Meditation Guide Now Exclusively on Kindle

Written by on February 7, 2012

Don’t Do Something, Just Sit There! A Simple Introductory Guide to Mindfulness Meditation – Now Exclusively on Kindle.

Do you want to learn to meditate but don’t know where to start?

Click here to buy now:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Mindfulness meditation is a powerful tool of personal change. What seems a deceptively simple process has the potential to undo unwanted thoughts and behaviours and generate alternative ways of acting and thinking.

Mindfulness is traditionally a spiritual or religious process, but has been explored and studied by psychologist since the 1970’s and has been formalised into a number of therapeutic applications that have been shown to work with issues such as stress reduction, anxiety and depression and chronic pain.

This is a complete beginners guide and I have done my best to cover every aspect of the meditation process, simply and without fluff or padding. Including:

  • Breathing, postural and relaxation exercise.
  • How to sit in meditation to get the most benefit.
  • Warm up exercises.
  • The equipment that you need.
  • A simple (yet very powerful) mindfulness meditation.
  • How to incorporate mindfulness into your everyday life.

There is over 30 years of scientific evidence (and over 2500 years of anecdotal evidence!) that suggests that a simple practice of mindfulness meditation can:

  • Slow the effects of ageing on the brain (it makes your brain “denser”!).
  • Create razor sharp concentration
  • Reduce stress and stress related illnesses and effects.
  • Banish depression and the stranglehold of negative emotions
  • Act more appropriately, spontaneously, in any situation (and feel more confident)
  • Let go of cravings and attachments.
  • Live more in the moment, not dwelling on the past or focusing on the future.
  • Increase your sense of well being.

I firmly believe that a daily meditation routine is one of the best ways to improve your health and well being.

Why Publish it on Kindle?

Because Kindle publishing gives you the most flexible way to read the book. You don’t need to own a Kindle to, you can download the (free) Kindle reader app for your phone, tablet, or PC, including:

  • Android
  • iPhone
  • iPad
  • Windows 7 phone
  • Windows and Mac

My other ebooks will be following onto Kindle very soon.

Click here to buy now:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Can You Help Me?

Have you purchased my mediation guide? I would really appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes to write a review on Amazon. If you do, email me and I will send you a gift to say thank you.

Have you got your own blog or website? Do you run a meditation group? Why not write a review or add it to your recommended reading list (if you do it through Amazon Affiliates to can earn commission!)?

Matt

Categories: The Journey, The Knowledge - Tags: , ,

One Minute Meditation

Written by on November 22, 2011

Even if you have have a regular meditation practice (and if you don’t, I highly recommend that you cultivate one), you will find at times, in the hustle and bustle of life, yourself being swept away, distracted, harassed and flustered.

At times like this I have developed a “one minute meditation” (although, in reality it can be anything from 10 seconds to five minutes or more depending on time available and your needs), to ground myself back in the present moment and stop being swept away by it.

It is the psychic equivalent of “switching it off and switching back on again” that you do with your PC when it gets all clogged up and grinds to a halt or develops glitches.

Here it is in simple steps for you to follow if you find yourself being swept away:

(Read through it and practice it a few times when you have some time to focus and concentrate on it, before you do it out in the “real world”)

1. Stand or sit up straight, imagine a thread running from the crown of your head, holding you up like a marionette.

2. Scan your body for any areas of tension, and consciously relax them, if you want wiggle and shake out the areas, shrug your shoulders, etc. Pay particularly attention to your jaw and shoulders. This is where we tend to hold most tension.

3. If standing, soften your knees, so they are not locked. If sat in a chair, move forward so your back is not supported. Roll your hips forward slightly so that you have a slight, natural arch in your lower back.

4. Move your focus of attention to your centre (approximately your belly button), and sink into your hips. Rock your hips back and forth if you need to balance them.

5. Move the place you are watching the world from to the centre of your brain, away from your forebrain where all the chatter goes on. Look through your eyes as if you are looking out of windows.

6. Take a full breath, imagining you are breathing in and out through your centre. As you breath out make the effort to breath out any lingering tension in your body.

7. If appropriate and useful, as you breath in focus on a word or image that illustrates, to you, the mental and emotional state you want to be in at this moment in time. It could be simply “Grace”, or “Calm”, or a more vivid and complex image.

Warning: This can be quite a powerful process if you do it right and it is not uncommon for people to feel a little “odd” and dizzy when they get it right, so I suggest, for the first few times at least, that you are sitting down.

Categories: The Knowledge - Tags: , , ,

Mindfulness Part 3: A Simple Meditation

Written by on April 22, 2009

OK, now you have had a go at just sitting still (how did you find it?), lets expand that to a bit more of a formal meditation.

I know, I know, to some people the word “meditation” sends shivers down their spin, and they conjure up images of tie dye hippies all sat round chanting, but don’t panic! Meditation is nothing like that (unless you want it to be – I am, I have to admit, a bit of a secret hippy…).

Essentially meditation is about creating mental discipline by which you can get beyond the reflexive, “thinking” mind into a state of relaxation or awareness.

Meditation often involves turning attention to a single point of reference and the easiest point of reference is your breath. The great thing about using your breath as a focus when developing mindfulness is that is always there! So you can do a spot of mindfulness meditation whenever you have a spare few minutes, I often to do whilst stood in a queue waiting for something.

Remember though that mediation is not an end in itself, it is about practicing mindfulness so you can use it all of the time. The secret, really, is to ALWAYS be meditating, and I will get onto that in much more detail in later posts, but right now, I want to talk you through a very basic mindfulness mediation so you can start creating a habit if doing it every day. It is a great habit to get into and you will find, with practice, you will become calmer, more focused and energised is a very short space of time.

To begin with, you only need to dedicate 5 minutes to this and slowly build the time up to 20 – 25 minutes (maybe add a minute a week? There is no rush, it is better to build slowly – those are the most powerful habits).

So, what you do is very simple, you don’t need to get yourself in any complicated posture, or burn incense or anything (although you can if you want to, I find it does help – creating a “ritual” around your practice) just sit in a nice firm chair (not a sofa!), make sure your feet can touch the floor, sit forward a bit on the chair so that you are supporting your own back and it has its natural curve (people often find the correct posture the hardest to create  – listen to the recent podcasts to hear about how to relax, breath and improve your posture), then  just breath! Don’t try and force your breath or change it, just breath. And as you do so, start counting the breath, start at one and go to ten, when you reach ten start at one again (breath in, “one, breath out “two”, etc), if you get distracted by thoughts or whatever, lose count or accidentally go over ten, just draw your attention gently back to your breath and start counting from one again.

Do this for five minutes and see how you get on.

Matt

Categories: Uncategorized - Tags: , , , ,