Mindfulness/Meditation

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Troublesome or problematic thoughts
• Sleep
• Blood pressure
• Leaning to be more fully “in” our body
• Trauma (in conjunction with the help of a counselor)
• Self-regulation
• Healthy and more-balanced relationships with yourself and others
• Healthy boundaries and boundary setting
• Pain management

The above list is only a small subset of a nearly endless list that can be improved upon with a combination of meditation and breathwork.

A common image that comes to mind when you ask someone to think of meditation – a person sitting cross legged and no thoughts for an hour. People then often come to the conclusion that they could never do that; however, that image reflects an over-used Hollywood display of what meditation is. Allow me to introduce you to a more realistic version of medication.

Everyone can meditate. You can start with as little as 1 minute observing your natural thoughts and patterns. Meditation and mindfulness are commonly thought of as not thinking, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. These practices can be focus on continually bringing your mind back to a single thought, mantra, or point of focus. It is about learning to utilize your mind to aid you rather than letting thoughts trample through our mind unhindered creating a hamster wheel of repetitive negative or troublesome thoughts. Your mind is the most powerful and sophisticated computer that exists, so use it to your advantage! The most important thing to remember about a meditation is consistency. Try to have a practice each day. even if it is only for a few minutes. Just like our body, the mind improves with practice. A short daily practice is far more effective than a single weekly long practice.

Just like breathwork, meditation can be a powerful tool for us to engage with our inner self. It allows us to connect to our innate inner wisdom and intuition and to learn to trust ourselves rather than looking to an outside source. Sometimes people will fall into a pattern where they trust others over themselves even when something feels wrong. Our bodies have this innate intelligence and if we can learn to quiet our mind, we can learn to hear what it is saying. Doing so enables us to integrate intuition with logic and reasoning, leading to a more comprehensive and self-honoring assessment of a situation.

An almost endless list of meditation techniques and mindfulness practices exist, so please try not to give up if you don’t connect with the first ones you try. There is something for everyone.