Mindfulness Meditation Mega Course

1. Introduction: welcome to the mountainous meditation and make a course. This is a long, deep dive into all aspects off mindfulness meditation. If you haven't already, you can check out the other courses that I've got on meditation. There's a bunch up, but this is more for those who want a deep dive to want to go really deep into the concept of meditation. There's a bunch of guided meditations that you're able to look back. There's a one minute, a five minute, a 20 minute one, as well as a few short guided meditations on the particular different styles that I cover. If you want to boost your mindfulness meditation practice, if you want to start feeling better mentally, overcome anxiety, defeat, depression If you want to get better at focusing, if you wanna have a clear in mind a clear a mental state, you want to be more productive. I can't stress meditation more so that further ado, let's get into the meditation. My name is Zachary Phillips, online mental of African author and coach. In these roles, I helped thousands of people move from a place off surviving to passionately thriving Meditation is one of the core components off this coaching practice. You're gonna love it. Let's do this 2. What Is Mindfulness: Monfils. Meditation is the act of pain, nonjudgmental attention to the present moment. But what's actually mean and how do you do it. So the way that you practice meditation at a basic level is clich? Arised. Draw your attention to a meditation object. Typically, this the breath is used because it's always with you, but you can use whatever you like. When your mind wanders, you gently bring it back so you close your eyes, let yourself breathe and gently bring your attention back. You're paying attention to the sensations off the breath, entering and leaving the nose, repeating that process over and over and over again. Your mind wonders. You bring it back in mind. One. Does you bring it back now? What are the basic benefits? Well, beyond just practicing and training your focus. What you're doing is you're giving yourself the ability to detach and step back from the mental phenomena. The thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, anxieties, all that stuff floating around in your head. You're sort of stepping back and allowing yourself to watch those thoughts drift past. So when mindfulness is the act of paying nonjudgmental attention to the present moment, you just allowing yourself to be present with whatever's going on. So in the next video, we'll get straight into a very quick one minute month in this meditation guided. So what I encourage you to do is to bookmark that you actually can come back to it so you don't have to go through the whole course, but we're just gonna get started so you can feel a little bit of the mindfulness meditation guarded, and then we'll talk about it in a bit more depth. 3. One Minute Guided Meditation: Okay, so we're going to begin a one minute guarded mindfulness meditation. Would you like to take a seat with good posture? Stay standing. Lie on the ground. Your body position is up to you. I would suggest that you close your eyes, but once again, that's your choice. So take a couple of big date breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, and then we'll get into it. Okay? So I want you to draw your attention to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving your nice Don't try and force the breath will try and manipulate breath. Just let it come. If you start thinking of a thought, I have an emotion or feeling. Or visualizations just gently bring your attention back to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the nose. Keep returning your attention back to that sensation. Que no hope in your eyes. Take a couple of big date breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Good job 4. Why I Meditate: So really you've got what it tastes now to start meditating. I know that's something interesting to stay at the start of a very long course. But the basics are there. You close your eyes, focus on the sensation of the breath entering and leaving your nose, and just repeat that process daily for a certain amount of time. Now obviously I'm going to go into specific deaths about all of the different aspects of this, the troubleshooting, how to set up the timer. All of the different examples give you longer guided meditations. But I just wanted to get you the ability to start meditating right now so you can do that. I just want to share with you why I meditate and how long and what I do very briefly. Meditation helps me to step back and attach and to see reality for what it is now as opposed to living back in that past. It is an incredible boost to my motivation levels, helps me to think clearer so I can get projects done bell. And it helps me with my relationships because I'm thinking clearer. I meditate daily. When I first started, I started with one minute per day, but now I'm up to 30 minutes with 20 minutes of silent mindfulness meditation and ten minutes guided. And I often do an extra session at night. The reason I'm so passionate about meditation and mindfulness is because everyone that does it, everyone that I know that have started at all of my clients, I've seen tremendous benefits and I want to give that to you. I want to spread it, the benefits. And also teaching it and making these videos helps me to dive deep myself. So with all that in mind, let's get into the nitty-gritty of how to meditate and adds all of those questions. Let's begin. 5. Dealing With Mental Phenomena: Okay, so let's get specific with dealing with mental phenomena. So you're meditating. You're either closed or open your focusing on your meditation object. I'm gonna keep using the breath. But like I said, you could focus on hearing you could focus on a candle. You could focus on the sensation of the ground at your feet. I'm gonna talk about different variations in later videos. But right now, for all intents and purposes, the meditation object will be the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the nurse. So your eyes were closed and you're focusing on the sensations, and then something comes up. I'm going to label anything that pops up in your mind. A mental phenomena. This could be a memory of the past. It would be like a visual vision. It could be a strong emotion. It could be a physical sensation. It could be anything, right, any sort of thing. Feelings of born, feelings of agitation, feelings of joy, pleasure. Any mental phenomena needs to be acknowledged and gently let go off. So a mental phenomena pops up. You acknowledge it gently. Let go and return to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the knives. You think I'm gonna do this? You acknowledge it and return your focus back to the breath, entering and leaving the nose. Now I wanna make it abundantly clear. Meditation is not about blocking off thoughts. It's not about having north ALS. It's about returning a focus back to the sensation of breath, entering and leaving the notice. It will help you to reduce those thoughts over time. But one of the things that a lot of beginning meditators will do is is they will. They will get upset of themselves When they realized they lost in thought when they realized Oh, my God, I've been thinking this thing I've been daydreaming are being feeling whatever when they're trapped with that mental phenomena, when in fact the active meditation is realizing and bringing the focus back, you realize that your trap didn't thought. You realize that you've become distracted. You realize that you've lost focus from your meditation, object from the breath, acknowledge it and come back gently. And you know all of the whole of the theory. All the books say to be kind of yourself, because I'll be polite, baby happy, right? Because really, when you notice yourself being distracted. You bring the attention back. That's the active meditating. It's training your mind. When you first start, you'll find that your mind is just bouncing between bubble up, bouncing between all of these different ports and sensations and all that sort of stuff. That's what your mind is. Lack, and in fact, it will feel like you're going a little bit crazy. It'll feel like that. You're getting heaps of force and all my garden. That's actually what's already happening of just not really looking for it. Your brain and untrained and unmedicated brain bounces between things very quickly. You're bringing your attention back and you're going, Oh, okay, But I understand that you looking at that brain well, let's get bring it back. Oh, I see that you're focusing on that. That's like I I accept that good job. Bring it back. So do not get upset yourself. Be happy that you noticing your attention, wondering and bring it back, because that's the act of meditation. Eventually, your brain is going to stop wondering. Eventually you'll be able to focus on that meditation off jet without the mental phenomena distracting in overtime. Eventually, don't worry about it there. Even consistent daily longtime meditators will be bringing their attention back to the breath. That's the act. That's what we're doing, and that's what we'll give you. Those benefits of focus, motivation, mental health, all of that sort of stuff we're bringing out. Engine back to the breath, do that for anything that pops up other than your focus here. Okay, so that could be for physical pain. It could be a whole bunch of stuff. Now there's a caveat here. If you find yourself in extreme pain, if you find that there's a very overwhelming thought, don't torture yourself. This isn't meant to be like Don't martyr yourself with pain. If you're in pain, slowly mindfully calmly. Pay attention to the pain so you can actually change your meditation object. You're focusing on your nose, the sensation of the breath, and you're strong, sharp pain in your leg before you move it. Change that to be your meditation object for a little while and just look at the pain and then slowly extended out and just feel what that feels like. And when the pain disappears, return the sensation back to the breath or, for example, a strong fort pops up. You can actually look at that and hold that and sort of observe what it is. What does the thought itself feel like? Do you feel it in your belly? Doesn't have a sensation. Does it have, like, an energy pattern? But I mean spiritually mystical energy, I mean physically. What does it physically feel like to you? You know, if you feel depressed or anxious or sad or angry, it relates to physiological feelings. What does that feel like? Right. And you can do this for anything, so your meditation object will be the breath. But if you find yourself unable to keep return, that's OK. Change your meditation object you something else. But mindfully focus on that. Don't get too bogged down on this. Be kind. Be easy on yourself. And just remember, you can only have the meditation that you're having. A successful meditation is the one that you complain, right? Do it daily. That's it. Yeah, 6. Setting The Scene: Okay, so let's talk about setting the scene. We're gonna cover three aspects in this part. It's going to be sitting physical saints or where you're gonna meditate, sitting the sort of time based thing when you're gonna meditate and setting the theme in terms of intense. So your mental intent. So let's get into first covering the physical scene, Where you going to meditate. In reality, it doesn't matter. Okay, so you just focus on the meditation object. You can do every lack. However, most people prefer to have a particular place where they go to to meditate, and they find that it sort of helps them to be primed. I personally have a room, my office space and in a corner. I've got, like, a meditation covered, and in there my partner and I we've got some candles. We got some sense we've got a a few different things. You could put whatever you like in that space, you know, like dress it up. How you like if you're religious, you could put religious subjects there. If you're more spiritually Ontario, you could spirituals stuffs there, you could put books there. Whatever. You sort of whatever sort of trick you into being related into a meditative space. Some people prefer to be outside. Some people prefer to be inside. It doesn't matter. I do suggest you have a go to meditation space just because it helps prime you and get you into the mood in terms of what you want. Physically there. I like to sit on the ground. I just use the ground and a plain wall behind me or just sitting on my feet, cross legged in that so the loads positions in flexible enough to do so. A lot of people are. A lot of people prefer to have a meditation cushion in meditation. Chair something nice, structurally strong but not too intrusive. Some people prefer to lay down, in which case you might want to cushion in the blank from with lying Down is easy may fall asleep so some people, when they do choose to lie down, will have their their hand up when they made a tightening. So if they do fall asleep, it'll fall and wake them up. Some people go to meditate, standing or even do movement meditation. We'll talk about some of those variations laying up the point is is find yourself a space to meditate and use that space each day in terms off went to meditate. When should you meditate? I like to do it first thing. As in, I wake up, get myself a coffee, go to the toilet, dual that sort of stuff. And then I go and sit down and meditate. I go to my meditation space and I start. Why don't I do it is the first thing each day. The reason being is is that it guarantees that I do it. I love meditation, but I know that if I don't do it first thing, I've got maybe a 50% chance off finding the time for because it always feels like there's other things you should do, because when you start meditating, you realize that you're literally doing nothing. It's calming down. It's relaxing. It'll that sort of stuff. But you're not according court doing anything. So you you were a little busy. We've all got stuff to do, so it gets harder and harder to justify doing the meditation. This is why I do what the first thing I wake up, I get myself ready. I met type. Then I go and do my exercise. Now, if you watch the establishment wanting routine video short course that I've got on skill share, you'll be able to see in death how establish that morning routine. But basically I would suggest that used do it first thing. Now other people find that they like to meditate, triggered by certain events. For example, I'll meditate just before or just after a meal, or just before I go to sleep, or just before or just after a workout, or just after they come home from work or in their lunch break or whatever. Find the time that works for you and stick to it. If you find yourself not being able to meditate in that time, that's okay. Change it up. One of the reasons why I like it as a first things last last thing, the benefits of doing in the first thing in the morning Is that a prime? Your day? You wake up your calm, you're ready to go, right? So it helps you for the rest of the day. The benefits of doing at not as the last thing that helps calm you down and get you ready for sleep not going to sleep effectively. Usual goal. But it can very much help. Sometimes people have a long and stressful work day, and sitting down to meditate just causes frustration because you're dealing with a little of these thoughts Now, obviously, meditation is designed to help you with those, and over time it will. But if you try and do it after stressful events every day when you first started, you're not gonna have as much success as if you start with a fresh mind set. I know some people who choose to exercise first, then sit down to meditate. The reason being is that it gets and primes them in that nice physical feeling that feels strongly feel like they've already done something, and then they sitting down for a positive session once again. Technically, it doesn't matter, because all of the thoughts and stuff popping up you just acknowledging. Return your focus back to the breath, but it sort of does. When you're starting out because you want to have positive sessions, you wanna be able to get into the habit. Establishing a habit is important on that topic. I would strongly strongly suggest that you either get your family onboard, meditating with you so that your along Boyd role doing it, you'll know what everyone's doing. Or, alternatively, you find yourself a space where you can be interrupted. Maybe you put a sign on the door that says, I'm meditating or do not disturb all that sort of stuff and you let them know that this is your time that you're taking. It's important that people in your life know that you're taking this time. It's a form of self care, and it could be very helpful to you to do that. So find a space that is your own. Find a time frame that you can we look with that keeps you and that you're unable, unable, used to keep up the habit because particularly you're starting. It's important establishing that routine and to be able to do it on going, find a space where you won't be interrupted, closed, locked the door, put a sign up whatever you need to and sit down to meditate. Some optional extras. Like I said, you can put the sense you have the spiritual objects, although so stuff I do suggest you get a meditation time or an app I use an app. The Waking up by Sam Harris. It has a meditation time on it. Use that. I'll talk about that later in the resource of section, but I still suggest you get a meditation tongue. Why? Because if you set yourself a time, I'm gonna meditate for 15 10 20 and our whatever you like, then you know not to step off the mat, not to listen to those sorts of, like, I gotta be doing this for so long on board and whatever you know them. Let them go until the timer goes off. That's when you hop off. Okay, So set yourself a timer. And in the next video, I'm gonna talk about how to probably something mentally, but having a meditation time. But they're really does help to know when you're going to stop. You can get them off eBay for, like, 23 bucks. So it's a very worthwhile invention. Just get I think you just searched for something like kitchen time up or a countdown timer . If you search for a specific meditation time, you'll be paying through the nose because it's just a time. Find a timer and use it. Yeah, 7. Priming Your Mental State: We just talked about sitting the physical scene and sitting a time for meditation. But let's talk about prime ing your brain probing in mental state to meditate. What I want you to be aware of is that your meditation time is maybe the only time in your day that you will be sitting down and dedicating yourself to self care to being alone with your thoughts, too. Healing to growing run. So it's important to set the right scene so that you really keep that in the forefront of your mind, what you are doing and why now you might want to say something to yourself prior to starting meditation just to remind yourself of what you're doing and why some people choose to say a prayer or an invocation or a mantra. I personally just prefer to just think to myself, Okay, what am I about to do and why I'm about to do some meditation? This will help me in the following ways. I also want to think about how you going to meditate to just remind yourself. Okay, when I turn on this time, I'm gonna focus on the sensation off the breath, entering and leaving my nose, although I might notice other science and that's okay. We'll just keep between my sensation, but focus back to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the nose, and I'll just keep on doing that. I'll sit with a good posture. I remember and remind myself to sit back and sit over the good posture. Also, make sure that I've eliminated as many distractions as possible. My phones on silent, the doors closed and locked. I've told people that I'm meditating. I've established those routines in that mind frame. The reason is important for this. If you and you'll notice this when you start practicing, if you just sit down and just go well, I'm meditating. It's like there's no break between activities once again. That's why you start meditating first thing in the morning. But if you do meditate another time of the day, that's fine. But just take a little bit of a breath on One thing I ever I also like to do is if I'm meditating later in the day, particularly, I'll do a little bit of come breathing now I'm gonna talk about come calmness and relaxation breathing later on. But for the moment. Just think about just taking a few slow and deep breaths just to calm yourself down. Now this isn't the idea off a meditative slow indeed. Breath from just focusing on the breath. This is just relaxation. Relaxing the body 5 to 10 of those to just settle myself, calm myself down and get my good posture. Think of my motivation. Think of my goal. Think of what I'm about to do. Set the timer and then I do it. It's about prime in yourself. It's the same reason behind. Some people will listen to energetic, heavy metal emotive music prior to exercise. Some people have a meditation song or meditation sent that they'll put on. They might have a ritual. A lot of religions use. You know, prostration your physical movements is a part of their prayer because it primes the person to think about what they're doing. They're physically moving that body. If you're into yoga, you could do some yoga stretching right. There isn't really a prescriptive way of what I'm suggesting, but I am saying is is that it's important to prime yourself to get yourself into the mood because let's say you're giving yourself 10 minutes. If you don't problem yourself, you'll find yourself doing that prime in process during the meditation anyway. And getting frustrated and not having a good session and just feel a little you're spending that time anyway, I think would be better to spend a bit less time at the start. Not meditating. Just getting yourself ready, getting self, probably getting self organized and then having a good session. In the next video, we're going to do a five minute guided mindfulness meditation session. Once again, I encourage you to book market so you can return back to it at any time that you like. 8. Five Minute Guided Meditation: five minute guarded mindfulness meditation. So to begin, I would like you to take a seat, stay sanding or lie on the ground. We used to have your eyes opened or closed. It's up to you. But I'm going to assume that you're sitting with your eyes closed. We're going to use the breath as the meditation object once more. So close your eyes. And before we begin the meditative aspect, we're going to do a quick five breath relaxation. So ice close, nice and slow. Deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. - Okay , I'd like you to just lecher off any tension that holding in your body. Just relax your muscles. Still, sit with a good posture. Just nothing comfortable. Close your eyes and bring your attention to the sensation of the breath and during and leaving the nose. Don't force the breath. Just let it come when thoughts arise. When visions air us when emotions arrives, gently acknowledge them. In return, you'll focus back to the sensation off the breath, entering and leaving the nice. - You may find yourself noticing that you've been lost in thought. When I start talking, that's okay. Remember the point of meditation is to draw your attention back to the breath. - You may feel tension or pain or itchiness in your body before you just move a muscle before you scratch it. Before you deal with it. Just take a look at it. Observe that physical sensation. Just watch it for a bit Monetarily. You may find that the each or the pain goes away, and it does Return your attention back to the breath. If it doesn't, gently slowly move your muscles, scratch the edge and then returned back to the sensation of the breath Interim and leaving the Nice once again. Remember, meditation is the act of bringing attention back. So if you find yourself lost in thought, that's okay. Gently return your focus back to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the nice. Okay, so we're coming to the end of the five minutes. I'd like you to slowly open your eyes and take three slow, deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Thank you for joining me in this practice. And remember, you can come back to this meditation session any time you look 9. Attention Versus Awareness: so I'll just quickly cover the difference between attention and awareness. Attention is what you're sort of directing your focus to, so you're directing your attention to my voice to looking at May. Now that's your attention. But you're also aware off a variety of things. You've got this peripheral awareness off all of your senses, so just sort of pay attention to my voice with your attention, right? But just be aware of the other things that you can hear all that you can see. So if you're looking at this on a laptop on your phone or whatever, you can actually see a variety about the stuff right. That's all in your attention. Now your attention plays an important part in sort of evolutionary survival turns. It highlights stuff and keeps you safe. So there's an important thing that I want you to be aware of with meditation. Well, that you're paying attention to the breath. You also want your awareness wide now why in terms off both physically but also particularly mentally. If your attention is solely focused on this and you don't have any awareness, you will find that thoughts just jump and grab you over time and what I want you to think of when you're meditating from now on is this concept off a wide attention that allow you to sort of in your peripheries notice these thoughts coming and going so your attention is here but Europe? You've got this awareness off the thought mental phenomena coming and going. You might be paying attention to your nose, but you can feel physical pain as well. You're aware of it now. At times, that awareness will be so sharp or so risky, also dangerous, that will jump into your attention. And that's actually, you know, very useful to survival. Right? You might be driving you. You're aware you're paying attention to the road, and then out of the corner of your awareness, something pops up and bang. You're aware of that because that's a truck coming right? That's the important part. So when we're doing meditation, what we want to do is train our attention to focus on the breath with paying close attention to keep drawing our attention back. But when our attention wanders into awareness and we're sort of focus on something else, that that's the act of bringing it back so when you're meditating on to be aware, you actually do want a wide awareness. Your attention is focused on the meditation object, but your awareness is wide to capture everything. Yeah, it's a little bit of a hard concept, but once you start meditating for a while, you'll start to notice this you'll be like Okay, well, I'm here paying attention to this. I'm grounded in my meditation object, and I'm able to see things coming past almost like it was like cows on the road driving by Or, you know, like music playing. You sort of see it coming. You don't grasp. It just continues to go. There's a little knowledge to describe this, but basically you're focused here and your attention is wide to pick up a little. The other objects be aware of that. We are actually we're looking for global large awareness, single pointed focused attention. And let's say there's a thing in your awareness in this global awareness that is very, very strong. It's like, Hey, get my attention. Your attention might go to this. Now That's okay, because you can choose to change your meditation object at the startled suggest you stay focused and you keep trying, bring the focus back. But you want to start playing with this or like we did in the previous meditation, the five minute meditation. If something is causing a lot of pain, you can actually look at that. You can actually choose to take a different object and really just focus on it. I was meditating via a outside like focusing on the breath and my attention picked up the sound of a bird and given the acoustics of the area, it did its sound. It sort of made a tweeting sound, and it echoed Reverberated. Now that was so unique that it's like it just caught my attention. My attention went there and then I thought, Okay, I can choose to draw my attention back to the breath, but this is a unique experience. So I'm gonna change my meditation object for the next minute through the sound of this bird because it just sounded incredible. And I really wanted to hear it for what it waas. So something in my awareness sort of real men, to quote unquote my meditation. That's okay. I chose to change my meditation object. So two conceptually here focused on the meditation object off the bird. And now that became the focus. I kept trying my attention back to that sound and the reverberations and what was actually sounding like it sort of taking any preconceived judgments about it. I was just hearing the actual acoustic sound. You do that for feelings. You do that for thoughts and do that for memories. You do that for touch, taste, smell all of these different things. But like I say, big awareness focused attention. 10. Taking Mindfulness Into The Day: meditation for meditation sake is great and you will get benefits. But the real benefits of meditation come when you take that marvelous ability off the meditation, share off the mat and into real world. So one thing I want to start considering is when you finish a meditation session, you know, in the morning and then whatever. Whenever you do it, start thinking about bringing that same feeling often that not just going okay, I'm mindful. Now, that's my mindful time. And now I'm just gonna be on autonomic your own, right. Try and take some mindfulness breaths throughout the day. Whenever you think about mindfulness, just one breath, one single breath over the course of the day will help to ground you and will have significant benefits. Obviously, it's hard. Tiu quantify this, but I found that a 10 minute session or, you know, 10 separate breast throughout the day, almost worth the same in terms of mental health. It really does help you to just get back into that. I'm here. I'm present. I'm calm. I mean control. Under test from situation, we want to get as mindful and as detached. It's possible throughout that day, so when you finish the meditation, don't just get up and go. If you think yourself, I'm going to bring this into my day. I'm gonna bring my practice into my day when I'm with my child known at work. When I'm doing my sport or exercise or hobbies or whatever I'm doing when I'm eating, I'm gonna have some mindful movements. He So let's talk about how we can bring it into a day. Now. There's a couple things you can do. I like to use trees. Now, as in when I do something, that something happens that will trigger me to meditate, trigger me to just have that mindful breath. So let's just do one mindful breath to put this into context. Just close your eyes, that's it. Just focus on that one breath in, and now and then you back to laugh, right? So doesn't my started all 5 10 seconds? When do you do that? You don't have to take the breaths or be right. It could just be, like, literally just in tow. I like to do changing habits, and if you check out my change, have it slowly. Course you'll be at Sorry, change happens 101 course, you'll be able to see how I do this. I like to do it when I touch the door handle. So I touch the door handle entering a leading of room, and that will be the trigger to change. They have it now at the skylighted posture because you touch a door. Had a good pasta. It works. I've used it to help me to lucid dream. Every time I touch you don't handle, I ask myself, Am I dreaming? I've also used it as a trigger full mindfulness. Touch the door handle quick marvel breath. Calm down to get into the present moment. That's one option. Some people use phone reminders, their APS or just alarms. That just ain't mindfulness. You just just beeps. Every so often you put it onto paper 12 o'clock, three o'clock, seven o'clock. Whatever. Some people you know, I have tethers on my wrists. I every time I see those tethers trees mindfulness because I'm not always looking at him. I see them. Oh, mindful mind is that sort of makes sense. It's good to have triggers. It could be every time you pick up the phone every time you go on. Social media, right? Social media is a good one because it has this way off, sort of sucking you into its vortex. So instead, every time you're you open up that app mindful breath First, it will help you to use it less. But it also happy to be more mindful. Give it a try. 11. Daily Mindfulness Opportunities: in addition to using triggers or other life events to be mindful, let's consist some other opportunities to which you might want to be mindful to explore what the sensations and what these feelings and what the actual reality is actually like right to get out of your head and into the present moment. There's a few. Showering is a interesting one. If you sit there and just close your eyes and feel the water on your head, on your body, the warmth, the cold. Whatever you do, you realize that you probably haven't been mindful for that experience much at all. It's very easy to just get distracted by thoughts, emotions, a lot sort of stuff and just have a quick share and get out. But just to shower on slow, deep breaths and feel your body, feel what the water hitting your body feels like, and you'll find that you'll lose the feeling off your body and you just get this sort of cloud of sensation of wolf. And it's amazing because that's what a show it actually feels like. Apply the same logic to eating. What does your food actually tastes like in a past life? I was a high school teacher and I would get kids when they were eating that food to monthly . Taste it, particularly with Orioles. Now, no offense stories, but I am not a fan. And what I did was like, Hey, kids actually taste that like, put it on your tongue, chew it and really taste it. And when they did, some of them realized I really loved them. But other people realized they really didn't. Why, because they were actually tasting it for the first time. I got them to do this with Coke, with their sandwiches, with meat pies with anything that we're reading, and it really got them to see the reality off the fruit that that we're reading. Sometimes I loved it. Sometimes I hated it. But the point is, is, when you're eating, you can actually be mindful with that. Put the body into the mouth, chew it slowly and taste what actually is being eaten all right, and that will tell you if you like it or if you don't because very easy, just eight mindlessly will also help you to eat less. If you struggle to eat too much because you'll feel those feelings thankful some other interesting things. Somewhat music, the smell and the sound of a notion. Planning with your child, right? All of these things are amazing moments to be mindful, exercising, running like for those of you that, like exercise like I do. Once again, it could be easy to distract yourself. Just get through the exercise or whatever, but do a couple of sessions and go hard and just focus on what it actually feels like. Feel your body in that range of movement. Do this and you will get a real understanding off what your life actually is like as opposed to the mental. Build up the delusions, the the false itude that you'll put up and sort of block the reality out with. How do you do this? You just take that common, mindful breath and use whatever object in your environment. Whatever stimulus you want to be the object of meditation. Give it a try. Try with literally anything. Reading is a good one, like watching movies. Whatever you like. You'll find that when you really do pay attention to the stimulus, you'll start noticing it for what it is, as opposed to what you think it is. And that's a massive difference 12. Troubleshooting : Let's talk about some practical realities of meditation. Should you be seated, should your eyes close, be opened, all that sort of stuff. The best advice is to be pragmatic here. Do what you need to do to get the meditation in. If you want to do it standing, seated, eyes closed, eyes opened, folded legs, good posture, whatever you like, just get the meditation done. What I use is I sit cross-legged, not in loudest, just normal cross-legged, back against the wall. Good posture, eyes closed, using the breath as the meditational object. But you don't have to remember the act of what meditation is, is the act of bringing attention or awareness back to the meditation object. Now, you can choose whatever meditation object you like. The breadth is good because it's always there, it's always with you can always focus on it. Some people don't like it and that's fine. You could use it a, the feeling of the ground. You can use whatever meditation objects you'd like. You can use sights, sounds, all of those things. Some people find that eyes closed. They don't like for whatever reason they fall asleep. It's been confronting whatever, that's fine. Eyes open. Some people like this sort of half eyes open and close. Their eyes aren't closed but the vision is blurry. That's okay too. I can't stress enough that whatever posture and style you choose, that's okay. Some people due to body issues and conditions have to sit in an office chair or they stay standing or they laid down. Now, if you lay down there is a bit of a risk of falling asleep. Remember, our goal isn't to get tired. A goal isn't to fall asleep. And yes, there are relaxation benefits and there are different other meditative practices that will help you to relax and fall asleep. This isn't what we're going for. We're going from mountain front. So if you are going to lay down, be aware that you may fall asleep. And one of the ways to combat that is to lay down with your arms up. And then if you do fall asleep, your AML dropped waking you up. I I'm not a fan of lying down meditation because I find, I just get to drowsy two quick. It's too relaxing for me. Other people much prefer it and they don't fall asleep. And going real deepen, this is far beyond the scope of this course. There's, there's traditional practices where you learn to lucid dream and then you continue your meditation from waking into sleep into you to your lucid dreaming and you're actually being mindful in your drain. I've read some books on it. I'm not at all competent edit yet, but there are definite practices there. So if you're practicing that, you would start asleep and you would continue through that process. We've already discussed how to deal with mental phenomena. Like I've said, whatever pops up, thoughts, feelings, emotions, issues, anxiety, anything like that. Physical sensations acknowledged them except them. Turn your focus back to the meditation object. If you find a stimulus is overwhelming, you can definitely change the focus of your meditation object. You can change the meditation object to really investigate that and look at it. Look at it for what it is. 13. How Long Is Too Long: a good analogy for meditation is the gym, because if you do one exercise session, you wouldn't expect to see much, if any, gains right. But if you exercise every day for half a year, you will certainly see improvements in strength, flexibility, fitness and probably weight loss. You'll see gains. The same is true for meditation. If you do one session, that's good. It's not bad to do one session, but you won't notice much if any difference. The real benefits come from cumulative daily practice. I strongly strongly suggest that you instill meditation as I daily practice. It's like a previously imagined Check out the changing habits course to establish this into your day, check out the morning routine course that I've gone up to establish that into your day. I started with one minute, and now I do 30 minutes, if not more, each day. I didn't start that much. I brought it in overtime. One thing I want you to highlight I want to highlight to you is that meditation or with any change but meditation as well. There's a lag between action and results. You might start meditating now, but you might not notice anything much at all for a month, two months, three months. So you've really got to understand the benefits. Why? Which is why I harp on about it. And you've really got to know that this is a long term, life changing thing, as opposed to a quick fix. There are no quick fixes. Meditation will work, but it will take time over time. So I strongly suggest that you implemented daily, start small and build up. However, the is there is something I want to address here. In terms of duration, any amount is good. Like I said, one breath, one breath over the day is good. Starting with one minute a day is so much, infinitely better than nothing. But what's the right amount of time? How much time should you do the books? The theory sort of technically say as long as possible. I don't like that because you can sort of lose yourself in anything, but what I do suggest is that you build up to a level that you're comfortable with. I think that if you can get to that 10 to 20 minute mark of silence, that's that's beautiful and it's amazing and you'll start to really notice the benefits. But what I also suggest that you do is that once a week or once a fortnight or once a month . Triple that time, right? So you might be doing, say, five minutes sessions. But then, once a week or once a month for months, on a fortnight, once every so often do a 15 minute session or if you're at 20 minutes like I am occasionally I'll do analysis session. The reason for doing such a long session is that it it helps you to see where you can get to with more time. It's This is a real benefit of sort of blasting yourself and were the meditations Asian back to the exercise analogy. If you do the same session over and over and over again, you will see improvements, but you'll see far more if you change it up, if you tweak it or if you go super hard and then scale it back right In terms of meditation I was doing, I think about five minutes and then I did a 20 minute session and the next for the next week. I felt incredible, like hang on a second. There's something here and what I realized is that what I was doing? That five minute session was really preparing myself to meditate. I wasn't really in the zone yet. I wasn't really able to be 100% mindful. I realized that it took me five minutes, maybe more, even really effectively, properly stopped meditating. Something about this. I'm thinking about that. My brain's going off. I forget that I'm meditating all of this sort of stuff. And then after that, five minutes on my neck. I really am. He I am meditating. That 20 minute session showed me that I needed to be doing a longer session. It just It just gave me the So then over time I built after that 20 minute session. So now I keep suggesting that I keep saying that perhaps once a week, once a fortnight, once a month, you do a special meditation session that's a lot longer a double or triple or quadruple length. Set the timer. Do your thing, prepare the exact same way, but do a longer session and see how you feel. And then you might go. OK, well, it was okay for the first half, but by the second half just hating life. Look, I can't That's fine. It's too long. We know now you might go. OK, but if I could, I could probably up it a little bit. Is that first half really was good experiment in play, but you'll find that you'll get a lot of benefits from the longer session itself, and you work out how long you should be doing it daily for you. Everyone's different. Some people might just do a few breath throughout the day and be completely fine, and that's enough for them. Other people might do one minute a day. People like myself 20 to 30 minutes a day. That's fine. Find what works for you but experiment with quite a lot longer sessions. So what follows is a 20 minute guided meditation session. Now when I say guided, it's not going to make me talking the whole time. I will be intimately reminding it, but most of it will be sitting in silence for extended periods of time. I'll be meditating along with you now if you don't feel like doing this now because it is a massive time commitment right now, bookmark it. Come back to it and use it whenever you like. Okay, so you've got the one minute, the five minute and what follows will be the 20 minute. That's good. Use it whenever you need to. But don't feel like you have to do it right now. But if you can, by all means sit down, meditate with may weaken, meditate together and feel the benefits off a longer session. And if you find yourself wanting to go on again or doom or, like do the 40 minutes will do the 60 minutes. Just replay that meditation again, where he played again. As many times as you need two. Or alternatively, just at the time out, when you watch on your app or whatever you like and do the longest session yourself, let's do it. 14. Twenty Minute Guided Meditation: 20 minute guided mindfulness meditation session. Okay, so once again, feel free to have your eyes opened or closed. Feel free to be seated, laying down standing walking however you like. However, I'm going to assume that you'll be seated in across like a position with your eyes closed. So what I wanted to do is to start this session with a few deep come breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. So as I'm talking, let's stop that process. Keep those sly breaths going. I just wanted to draw your attention to your body. Seated on the ground. Feel the weight of gravity sinking you into the seat. Feel your body on the ground. Let your body dissolve into a collection off sensations. You might lose the ability to distinguish different parts of your body and just feel this cloud off sensation. That's a good thing. Let that happen and keep the slow breaths going. I want to focus on what you can hear. You can hear my voice. Bacon also probably hear other things. Maybe the sound of traffic or the wind or talking Oh, the the refrigerator humming flies Nothing. Whatever. What can you hear right now in this moment, Two more big, deep, slow breaths in through the Nice. Now through the mouth. Okay, So settling into your seat draw your attention to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the nice Just let your breath come as it's coming. Don't try and force it. Try and prolong it. Don't hold on to it just of seven. If you mind starts to wander, will you find yourself trapped in thought or you hear my voice and you realize you have pain. Gently return yourself back, folks. Deep breath Entering and leaving A nice If you find yourself lost in thought, look at the thought. Turn your inner attention towards the thought. What happens to it? Where does the thought go? Then? Generally, return your attention back to the breath, entering or leaving the nurse Just continue to return your attention back to the breath, entering and leaving the nurse. - If you find the your body is feeling physically uncomfortable, you gotta pain or an itch. Once again turn your attention towards the sensations. Look, does the itch actually feel like can you tell the right it for a little bit while you look at it. The late crap, the sore pain. If it's no too much before you move, just look at it for a little bit. What does it actually feel like? What is paying attention to it due to it? Is it getting better is getting worse. What does it actually feel like when you're ready? Slowly, purposely. Montali, move the muscle, Stretch the leg, Scratch the itch. Take a big date breath and return back to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the notice for the next two minutes. I want you to maintain closed us, but switching meditation. Object to what you can hear. What can you hear in this moment and try to just hear the sound and not put any meaning onto it? Just focus on the physical sensations that come into your ears. For the next two minutes, we're going to use hearing as our meditation object, trying to be nonjudgmental as possible. I just listen to the sounds that come. - There are no good sounds. Well, bad sounds, they were just sounds. What can you hear right now? - So now keeping your eyes closed, I want you to draw your attention to what you can see in your visual field. Your eyes are closed, but you can still see things. There might be dots, colors or shapes. Well, like cloudiness. A lot reflecting in. What can you see right now? Make you official field with your eyes closed. The focus of your meditation, your meditation object. - Can you see with your eyes closed right now? So take a big, deep breath and return your attention back to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the nurse. You can sit with that as the focus of your meditation for the duration of the remainder of the session. For the next five minutes, I will be silent, and you will maintain your awareness onto the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the knives when thoughts pop up. When you realize that you've bean trapped by a mental phenomena or a physical sensation, gently religion and return your sensations. 10 year awareness back to the sensation of the breath entry and leaving the nice Okay , so keeping your eyes closed for a moment, I want you to take a slower deep breath and through the nose and out through the mouth, gently open your eyes and for the rest of the day, try and take these Martinez practices off the meditation mat and into waking life. Bring it with you. Take a few moments today and every day to be mindful when you're walking when you're eating . When you're talking to someone when you're doing a job or school or whatever it is that you find yourself doing today, take a few moments to be mindful. And also just take a moment right now to congratulate yourself full having a meditation session. What you were doing is very beneficial to your mental state, to your productivity, to your life in general, and you'll notice it on a mental, physical and spiritual planes as well as your relationships both at home and at work will improve. Keep this practice going, take it off the mat with you and continue Good job. 15. Different Ways To Meditate: So the next section off this course will cover some variations and operations to mount for his meditation and meditations in general that will add to your practice. So you're already well established to start and get a lot out of you meditation. But these just some tweaks and little additions and other ways that you can meditate that will add to the benefits. So whilst they're not important that you do them, they do at a lot of value. And I think they're tool that are worth having in your arsenal so that you can meditate as you're going so that you could meditate if you're, you know, out of time or you're on the road. Or you're feeling quite anxious that they're good tools to have in the back pocket to use whenever you need to. So the next few years will cover different ways to meditate and with some small quick examples off them to get you started, just be aware that each one either has a course that I've already done on the topic, or I will make a specific course about them. So obviously each one I'm gonna go through in a video water, but know that there's a lot of death down each of these pathways, So without further ado, let's get into the different variations of ways that you can make it. 16. Present State Awareness: present State awareness is a form of meditation in which you cycle through your different senses and change the meditation object. It's very simple. You basically just ask self questions. What can I see? Hear, touch, taste and smell your cycles for rhythm. Now how you cycle through them is up to you. Which senses you focus on is up to you. What I like to do is the following Oh, close my eyes and think to myself What can I feel in my fate right now? What can I feel in my body and my hot and my cold? All of those sort of things? What can I feel right now and focus on that for a couple of breaths that I'll open my eyes ? I just look broadly. What can I see right now when my singing that I didn't notice at the start. Am I seeing anything? You What are the colors like one of the shops at the turn of the textures, All of that sort of stuff. What can I see right now and just look for a few breaths, you know, close my eyes again and I ask myself, What can I fear and I'll stay silent. What can I hear right now? Are there sounds that I didn't know? What did it sound sound like? Are they loud? Quiet at a shop? Are they mellow? Are they pleasant of unpleasant? What can I hear right now? Then I go on to What can I smell right now with my eyes closed? What does the air smell like right now? Can I smell grass or the fresh air or stuffiness or cooking? What can I actually smell right now? Now, I don't typically do taste because, you know, like taste is very specific to if you're eating. But when you are reading, you can definitely add in. What can I taste right now? The variations of present state awareness could be the cycle through all of those. Just once it could be to spend one breath on each of those sensors. It could be to just focus on one sense. Ah, lot of people find benefit particularly if they're in public. Just what can I feel in my feet right now or what can I hear right now? Because it's not that intrusive. It is not that obvious that you're doing president awareness is a very good trick for overcoming anxiety. Right? Particularly those panic a tackle, those things that just have come out of the blue. What can I feel right now? And you can do that Exactly what you are. I personally like touch, hearing and sight, but particularly touch and hearing those two together, back and forth, back and forth really are quite good for may. I just prefer them. So I will think to myself. What can I hear really focused on here? What I can I feel right now and I'm using those is the meditation object. You could change it up and go OK. For one minute, I'm gonna focus on each sense and cycle through or for one breath or for five breaths. How you do it is up to you. But the act of presence said awareness is to go. What am I feeling? Well, can I sent in my senses or right now? What will follow is a very quick one minute present said awareness guided meditation. Once again, you can bookmark it if you want to come back to it and you can follow along at any time 17. Present State Awareness Guided Meditation: prison State awareness Guided meditation. One minute, Take a big date breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, which to close your eyes and just draw your attention to the sensation of the breath, entering and leaving the knives. For this pretty straight awareness meditation, we're going to use touch and hearing, but you would obviously add extra senses should you choose. Draw your attention to the sensations at your feet. Your feet in your shoes are on the ground. What can you feel? What do your feet feel like right now, really? Focus on the pressure, the tense in the hate, the cold, the wind, whatever you can feel on your feet at this moment. Now join your attention to what you can hear. Listen to the sound of my voice. Keep your attention focused on what you can hear and when I'm quiet. Listen for other sounds. Keep your in your attention back to what you can hear. Okay, slowly open your eyes 18. Movement Meditation: another form of meditation that you can employ mindfulness in ears, movement, meditation. There's a few forms. A common one is walking meditation. So the idea is that rather than paying attention to the breath, you're paying attention to the sensations of each step. Now people will suggest that you should do this at a very small pace and just sort of walk in a circle as and you step and slowly feel the feet, heels, heels, middle toe, heels, middle toe, and you're very slowly walking in a circle. Now that's one option. If you have a space where you can walk slowly and just feel what it feels like to walk very slowly, each each individual muscle, contraction in the bounce and all that sort of stuff, that's a wonderful way to practice. You don't have to do it that slow, and some people feel self conscious about doing that for obvious reasons. Um, unless you have a space and you're in a comfortable environment and all that sort of stuff that might not be applicable to you. However, you can practice that same exact technique whenever you walk, just focus on the sensation of the breath sensation of the surface area of the feet, the movement, all that sort of stuff. Whatever patient walking at, I just feel what it feels like to book another aspect off movement meditation that you can do is when you're exercising, particularly when you doing something like a year ago or a stretch. Yes, because when you're doing yoga, that sort of slower styles, you're in a particular position and your body will be moving off, feeling or doing something in a certain way. Why not use those feelings? There's bodily sensations, the stretch, the tension, the exercise itself as a focus of meditation. A lot of good yoga practitioners will employ that practice to their students without really even sort of emphasizing what they're doing. They'll be like, you know, George attention to your body feels, stretch, all that sort of stuff. They're actually getting you to be mindful of your stretch. But you can do that yourself, you know. Try it right now. Just put your arms up and just feel what you feel in your back. Put your arms back behind your back and pull. Do a big date breath next to the side stretch around stretch of body and just feel what it feels like to move your body so you can do it a few different ways. Slow walking or regular walking, stretching or yoga or any general exercise. I do a lot of sort of slow ovary had work and in those movements, because I've got your shoulder issues in these sort of movements, I could be very mindful and feel what my body is doing. Feel the tension. That sort of allows me to know where I'm so where I'm not. So it helps me to get that physicality better. But it's also another practice of mindfulness, which adds to those benefits to try some movement meditation as well. 19. Full Body Sweep: full body scan and body sweeps. This is an active mindfulness meditation that focuses on feeling your physical body. So, basically, you either go from top to bottom, head to feet or from bottom to top feet ahead and feel each part of your body. Feel the tension. Andi. Whatever you can feel in that pot, just draw your attention to the part of the body and then all the way. Absolutely feel every part. Now that's the body. Sweep the tension and release. You can add to that by going drawing your attention to the part of the body and then tensing it and releasing it. The act of tensing and releasing the muscles is an added relaxation fate. So this is one to try if you find yourself holding a lot of physical tension and you want to start letting go of that so the next video will be a guided meditation on a full body. Sweet, just a quick one. But I want to give you a touch of a warning if, like we talked about the trauma based approach, some people that have had past traumas and past issues find this very confronting. Other people love it and help them integrate. So if you're doing this and you'll find it's too much, stop move on. That's completely understandable, but you also may, alternatively, find that really help you to connect to your physical body and to re integrate it. So with that caveat in mind, the next video will be a quick guided, full body sweet meditation. 20. Full Body Sweep Guided Meditation: full body sweep, guided meditation. Okay, so close your eyes and take a big, deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Draw your attention to your fate. Look, your feet feel right now. What do you feet feeling? Want to tense your fate? Muscles pulling time and relax them and your your attention to your lakes. What do your links feel like? Right now, folks, on the front of your legs, in the back of your legs. Now, I want you to squeeze those leg muscles, release them and squeeze them again. Release them during her attention to your back. What did you back feel like right now? It's already tension will pain for relaxation feelings. I want you to tense your back muscles. Big squeeze and relax them. And another big squeeze and relax them. And for your attention to you'll tummy muscles. What did you tell me? Feel like right now, type that cow. Is it feeling butterfly, is not it? What did your belly feel like right now? Now I want you to tense your belly and relax it. Intensity and relax. Now I want to draw your attention to your chest. What does your chest feel like right now? Is there any pain, any tension? What do you close feel like? What does your chest feel like right now? I want you to tense your chest muscles and relax, tense and relax. Draw your attention to your arms, all of your arms and your hands. What do they feel like? Start attention that any point? What do you close feel like? And not so strong tense of your arm muscles in your hands Clenched fist. Relax, tense and relax. So now I want to draw your attention to your neck and t advice into your head. What do they feel like? Do you feel any tension, any pain? What temperature do they feel like Now? I want you to tense the muscles in your neck and advice and your head and relax. Contents them again and relax. Now it's to draw your attention to your whole body. What is your body as a whole? I feel like right now. Now I want you to tense every muscle in your body. All that wants all that you can. And now relax, intense and relax. Okay. And return your attention to the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the noise and take three deep slur relaxing breaths. You can do a full body sweep when your own at any time. You don't have to include the tenses, and you can get very, very, very specific. So this was really quick one where we just covered the major body out. But you could get super specific feel each finger, feel each different muscle group of the legs, each different part of the back of the neck. Individually, the front in the back, the eyes, the nose. You can get really specific with this, and if you find that this is a meditation that is providing you benefits, I encourage you to try it. So feel free to relook. And what's that one again if you want to follow that approach, but you could also go far deeper and far more detailed yourself, But you could also bring it back and just do a full body quick sleep. How does my body feel like right now? Okay, tense my body. Relax. That's approach can work as well. Give birth to try and see how you go 21. Problem Solving: meditation for problem solving. You can use the same approach to problem, solve or contemplate or investigate an issue rather than using the breath as a meditation object, you can use a question or a concept or something challenging as the object itself. This requires a little bit of set up and a little bit of a practice extreme meditation, because it's quite hard to do so. But what you'll do is you'll remember how we talked about prime in yourself well, at the start, rather than prom in yourself. The traditional way that we talked about you will say Okay, the purpose of this meditation is to think about this concept or two. Deal with this problem or manage this issue, and you will make that question or that feeling or that thought. The focus off the meditation object That's what we will keep returning your focus back to. You'll keep thinking off and you'll find yourself going down lines of thought, and this is where the meditation practice comes in. You don't get lost. You just wanna watch your brain sort of exploring it. This requires a little bit of practice, but you can set yourself that intention during this meditation session. I'm going to focus on this now. This couple of approaches, like I said, you can just set that meditation object a focus on it as the meditation object. You could also set your intention, do some normal mindfulness and then try and just let go. I'm gonna talk about the concept of letting go meditation later. But basically, you just set your intention and let your brain flood. So you think yourself I want to work out this problem. You do some mindfulness Kate yourself focused on that meditation object that breath, and then you just let go and let your brain just explore. And then after that timer goes off, hopefully you will come to some conclusions or you will be able to flesh out the issue a little bit more. I use this to help with writing help with my martial arts and help with personal or interpersonal issues. It's a way to sit back and see how I really feel. I know that sounds funny, but sometimes, particularly if you have a streak of anxiety or depression or other mental issues, you can get clouded. So this is a way to sort of detached step back and just look at the problem from a detached perspective. Give it a try 22. Choiceless Awareness: choices, awareness or like a letting go meditation. This one's a little bit different, and it's, you know, technically not a mindfulness meditation. But I find that it definitely does add to the practice, and what I sometimes do is I will do 5 10 to 20 minutes of this instead of my mindfulness meditation on occasion, because it does have this benefit to it. So the basic practices this. You sit down and do nothing. You just let your brain floor sounds interesting, but it's It's quite challenging because you want to be able to what's your thoughts but not get trapped by them? And this is where your practice of mindfulness really helps. Because you find your brain will pop up a whole bunch of different thoughts and you just look at them. You know you thought pops up. You just jury attention to that. Just look at the film you thought pops up the jury attention to that. Just keep repeating that process without getting without getting attached to the phone without falling in Twitter without losing yourself in that thought. So if you have a history or practice of Montana's meditation is we do, you will be able to find some benefit off this and in L. A. For this meditation is it's almost like all of the things that happening in your life are like unready. Niles on this sort of meditation is you letting yourself just read and open and let go off those emails that you're opening them, letting your brain look at them and letting them go. I found a lot of benefit for this of processing my past. It helps you to see them, and because you're a seIf adult meditative space, you are better able to process them. Some people struggle with this because their brain goes quite crazy, which is why I suggest that this is a bit more of an advanced practice that you might want to try after you've being doing normal mindfulness meditation for a while. But the practice is this. Set your timer for whatever time you like and just sit, do a few deep mindful breasts and stop and then just resolve yourself to pay attention and acknowledge whatever thoughts pop up. I just let them keep coming. I just looked them as like, and you'll probably notice that when you draw attention to them when you look at them, when you turn and face those thoughts, they disappear in the next one comes up on the next one and the next one the next one, until eventually your brain sits quietly, you'll find that you've got a peace and quiet mindfulness space with no attention, no object. And that's when the real fun starts. And I can't I can't put into Woods the feeling that that feels like because it's it's a feeling of like non Jew ality. There's no me and, you know, object subject is just it's sounds esoteric sense crazy, but it is there to be experienced and all of the traditions and all of the books talk about this experience. I strongly, strongly recommended give this tribe, but maybe not at the start. Usual and judgment. Give it a shot. Set yourself the timer and just experience 23. ‘Eyeballs’ Meditation: eyeballs. Meditation. This one's interesting because you need a partner for what you do is literally sit face to face with someone and look at their eyes while they're looking door ice. You just stare into one eye. You can choose one of the other one on. You just look sounds intense. And it is. The idea is, is that you're looking at them at their eye while they're looking at your eyes mindfully. So you keep drawing attention back to that is the meditation object. This was an interesting one because it seems a fronting. It seems a bit challenging, and it is, but it has some tremendous relationship benefits. It really does. My partner and I, we sit down every day. After we meditate, we do our meditations. And then she sits opposite me and we do two minutes off eyeballs meditation, and what we find is that it helps us to communicate more. It helps us to connect more. It helps us to be soft with each other, end more caring for lack of a better expression, eat, humanizes people not that you don't see or connect to or anything like that, the other person, but it really emphasizes that they're in there. They're in their mind. They're they're they're they're doing their own thing just like you are doing your own thing. And when you're both doing it to each other, there's this connection in this deep understanding that, you know, we're just here. We're just we just table, you know. So I suggest this to anyone that I'm giving relationship counselling to to just do one minute per day. Just look at each other's eyes and just don't say a word. You might start talking. That's okay. Just bring it back. The focus for that one minute that two minute whatever. Small man Aton isn't intense. You just practice this eyeball meditation their side benefits beyond the relationship that you have with the person you're doing. It helps you to feel more confident socially. It helps you, particularly if you've had a history of anxiety or depression where you sort of hitting yourself practicing. Looking at someone in the eyes is a massive confidence boost, So not only is it mindfulness, not only is it relationship gaining, it is also a conference boots because you are able to look at people in the eye and If you can look at people in the eye, you are able to ask for what you want. You can be more assertive and there's so many benefits. So what we're gonna do now is I invite you. Look at the camera for 10 seconds straight in the eyes. I want to look at me back nice and slow deaths and just will maintain eye contact. Now you can blink. You can do that sort of stuff. And if it's too much, feel free to click to the next video. But just to give you a little bit of experience now, obviously doing this through the camera is a bit different, but that's OK. I want you to find someone if you can. If this seems like something, wanna try If you've got a partner and give it a shot to take a big slow breath dries on mine and we do some Bible meditation, Okay, It wasn't too bad, was it? So now, if you've got a partner, if you got a willing friend or you've got a meditation group, get this one of shop. It has in a very short amount of time. The ability to give you tremendous benefits can't stress that enough 24. Relaxation Breathing: So why would you want to use calm breathing techniques to aid your meditation? Well, if you're going to sit down and you're going to feel yourself, I feel it's better to be in a coma state. And for anyone that has anxiety or tangent, I just wants to be in a bit that a mental state being comma and instilling cam practices translate throughout the rest of the day. So that's why I stopped older meditation's with a couple of slow deep breaths. You can actually extend that. You can actually go and do slow calm breathing for an extended period of time, you can make that your meditation. Now, most of the time with meditation, with mindfulness meditation, you're not actively trying to change the duration of the breadth. You just to boast or watch it. However, when you find, you're probably finding that when you're watching the breath, you start controlling that breath. That's okay. This meditation, you actually are going to control the breadth and you're going to still focus on those sensations or choose a different meditation objects. The candle, the feeling of the fate, the meditation object itself doesn't matter. But for this purposes we'll just keep it as the breadth. But you now actively the sensation that is B now actually going to just keep slow breathing. Those cliched bits of self-help advice. It's like onto some slow breaths, you'll feel good. So no one actually really does it, but it really is amazing. So in the next video, we're going to just do ten slow and deep breaths together. That's it. And I encourage you to actually do this one literally sit there and do some slow breathing with me. And you'll find that you really do feel calm because there's a mind-body connection. If you're breathing slowly, your body is telling your brain that there's no reason to be worried. Because if you were worried, you wouldn't be slowly breathing, it'd be freaking out, right? So your body can impact your brain, your brain can impact your body. So we're using good posture, nice relaxation, slow deep breaths to relax the mind. Now, once again, there's always different technicalities in ways that people do this. Some people do a square breathing, for example, a breathing for four to six to eight seconds, hold for that same time, released slowly for that time, and then breathing for that time. So it's like right. So it's like a square. Other people go in, hold out, in holdouts. That's like a triangle. Other people will just go in, out. Whatever, right? Find the way that works for you. I find the square breathing anxiety inducing because I'm like, I can't breathe. I don't like it. I'm a fan of triangle. The breathing as in the in, hold out, in, hold out, or just the in and out slowly. So what we're gonna do next is the Internet slowly. But once again, I encourage you to practice any of those options. Give them all the try what everyone relaxes you the most. Our goal is to be relaxed. Yeah, let's do it. 25. Relaxation Breathing Guided Meditation: Tyne. Relaxation breaths, guided meditation. Close your eyes and just breathe with me. We're going to do 10 slow breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Let's begin okay up in your US and feel how relaxed you feel. 26. Meta Meditation: the final top of meditation that already introduced to you is called metta or Loving Kindness. Meditation. It's interesting. Every meditation book that on mindfulness irate, always has a appendix or chapter of the end. Talking about metta meditation, they suggest that whilst your main practice might be them on, furnaces were discussed. There was a very, very strong benefit to practicing metta meditation to practicing loving kindness. So what is this? It's basically the act off, opening up your heart to invoking positive and good feelings what you do. You will start with you common slow breaths like we do always and then draw your so enjoy your attention to the feeling of you hot and you will bring up the visualization off yourself and you'll start sending feelings of loving kindness to yourself. Some people just can have that feeling other people will use words, and the words could be May I be free of ill will be free of suffering may be full of loving kindness. May I'll be happy. The words down that intent are what is necessary, the words specifically unimportant. The idea is, is that you build up this feeling of love and kindness this wolf this in a heart feeling and you build it up stronger, stronger, stronger. And then you start sending it to people in the sense of you. Bring up your child. What, you bring up the partner or you bring up a friend and then you start making sending those same statements that feeling that heart, that warp to that person, may my partner be free of it will make should be free of suffering. Maybe she'd be full of loving kindness, makes you be happy. And then you extend that to people you work with and then to the world at large. And then, if you can keep that feeling going to people that maybe have wronged you or harmed you, or do in different people to every living creature. Now there's a couple of ways to look at what you're actually doing here. The mystical approaches like to sending them love, and that helps them Now that's a whole different discussion that I'm not getting into. Only talk about what it does for you, the person that's doing it. If you can invoke a sense of love you're actually connecting brain cells are like, you know, neuronal connections in a positive fashion. You're coming yourself down and you're making yourself feel good. If you can send those feelings to yourself, you're practicing self love, which has multitudes of benefits. If you consider that to people that you care about, you know, having them in your mind and your thoughts and you'll, you'll stop acting in a positive way. If you're sending good vibes, quote unquote sending good vibes to people It's very hard to treat that person badly, and you know whether or not you believe in the reality of comma in the sense of you do something bad. Something that happens, it's very obvious. If you treat people well, people will treat you well. If that's calmer, what if I don't know? But if you send out this positive feeling to people, you will act better to them, and that will treat you better, and therefore your life will improve. So there's a few things going on here that's completely non mystical, known, spiritually non we were. It's literally just opening yourself up. Now let's take that a step, too. People that have your indifferent to the world at large. Two people that may have wronged you there's that saying That's like if you're holding onto and you're the one getting Bert and there's a lot of truth to that, if you are holding on to anger the person that you're angry at doesn't feel that it's, you know, the one suffering you could be ruminating on over and over there, get over again and then you finally bringing up that person. They want a meeting room, then be right. So in reality, what you're doing is helping to let go off those toxic feelings. So I encourage you to try this. Now some people will suggest you start with yourself first. Other people will suggest that you start with someone else. First, however you go about this, it's fun. But the idea is that you get those feelings in your heart. Down here, you feel them, you sit with them and then you start sending them out. And if you find them falling away or you find it struggling, you go back to yourself or back to that initial person. Build it back up again and keep going. Now, once again, the practical nature of this you could do it for a minute for five minutes ago for 20. Some people use this as their sole meditative Frank is. All they're doing is loving kindness to themselves, to the world, to people in general, all living creatures over and over again. Other people uses supplement. That's what I do. I mainly practice mindfulness, and I do this on occasion, for example, in the same way that we did the open minded meditation, the choices of wins, meditation, our belong K on occasion do metta meditation as well. One of those things that I find just boosts and has a good feeling. So I use it as a supplement to my mindfulness meditation practice. Basically, because all the people that I'm learning part for this off do so as well. It does feel good. Give it a try and see how it makes you feel toward yourself and told the people in your life 27. Class Project: Okay, so class project time. Like I just said, if you've got questions, if you want some help troubleshooting anything that we've talked about, the class project is the place to do it so literally. The class project will be a meditation journal. What I want you to do is stop meditating daily and just write down when you meditated. How long you meditated? Full s and general impressions and questions that you have. Do this for seven days and each day update and edit your class project. So your first class project would just be day one. How long when? And just comments. That's it. Open a little template to show you what I mean. But the really wanted to do this class project is that will start helping to establish the practice off meditation. It will help you when I can help to address the troubleshooting issues, and it will make you socially accountable. Social accountability is an amazing way to change habits. So I strongly, strongly strongly encourage you to do the class project brought down how you went, how long you meditated for and when you meditated. That's it. Ask me any questions you need in that section and we can stop getting better at a meditation due to try 28. Resources & Recap: Okay, so I've tried to make this course as comprehensive as possible. However, I want to provide further resources and reading for those of you who want to go really deep on particular topics and to see where I'm getting my information from and answer those in-depth questions on this topic, please feel free to connect with me on social media and Zach P. Philips or via my website Zachary happened Phillips.com or as a comment section here and the projects. And we talk about that a little later if you have questions. But here's the source. Here's a bunch more in-depth information from highest-quality meditators that you'll come across. The first few are a couple of books. I'll talk about an app and then I'll share with you some of the stuff that I've written myself. So for those of you that are left brain thinkers, that one, a logical step-by-step process. This book, the mind illuminated, is for you. It breaks down meditation into component parts and sort of gives you a ten step, a 10-point process that you will start. Everyone starts at level 0, level one. And then you will find that it will give you milestones and give you different things that you will find that at level one, you're going to be doing this. These will be the things you face. This is how you move beyond that level two, level three, all the way up. And I found this to be quite useful because it broke the concept of mindfulness metadata annotation down into such a systematic and applicable approach that I couldn't find anywhere else. Not in-person or online, not in any books. This is the one that sort of left brain thinker, that sort of logical analytic person. This is the one you want to get. Now, on the outside of things. If you're more right brain, if you're more of a feeling sort of person, more intuitive person. Mindfulness in plain English. This book was, once again, very, very highly recommend it very highly, because it gets you going very quickly. And as the name suggests, it's Mindfulness in plain English. It really just gets you started, gets you going and makes you feel it very quickly. I recommend this one to my clients who are more of the intuitive sort of person because it sort of speaks to them a little bit more. It's got more personalized examples of the author. And as such, it's got a more human feel as opposed to the analytic nature of the mind illuminated. But I find having both of those hits the mark because you really get this left-brain, right-brain approach. And when you combine them together because they're both talking about mindfulness meditation, you get a lot of depth to it. And interestingly enough, they both have the little appendix of Metta meditation in them. So it's worth, it, it's worth paying attention to the books that I would recommend. There are many, many, many more that I've read across multiple disciplines. But these three are the core that I would suggest that if you want to go deep, they're the ones you rate. In terms of guided meditations. Obviously we've done a few here in this course. But if you're looking for a daily ongoing guided meditation, go no further than the waking up app by Sam Harris. Sam Harris is a expert meditator and his course. And the app is constantly being updated. It's got this 50 part introduction. It's got daily meditation, it's got theory and it's got conversations with expert meditators. I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest that you do that. I've signed up, I use it daily. I use that for my 10-minute guided meditation. And then I use the in-app timer for my meditation app for my personal meditation. It also has a kid section that is basically mindfulness specifically for kids. I do that as well when the new lessons on their pop up because it just, it's, it's spoken about in a different way in the language is obviously approachable for kids. So check out that app if you're looking for an app-based guided meditation session. It covers mindfulness, but also covers a whole bunch of different tweaks and styles like the Metta, like the choiceless awareness and couldn't recommend that more. The final resources. And I'll put the links down below to all the books, is a link, two chapters from my book, how to get your **** together. So I've written a self-help book that covers everything from overcoming anxiety, defeating depression, moving up and trauma, all the way to getting organized, following your dreams and finding meaning. And there's some chapters that I've done on meditation and relaxation, breathing. And they sort of flesh out this topic a little bit more as well. So I'll put the link down. You can read them, you can listen to them for free and check that out too. So if you want to get deeper on this, this course has been quite comprehensive obviously, but these resources will take you to that next level. Once again, I encourage you to connect with me if you have any issues in the next video is going to be on the class project. And when you do the class project, that will be an opportunity for you to troubleshoot and ask me questions. So I encourage you to do so there, if you've got a project up and you're like, Hey, I need help with this. I will answer and I will follow up with that. You can also connect with me on social media at Zach be Philips or my website Zachary half and philips.com. The links down will be in the show notes and there's places that you can ask me for further assistance as well. So whole bunch of further resources strongly, strongly, strongly recommend those books, the chapters of my book, The Waking Up app, and to connect with me via the class project. Let's do that now. So I just want to thank everyone for joining me in this meditation mega course. You'll notice that the top there, it's saying something like, do you want to review this class? I must, must, must encourage you to do that because it makes a massive difference to spreading the word, getting more people on board, promoting the channel, all of that sort of stuff. The more people that like and rate and review what I'm doing here means the more courses that I can do On that topic. If you have suggestions or ideas or courses that you would like me to do, please connect with me on Skillshare or via my social media. The links are all down below. And I just want to say, remind you once again, meditation is the act of bringing your attention back to the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the node. No, it's back to the meditation object, right? So if you find yourself meditating and vital, getting frustrated, that you keep getting lost in thought. Actually be happy with yourself. That's meditation. You're doing it. Noticing that you're distracted and bringing your attention back is the meditation. So you, congratulations. I must, must, must encourage you again to do this daily. Okay. It really is one of the best things you could ever do for your mental state. And doing it daily will show benefits. It will take time. There will be that lag, but you will see a result. And finally, I want to remind you that you should do your best to take the mindfulness off the meditation cushion and into your daily life. You'll start to detach or start to step back, you'll start to see reality for what it is. And on that note, if you find that you're not happy with what you're saying, That's a good thing because that's the reality of living in. It means that you can now start to slowly make some changes and improve yourself. That's, that's, that's what it's all about. If you want more from me, if you want to see what else I'm doing, you can click the link to my website, and from there you'll see my different podcasts, my books, my blogs, my vlogs, all of the things that I'm doing. And a lot of that is self-improvement. So if you find that when you're meditating, stuff's coming up the 900% happy with. Good. That means that you're aware of it, you can start making some changes. So once again, thank you for connecting with me. Feel free to go back to those guided meditations anytime you'd like. Do the class project, use that as a place to troubleshoot any issues or questions you have. And yeah, let's keep this guy because this is great. Thank you.