Why Meditate? Intro to Our Winter Meditation Series
Something you may not know is I share meditations on the app insight timer. Some of my meditations have thousands of plays over there. I just found out my most popular meditation has over 156,000 plays!
I was connecting with one of my listeners over there who asked if I could share these meditations on more platforms so they could be easily accessible.
So we'll be offering a winter series of meditations to support you during this time of turning inwards, slowing down, being with your body and your breath.
Find more meditations on Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/meredithrom
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Transcription:
Why should we meditate? Besides the huge amount of physical benefits from me, meditation, including lowering our stress levels, preventing anxiety related diseases, and really setting ourselves up for a healthy and stress-free future. There are so many reasons to meditate. One of the biggest reasons that I meditate, and it has helped me to become more aware and less reactive in times in my life when I would've gotten really angry at someone or resentful, I've been able to move through difficult emotions.
With so much ease and grace and be able to forgive and move on with my life and really focus on myself. And since I've been able to do that, I've really just constantly been given beautiful opportunities in my life. I feel like I've been able to attract so much more happiness and joy because I've been willing to let go and move through those difficult emotions.
I want you to imagine just this beautiful still lake, and then also imagine just a cup of water. So if we took a spoonful of. Salt and put it in a cup of water, the water would become very affected. It would become very salty. And I want you to imagine that salt represents all the difficult stuff in life.
Maybe it's difficult, people conflict, um, the things that arise as human beings. And if we don't meditate, we tend to get very. Affected will become like that little glass of water that's just become so salty and maybe full of anger or resentment or holding on to grudges, and it really can upset us and affect all parts of our lives.
We take it on emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically, however. If you meditate, and what I really see is the point of meditation is to become a beautiful, spacious still lake. And if you take a spoonful of salt and you place it into a big, spacious lake, the water is not very affected. It. You can't even really tell that there's salt in the lake because it's so big and spacious and it.
The salt doesn't really make an effect. So you can imagine that as you are taking the time to meditate, your mind is becoming like this beautiful, spacious lake that difficult situations are able to just move through you. You're able to be with emotions and then let them go rather than getting stuck and having it take such a negative effect on your life.
When we are stuck in the tech negativity and it comes into our thoughts, then we begin to attract even more difficult situations in our life, more negativity, and it can become this really terrible cycle of just stress and anxiety. So taking this time to consciously meditate and to renew and to expand your consciousness and your awareness is a practice that will.
Affect so many parts of your life. Some other reasons why I meditate is to heighten my intuition. When I, in times in my life, when I'm closing my eyes, I'm taking, not taking in any new information. That's when I have guidance come. That's when I have new ideas come and I can really listen to them and be feel like I'm being guided from a more divine place.
It helps me remember what's important in life, especially if I'm reading a vision at the end of my meditation. It really helps me remember what I'm working towards, what I'm trying to cultivate, what is my ultimate goal in my life, what I'm working towards, what I'm putting my energy to. It helps me come back to gratitude to remember that.
I have so much that I don't need to worry. I don't need to put so much pressure on myself that actually what I have is a beautiful gift, and I can be grateful for that. And when I do that, that's when we, I begin to attract more of those experiences that will help me feel grateful. It helps me connect to a deep level of acceptance and being okay with all aspects of life.
And again, that's just so useful when difficulty arises to be able to breathe, be calm, to move forward to act, take action from a very clear and grounded place, helps me accept my body to be more present, for myself, to take better care of myself. Because I'm really tuning in and listening like, how much food does my body really need to eat?
Or what kind of food does my body really need to eat? It also helps me be more self-reliant. I don't have to look outside of myself to really understand what I need to do next. I can really rely on myself. Self and my own judgment. I can be in touch with what yes feels like for me, what steps I need to take.
It helps me also be okay with my aloneness in our society. I think we are always seeking something outside of ourselves. We're really afraid to be alone. We always wanna be distracted by something, and meditation really helps me connect back to myself and to know that. I have this unshakeable trust, this unshakeable connection with something deep inside myself that I don't need to be surrounded by people all the time, or to distract myself with technology or phone calls or text messages.
I can really just be grounded in who I am. I love the quote that about loneliness versus aloneness. I. Loneliness is the absence of the other. The emphasis is on what is missing. Aloneness is the presence of oneself. This is really relishing and enjoying that energy of just being who you are and being in joy with that, being in love with that.
And so the next time you find yourself alone, rather than going into a mind state of, oh, I'm so lonely, how can it be just so nourishing and beautiful to be with your own aloneness? Meditation helps us to. Be with our thoughts. It's easier to just be in our own minds day to day because we have this awareness of what we're thinking and we can actually then begin to shift our thoughts and shift our beliefs.
So if I, I really notice now when I have a negative thought come up, I consciously think, oh. Okay. This is not something I really want to spend too much time in. So I can have a few words or a different memory to come up to shift myself into thinking more positively or to notice when I have self-doubt or limiting belief come up and to say, you know, that's not really real.
And actually I'm gonna say an affirmation right now to shift that. It. Meditation has helped me move through so many fears in my life. Just being with the sensations of that fear, knowing that I can rely on a higher power, that I will be, that I will be guided when I need to. And lastly, it connects me to that inner guidance.
It connects me to my highest self, my inner mentor, someone that I can turn to in times of need rather than always. Needing something outside of myself, I can really tune in and make decisions from a very pure, grounded place. And when I first started, I found that my mind was so busy that I had a lot of pain come up in my body.
And as much as I wanted to sit still and find that quiet place it was. Quite difficult, and so some tips when you're first starting out in meditation. It might be useful if you do some movement beforehand, if you go for a run and then sit in stillness if you dance, and then sit in stillness or do a full yoga practice and then sit in stillness.
I find that when you take some time to really tune into the physical body and then to quiet the mind, it's much more. Um, it's easier to step into that place of stillness. Osho, an Indian guru who I have studied the teachings of, would always say that before we can sit in silence in the vipasana meditation.
First, we need to clear away. Garbage of the mind, and so he came up with all these active meditations, ways to move our body or to make noises and to get it out. Then to come into that stillness and just notice the breath. So after moving your body or um, going out and making some noises, doing something to kind of clear out any garbage in your mind, then you can come sit in stillness.
You can close your eyes and just tune into the breath. The breath is the vehicle of stealing the mind, knowing that this is something that's happening whether we want to or not. We can always come back to the present moment by noticing the breath. And the simplest meditation you can do is just noticing the breath.
Anytime the mind begins to wander away, simply bring it back to the breath. And when you feel like you've mastered this form of meditation and you can go five, 10 minutes of just being with the breath, then I recommend trying the vipasana that begins to get into the sensations of the body and you can try me.
All these other forms of meditation that can easily integrate into your life.
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Thanks again for being here. It's an honor to walk this path with you.
