My relationship with meditation has been up and down over the years. I used to find myself sitting there and thinking of everything I have to get done and the time I am wasting 'just sitting here'. Over the years and with practice this changed but it wasn't overnight.
You hear masters of yoga proclaim again and again - meditation is the key! Key to transcendence, as well as issues us mere mortals can relate to, like anxiety, stress and being in constant overdrive.
There are so many different ways to meditate, especially now that it has become the hip thing to do. If the western science confirms it is good for you then it must be, right?! :) It can take time to convince yourself to try, because it is outside of anything you have done before to cope with pressures of life. I have known so many say - 'Oh, I am just waiting for my meditation cushion to arrive and then I'll start meditating'. The truth is if you have resistance to it, then it will never be the right time, and you will keep making excuses for why you haven't started.
And once you make yourself do it, you might even hate it at the beginning. One of my students recently text me saying - 'Sabina I started practicing your Elevated emotions meditations and hated it'.....thankfully she didn't stop there. 'but then I made myself do it again and again every day and now I’ve relaxed into it, accepted it and I love it - it is the highlight of my day'.
You cannot pass judgement on something having done it once. So many factors come into play - your mood, when you had eaten, how much work is waiting for you, if you have just had an uncomfortable conversation - all this colours our judgement and perception on things.
Choose one style, technique, teacher and stick to it for at least one week!
A meditation I have consistently practiced over the past 2 years is an 8-phase meditation created by my teacher - Jambo Truong. He created it with a modern human in mind. The people who are in overdrive, overworking, over stimulated and stressed. Sometimes when you are deep in these loops, it might even feel like you have no control over your life and how it turns out. Jambo lives by the belief that you are the captain of your ship. You can navigate your destiny just the way you want it to be. Here is a little bit more about this technique and each phase:
Phase 1 - Breathe for Yourself
The meditation starts with an invitation to breathe for yourself. We spend so much of our time with our attention and energy outwardly focused. From the moment we are up in the morning to night, there are so many external stimuli that have a grip on our attention. This first phase is about arriving to a place where we are listening to our internal vibrations, grounding and quietening down.
Phase 2 - Sit With What You Feel
Often, the layers of tension we carry create distance between us and our true nature. Or perhaps a clearer way to describe this – when the mind is distracted, we are further away from the truth. Jambo also calls this phase – confessing to your spirit. There is something about the act of being truthful about your state that frees you of the fog of uncertainty, tension and disillusionment. If you are angry in that moment, do not delude yourself – say that you are. If you are distracted, then say you are. All this helps to put down the unnecessary burden we carry, often without realising.
Phase 3 - Choose an Elevated Emotion
I have a 10 Day meditation on 10 Elevated Emotions, so if you find this phase difficult, then try doing that meditation first to see what you need to work on right now. It is good to choose one emotion and stick to it for at least 3 months, maybe more. Whether you are working with Love, Awe, Faith, Kindness – every day this emotion will unfold itself and reveal to you something you haven’t noticed before. You might start on a superficial level of connecting to the word itself and whatever you have in your memory bank associated with the word. Then you might dive deeper and start witnessing how it feels in the body and where in the body you feel it.
Phase 4 - What are You Grateful For?
A healthy practice to do and proven to change your state. Sometimes in life, we shine light on the negative things or things that went wrong in your day. This phase is a reminder that there is always something in your life that you can be thankful for, no matter how difficult your day has been…give it time to make itself known. The more tangible it is, the more you can connect to it and the more this feeling of gratitude has the power to change your mood and state. Over time you see that your mind automatically looks and really uptakes moments of beauty, because you train yourself to see.
Phase 5 - Practice Forgiveness
In Buddhism and in many other spiritual traditions in fact, forgiveness is one of the central practices on a path to be able to love freely. Blame and anger creates a shield around the heart, so what we are cultivating is a gradual softening of that shield to get curious about what's underneath. Nelson Mandela once said - holding on to resentment is like holding on to poison hoping it would kill your enemy. So when we soften the shields of our heart we slowly start letting go of the poison. Because ultimately, we are the ones with poison and not the enemy! It does not happen in a day, forgiveness is a practice that takes patience. Phase 6 - How is Your Life Going to Be in One Year?
Here is where you can practice steering your ship. When I was first guided through the 8 Phase Meditation practice by Jambo and I had to visualise my life in one year, I was lost and didn’t know how to do it. It made me realise, I am not clear about my life and my intentions. This was a stark realisation – one doesn’t want to get fixed on goals forgetting the present moment, but it is also important to have some signposts in the future to arrive to, it helps you focus. This phase makes you dream and become clear about what you want your future to look like. This also informs where you put your energy in the present moment.
Phase 7 - How is Your Life Going to Be in the Next 24 Hours?
This phase is a practice for what you need to do in the next 24 hours to make your goals of the next year come true. Often New Year’s resolutions fail because we set intentions and don’t necessarily have the process of keeping accountable. Every day when you meditate and envisage your next 24 hours (right after envisioning your next year), you are reminded that your immediate actions matter in the long term of your life. Where you put your energy today will impact your whole year!
Phase 8 - Sit With Your Guides
This is a beautiful phase to end with. Think of it this way - when you are in the company of your friends and they are supporting you and telling you that you can do anything – then you leave that situation thinking ‘I can do anything!’. Your guides – whether that’s in the form of a spirit animal or an ancestor or a mentor or a yoga teacher (hi!) – are there to help you! And you are always cared for and support is available… you just need to look and ask for guidance. This might be a phase where you pose a question to your guides or simply let it be and see what happens.
Check it out for yourself and I am excited to see what you think. The 8 Phase Meditation comes as part of a Cultivating Resilience in Mind & Body course - Check it Out!
Enjoy xxx
The Yoke Wellness Ambassador,
Sabina Ahmadov
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