Meditation enhances your self healing experience.
The greatest mysteries to healing in life are right here in front of us, part of us, each and every day. The reason we do not recognize them is because we are so busy surviving. We rarely slow down long enough to notice the spirit of life hidden within every living thing.
You do not have to wait for a healing miracle to magically occur. Healing moments and miracles occur as you dedicate time and space to simply be in the presence of life. By creating quiet moments of reflection and meditation, you increase the odds that intuitive wisdom, insights and healing energy can actually get through to you.
The inner stillness that creates the opening for healing doesn’t just happen. You must be willing to create time and put effort into becoming still. In the stillness you become witness to yourself, your guidance and to the gifts that life is offering you. In order to assist you in slowing down, one of the very first things to do is to create safe space for yourself.
Here are 5 ways to create safety for experiencing more space, quiet and meditation:
Make Privacy a Priority
In order to create deep and meaningful experiences, you will find it helpful to attend to your needs for privacy. It is difficult to engage in the depths of stillness when you surround yourself with multiple distractions, so I recommend creating space where those are at a minimum if at all possible. For example turn off the stereo and the telephone. Ifyou are meditating, you are not answering the phone, so you might as well spare yourself the disturbance of it ringing.
Create a Quiet Space or Incorporate Background Noise
If you are living in a metropolitan area, where it is nearly impossible to escape loud noise, then it is probably best to practice meditation in such a way that you allow those sounds to become part of the background. With practice, your senses will become more attuned to nature and your inner landscape and less attuned to human-made sounds.
Notify Others
When living with others, you might want to post a note on your door or notify your family or friends that you are taking some private time and need to be left undisturbed fora certain period of time. Unless there is an emergency, it is probably best not to give into the temptation to respond to any outside interruptions. Your relationship with the Divine is an integral part of your journey in self-awareness, deserving your complete and uninterrupted attention.
Choose a Consistent Time of Day and Amount of Time
You may want to set a timer for a specified period of uninterrupted time. In this way, you and everyone in your home knows that this is your private time, until the timer goes off. Consider setting your sacred time for a specific time of the day, every day. Consistency will help you learn to let go of the mental distractions that usually, naturally arise, and it will make it easier on friends and family to know when to expect you to be needing privacy.
Start Out Slow
Start out slow. If the longest you can be still with yourself is 5 minutes, that’s great. Begin there, and slowly add more time. The idea is to increase serenity, not become frustrated with yourself about what you can’t do yet in terms of being in the stillness with yourself.
If it is helpful to listen to a soothing or sound medicine CD for 20 minutes or so, incorporate that into your stillness practice. Many of my clients like to listen to Deep Peace daily to heal the mind, emotions and body, while entering into a state of profound tranquility.
If your mind gets quiet while taking a hot bath, pour that hot water into a tub and sink in. If you prefer to be out in nature, find a place to be and go there. If it helps to gaze at a candle or follow the movements of your breath, do what works.
This is your time for stillness and there is no right or wrong way to approach it. Do what works for you. Once you get used to having this private time for quieting your mind, you can become present to the mind itself.
In time, you will discover how to witness the mind itself and day-by-day invite it to become more and more quiet. In this quietness, there is opportunity for you to receive the guidance you need to be led to healing choices and options that are optimal for your healing.
Marianne says
Thank you, Misa. Your message came at the perfect time for me because I've been preoccupied with a busy mind this afternoon and it's not been too much fun. Time to get out of my head and into my breathing. Thanks!
MisaH says
Marianne,
I'm so glad to hear that the timing was right for you. We have so much conditioning around thinking things through that it does take our conscious attention to remember to breathe our way through. The quiet mind is so so sweet, isn't it?