Five things that I could see. I could see the water boats. I could see rooftops across the lake. I could see the mountains and I could see the sun through the blue sky. Four things I could feel, I could feel the breeze, I could feel the heat from the sun. I could feel my hair, which was blowing in, the breeze against my shoulders and back, and I could actually feel some spray coming off the lake. Three things I could hear. I could hear birds, I could hear the waves, and I could hear the crunch of gravel beneath my feet. Two things I can smell. I could actually smell the lake, the dakness of the lake, and I could smell all the amazing food coming from the restaurants as I passed. The taste is the gelato still lingering on my tongue. Now go into your camera role and find a video. Try to place yourself there. Really try to think about in that moment, what were you seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. See if you can use all five of your senses. The more you practice, the easier it will be when you're in a moment and need to use it. Whether it's a moment that you need to be present in because it's a difficult one, or whether it's a moment you want to remember forever. 7. Leaves on a Stream Guided Practice: All different types of meditations. Some of them are silent and some of them are guided. Some of them ask you to visualize certain things. Others ask you to imagine just sort of a blank space or a white space enclose your eyes. There's also open eye meditations, there's all different kinds. But first, thinking about a guided visual meditation. In this one, we're going to be doing leaves on a stream. In leaves on a stream, you're going to be listening to my voice, tell a story about where you are. Then I'm going to ask you to take thoughts that enter your head. Place them on a leaf and watch them go down the stream. Some things to think about during this meditation is it's okay if the same thought enters your head 500 times. Just keep placing it on the leaf and watching it go down the stream. Remember judgment in any mindfulness exercise, those thoughts can be silly. Those thoughts can be big. They can be thoughts that you didn't even know that you were thinking. If your stream is full of leaves, as many, many thoughts are entering your head, that's okay. If your stream has just one or two leaves, that's okay too. There's no judgment. Whatever your stream looks like, however many leaves you have, however many thoughts you have, that's all okay. As you practice this more and more, you'll find that you can recognize certain thoughts that are entering your head more so you can be aware of thoughts that maybe are taking up more space than as you thought that they were. Or thoughts that perhaps you haven't been thinking about but need to. I find that when I do leaves on a stream, in the beginning my stream is full of leaves. And by the end of the practice, I just have several floating down the stream at a time. When we do this, we really want to think about watching the leaves go down the stream. Part of the idea is acknowledging our thoughts. It's tapping into what are we thinking of, what is taking up space in our mind, But it's also watching them float away. We're acknowledging that they're there, but we're also letting them go. At the same time, I ask you to sit in a comfortable position, however it is most comfortable for you. But it should be an upright position so that we stay awake. And it's best to have your feet flat on the ground. This helps with grounding a connection to the Earth below us and our hands resting gently in our lap. You can let your eyes gently close if that's comfortable for you or if it's more comfortable to keep them open, you can fix them on a point a few feet in front of you. Let's take some deep breaths now. Let's breathe in through our nose and out through our mouth. And take some time to just settle in. Maybe notice if there's any tightness in your shoulders that we can release or if there's any tension in our jaw or our forehead or anywhere else you may notice. Let's take a moment, relax our body and give ourselves the opportunity to take a few deep breaths and relax. I want you to imagine that you have just walked into a clearing. You see the grass beneath your feet, and there are some trees lining the bank of a stream. You walk over to the stream and sit down by its side. The sun is shining. You can feel the warmth on your skin. You can hear the water as it flows by. You see the leaves rustle every now and then, one falls down to the water. You sit by the bank and watch them fall and gently float down the stream. The leaves are all different colors and shapes and sizes and you sit and watch them peacefully. Let's take a few deep breaths here and through our nose and out through our mouth as we watch the leaves in the water and the sky, and the trees and the grass around us. Now let's start to become aware of what thoughts might be coming into our mind, or what feelings we might be feeling, emotions or sensations in our body. Each time we notice a thought, or an emotion, or a sensation, imagine placing it on a leaf and letting it float down the stream. Remember that we do not judge anything that we place on a leaf as positive or negative. We don't judge them at all, Even if there are happiest thoughts or most painful or confusing, we place them on a leaf and watch them float down the stream. If the same thoughts keep coming up, that's okay. Each time, just place the thought on a leaf and watch it float down the stream. If any thoughts arise about doing this exercise, you're worried you may not be doing it correctly. Or if it doesn't seem to be working, where you have many leaves floating down your stream, that's okay. Just place each one on its own leaf and watch it gently float away. I'll give you some time here to continue doing the practice. Placing thoughts, emotions, and sensations on each leaf and watching them float down the stream. If your thoughts stop, that's okay. Notice that your thoughts have cleared and just continue watching the stream. If you notice your mind wandering away from the leaves in the stream, that's okay. A natural part of meditation is coming out of the experience and coming back. So just allow your mind to drift back to the leaves in the stream. Every time it tends to drift away. Keep breathing in your nose, out of your mouth. As you watch your thoughts on the leaves. Allow a few more deep breaths here before we start to come back. Now imagine rising from the bank of the stream and start to bring your attention back to where you are in the room sitting in your chair, Wiggle your toes. Wiggle your fingers. Gently open your eyes and notice what you see. Allow a little stretch, then welcome back. 8. Progressive Muscle Relaxation Guided Practice: So the progressive muscle relaxation is a wonderful way to relax your body when you're feeling tense to do a check in. And it's also a wonderful way to go to sleep at night. This one focuses less on your thoughts and more on your body. What is happening within our body, and it's also teaching that we can have control over our body when we're elevated, when we're having big emotions. When we are having those worrying thoughts, anxious thoughts, or when we are stressed, our bodies tend to tense. Our shoulders tend to rise, Our face can get tense. Sometimes we can clench our jaw. When we do progressive muscle relaxations more we do them, the more we can recognize when our body is tense and then we recognize when we can then relax it. Because we do have the skills to tense our body and to relax it, we are actually in control of how tense and how relaxed our body is in a progressive muscle relaxation. But I'll be asking you to go through parts of your body from your feet all the way to the top of your head. And we're going to be tensing muscles for a time and relaxing them. Something to think about during a progressive muscle relaxation is you don't have to tense your muscles too strongly. You don't have to tense them to a point where it hurts. You should be working at it, feel the muscles tense, and then let them relax. And you should feel your body get heavier as we travel up your body, tensing and relaxing in terms of your jaw, make sure that when we get to your face, you don't tense your jaw too much or push your teeth together too much. So we want to be mindful of that also in your core, and I'll give you a reminder as we go through the exercise. But in your core, when we're not tensing on our breath in, we're actually tensing on our breath out. Just be aware of that as we're traveling and listening to the directions as I take you through it. First, I'd like you to take a moment and get comfortable in your seat. Place your feet on the floor, if possible. And relax your hands in your lap, letting your hands fall open. Take a moment and notice, are your shoulders raised or tight? If so, let them relax. Notice your jaw. Let that relax as well. Your forehead, your eyes. If it's comfortable, you can let them close. If you're more comfortable with them open, that's okay too. You can find a fixed point in front of you or you can watch the video. Let's take a few deep breaths here, focusing on filling your core with a deep inhale. Breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. Let's take another deep breath, and through our nose and out through our mouth. If there's another way of breathing that's more comfortable, I invite you to do that as well. We just want to keep our breaths natural and relaxed. Now that we're breathing, I'd like you to imagine yourself as a tree. Maybe you're a palm tree, roots in warm sand, palm fronds hot from the sun. You can hear the ocean lapping at the shore. You can taste the salt in the air. Maybe you're a weeping willow in a meadow. Branches lazily blowing in the breeze. The air smells of wild flowers. Your roots settle in the cool soil and you can hear ducks splashing in a nearby pond. Maybe you're a pine tree perched on a mountainside. The air is brisk and your branches reach towards the clouds. Your roots grasp the cold stone. You can hear birds and you can almost taste the snow that's about to fall. No matter what your tree looks like or where your tree is, try to imagine what it would be like to be that tree. What do you hear? What does the air smell and taste like? What do your roots feel? Is it morning, dusk, midnight? Take a moment to imagine being your tree with your feet on the floor. Imagine them as the tip of your roots, reaching underground. Feel the soil or the sand or the rock. Feel each toe, touch the ground. Notice the balls of your feet and your heels acknowledge the balance they give. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to inhale and I would like you to tense the muscles in your feet. You don't need to squeeze them too hard. Just enough to feel them tense and inhale. Crunch your toes, feel the muscles pull in the arch of your feet. Hold the breath for a second or two, keep tensing. And then exhale. Relax your feet. Notice how different your feet feel as they are now fully relaxed. We're going to continue this pattern of holding the tension through an inhale. Pause, exhale, and relax. Let's move up to your calves. These are like your roots. As they widen and expand towards the trunk, maybe the soil is a little warmer here, closer to the surface. Notice how your calves are feeling. Acknowledge the stability they give. Now let's inhale, tense your calf muscles, hold for a second or two, and then exhale, relax your calf muscles, let your feet hold the weight as they are now fully relaxed. Moving up to your thighs, you can imagine them as their roots widen further toward the surface, Acknowledge their strength. When you begin to tighten the large muscle groups in your thighs, you may notice your feet rising from the ground or your legs extending. That's okay. Now, begin to tense and inhale. Hold for a second or two and then exhale, relax your thighs. Notice how they feel as they are fully relaxed and your legs and feet come back to rest. Moving further up your body, imagine your hips and bottom rising out of the soil and forming the lowest part of the tree trunk. You can see the sky now and feel the air around you. Acknowledge the rest this part of your body gives as you sit in your seat and how it holds you in this moment. As you tense the muscles in your hips and bottom, You may lift from your seat a bit and that's okay. No inhale, hold the breath, keep tensing and exhale. Relax your hips and bottom. Noticing how you settle back into your seat. We're moving up your Coronel, the trunk of your tree. Your belly, your chest, your sides, your back, all provide support. Acknowledge your stomach and lungs filling with each breath. Listen for your heartbeat. Can you feel your pulse? Notice any aches or cramps or pain or uncomfortableness that may be residing in this part of your body. Try not to dwell on them, but acknowledge they are there. When you inhale with this next breath, you're not going to tighten any muscle groups. Just take a deep inhale and fill your belly and lungs. When you exhale, you're going to contract your back and core and hold the tension for a moment at the end of the breath. Now we're going to fill your belly and hold the breath. Now exhale and tighten your core. Tense your stomach, your back, your sides, and hold that tension for a moment. And now release. Notice if your core now feels any different than it did a moment ago before your breath. Now we move up to your shoulders. The beginning of the arc to outstretched branches Acknowledge the weight they carry on your next inhale. Bring your shoulders high to your ears and tense them gently, taking care not to strain your neck. Now let's pull your shoulders, hold them to tension. Now exhale and release, feel them drop away from your ears. Notice how your neck elongates and the weight lifts. Now imagine your arms and hands as branches reaching out from your trunk. What are they reaching toward? The sun, snowfall, sea spray. What are your fingertips? The outermost reaches of your branches feeling Acknowledge their sensitivity, their dexterity, all the things you are able to touch and grab and hold. You're going to tense your hands and arms all the way from fingertip to biceps. On this next inhale, I tend to make fists with my hands, but you can also stretch your fingers outward as well. Breathe in and tense, hold, exhale, and release your arms and hands. Feel them fall back to your lap. Hands left open. Resting. Last we move up to your face, the highest part of your tree. Imagine being that tree. What do you see from your top? An ocean horizon, rolling fields, a mountain valley. What does the air smell like here? Can you taste anything? Acknowledge the senses your face gives you. On the next inhale, I would like you to tense the muscles in your face. Not forgetting your jaw, but taking care not to clench your jaw too tightly. Don't forget about your lips and eyebrows, your cheeks, forehead, and chin. Now inhale and hold. Exhale and release. Note how your jaw releases and forehead rests. Let your lips shift apart. If that's comfortable, take another breath. Feeling your whole body relaxed. Remember what it feels like to be this tree in this moment. Know that you can always come back here to this place as you carry it with you. When you're ready, you may open your eyes. If they were closed, take a breath. Look at a few things around you and orient yourself back to your space. 9. Mantra Meditation Guided Practice: Montra meditation is a little bit different than what we've done so far. In the leaves on a stream visualization meditation, it's really about being mindful and being in the moment and thinking about thoughts that are coming in, observing them, watching them pass in the progressive muscle relaxation. We're really thinking about our body and what our body is feeling like in tensing and relaxing in a Montra meditation. We're being very intentional. We want to come out of that meditation practice and that time when we're being intentional, we think about what we want the feeling to be, what we want our thought to be, and then what we want to come out of it with. That's how we decide what our mantra is going to be. When we're saying our mantra over and over and over again, you can say it out loud, you can say it within your head. I usually keep it within my head to myself, but every now and then I will speak it out loud. What this does is that it focuses all of your thoughts, all of your energy, all of your breath on one specific idea, on one thought. We're not allowing other thoughts to come in our head because we are just focused on this one thought that we are repeating over and over and over again when we pair that with our breath. Whether it's allowing something to come in with an inhale and letting something go with an exhale. Or whether it's just pairing the thought as we're breathing. It really can be a very powerful thing. It's also something that we can use when we don't really know exactly what meditation to use or we don't have the ability to listen to a recording of something or guided meditation. Mantra meditation can be easy thing to do because we always have access to some very simple mantras that we can have our thoughts that we want to think about. Mantra meditations are what I use most often. In my daily practice, I will tap into a mantra that I'm feeling. And sometimes my mantra will change from the beginning to the end of the meditation. And sometimes it will just sort of travel on its own to something else. Knowing that I have some go to mantras makes it so easy for me that when I'm in a space where I just have a few minutes, I can go right to a mantra. And then all of the other thoughts that are in my head melt away. And I'm able to just think on that one specific intentional thought feeling or idea. We're going to try a very simple mantra meditation first with just a singular thought paired with your breath. Take just a moment to notice if there's anything happening within your body. Can you release your shoulders and your jaw? Are you holding tension anywhere? If so, relax that part of your body. Allow your hands to drift gently to your lap or beside you. If you're laying down and let's begin comfortable for you. You can close your eyes or you can keep them open and stare at a fixed spot in front of you. Or you can watch the video. Let's take a deep inhale breath here into your nose, filling your core. And let's exhale through our mouth, gently releasing all the air you've held in your body. As we continue to inhale and exhale, we're going to pair our breath, the thought, I am capable of difficult things on our inhale breath, we are going to think I am capable on our exhale. We're going to think of difficult things. We keep repeating the thought, I am capable of difficult things. As we continue inhaling and exhaling, if other thoughts come into our head, we can acknowledge they're there. And then continue focusing on our mantra, I am capable of difficult things and if you drift off somewhere else, that's okay. It's once again a natural part of the meditation and mindfulness practice. We can drift away as long as we recognize to drift back and then continue on with your mantra, I am capable of difficult things. I'm going to give you a couple minutes here to practice. Remember to keep breathing. I am capable of difficult things. I am capable of difficult things. I am capable of difficult things. I will be here as you practice and we'll come back together in a couple minutes. And when you're ready, you can wiggle your fingers and toes, stretch your body a little bit, and then open your eyes gently and come back to the space around you, look around to bed to orient yourself and welcome back. 10. Thank You and Next Steps!: Okay everyone. You did it. You got through the class. Congratulations. I hope this was helpful for you. Use the schedule, take a moment for reflection, what works for you, what doesn't go about that breath, that mind body connection. Lean into those mantra meditations when you can. And just try to incorporate moments each day, even if it's just a few deep breaths. But those moments add up and the more that you do them, the more growth and change you're going to see. And when you have more time, you can really lean into your practice and you'll see It becomes easier and easier. Thank you, everyone.