 In meditation, we’re not trying to GET anywhere, we’re trying to BE somewhere, right here. – Michael Carroll For many busy women, meditating sounds like just another thing on your "to-do" list, that you don't have time to do! The whole idea with Busy Woman's Meditation is to find ways to make meditation work for you in your daily life. Here are five meditation tips for beginners that will help you overcome that problem: 1. Start with just 2-5 minutes. Even two to five minutes of meditation can make a difference in your state of mind. That's because just like any skill you learn or like an exercise program, the effects are cumulative. You could even try short sessions a couple of times a day. 2. Understand the goal and purpose of meditation. The goal for beginning meditators is being able to bring your attention back to your point of focus without judging or criticizing yourself. The purpose of meditation is to help you live life better, in whatever way that means to you. Bottom line: just do what you can, good enough is good enough and lose the judgy attitude. 3. Meditate your way. Listen to your body, and meditate in whatever way works best for you. Sitting in a kitchen chair is just as valid and spiritual as sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop. 4. Take baby steps. Set small goals and reward your progress along the way. Give yourself credit for each and every accomplishment and remind yourself of the steps you’ve taken, regardless of how small they might seem. This model I follow with my program of moving at your own incremental pace with meditations at increasing lengths, leads you to self- sufficiency and is what creates real results. It is also the key to maintaining a lifelong daily practice. Baby steps. It's always baby steps. 5. You can't do it wrong. There's no wrong way to meditate, but if you’re like most people, you’re going to think you are doing it wrong. You become distracted, you don't practice every day, you sometimes fall asleep. None of this means you’re doing it wrong. It's called a meditation ‘practice,’ not meditation ‘perfect’ because there’s no such thing as perfect meditation. In the West we often try to become the perfect meditation practitioner and there’s a tendency to take ourselves and our practice too seriously. It’s easy to fall into the trap of making one’s practice too rigid, and if this happens we need to lighten up and remind ourselves that it’s "progress, not perfection" we’re seeking.
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 Every courageous road we take brings us more deeply into our authentic being.
And, paradoxically, every road we avoid teaches us, too. Some are intoxicatingly blissful, others...unspeakably painful. But there are no ‘wrong’ roads, not if we approach every path with wonderment and curiosity -- a call to service, to self, adventure and discovery. - - Robyn Lark Wakefield, one of my early teachers At the start of this New Year I'd like to talk about my own meditation journey, which began almost 50 years ago... I was a naïve teenager who walked into a Transcendental Meditation class, not knowing anything about it, or even what meditation was, for that matter. Looking back now, I could never have possibly imagined then, how choosing that particular path in 1970 would eventually lead me to a life-long passion for meditation. In the ensuing decades since then, meditation has been a life-changing practice and an essential tool for me and I can now say that I truly appreciate how invaluable and beneficial my own meditation practice has been, throughout my entire life. It really doesn't seem like that long ago when I was a busy, young working Mom with my own successful business to run and doing my best to take care of it, my staff and my clients, PLUS a husband, 2 kids, various pets, our home and of course, myself each day. The bottom fell out of everything in 1987 when my husband lost his job and was out of work fortwo and a half years! Needless to say, during that time and despite our very best efforts, we literally lost EVERYTHING and had to start all over again. Helping to keep me sane and functioning in those very challenging days was focusing on my family and my business and having a few precious minutes each day for some "quiet time for me" to meditate. That’s literally all I had time for, but it made such a huge difference in my hectic, stressful life! I started noticing that I was calmer. I was better able to handle and respond to challenging situations, rather than to react to them. (Thankfully, we survived that experience and those challenging days are long behind me, and I wrote about my experiences during that time in my book, "Awakening To The Wisdom Of Your Soul." You can read an excerpt of it HERE. ) And for the next several years meditation became a practice I turned to, whenever I needed to relax and regroup. Then four years ago while vacationing in Bali, I took a hard fall on a wet marble floor and hurt myself pretty badly. I was given antibiotics, which triggered a dormant autoimmune issue I didn't even know I had. After a long and painful year of extremely slow healing using traditional medical protocols, I realized that if I was ever going to truly heal my body, I needed to make some radical lifestyle changes, ones that involved making my own self-care my very highest priority. It included making physical changes, dietary changes, emotional changes, mindset changes, and even having better stress management tools, which for me meant making meditation part of my regular daily practice, rather than an irregular, "If I can find the time," practice. It didn't take long before I started to see real and lasting healing and positive results from all of my efforts, most notably from the time I spent in meditation. I was so much calmer and centered and better able to handle whatever life threw at me. I know firsthand that meditation really CAN help to transform your life. Helping Women On Their Meditation Journey So as a direct result of that challenging experience and after being a life coach for many years, I decided to transition to being a meditation coach/teacher. Now it is my great joy to help women get started on their own journey with meditation and I'm honored to help YOU to get started, too! Contact me and let's set up a time to chat about starting your own life-changing practice. 12/3/2018 0 Comments Today's Busy Women And I said to my body. Softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath. And replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’ - Nayyirah Waheed Life in today’s busy world is incredibly *stressful and being a working woman today is not easy. You may even be feeling pretty stressed or over-
whelmed right now, many women are. Thanks to new advances in technology the pace of life seems to be getting faster all the time, so much so that we can barely keep up. We're constantly playing catch-up with unfinished work projects and endlessly replying to or answering emails and non-stop texts. Then add in the blur of communication and information overload from 24/7 news cycles and livestream coming at us all the time. Plus, we're also being bombarded daily with trauma and violence in the world. And don't even get me started on the subject of politics. It's fricking EXHAUSTING!! Recently, when asked by an interviewer about work/life balance, leaning in, and having it all, Michelle Obama replied, “That whole ‘so you can have it all.’ That’s a lie. Nope, not at the same time. And it’s not always enough to just lean in, because that shit doesn’t work all the time.” Wow, Michelle...telling it like it really is! So whether you're an entrepreneur who's mentally burned-out from overworking, a business-woman emotionally drained from interacting with challenging clients, a young Mom who's physically exhausted from taking care of the kids, or a working woman who's just worn out from dealing with demanding bosses and everyday circumstances that arise in the busy, crazy, stressful world we live in, having a way to relax and recharge your energy are necessary components in ALL of our lives. By the end of the day, you need an effective way to unplug and de-stress from all that. And let's get real, the way you might be doing that now may be by zoning out in front of the TV or Facebook or eating a big bowl of ice cream or maybe even pouring a second glass of wine (lots of women use food or alcohol to ease anxiety and stress, but the reality is, it’s only a temporary fix). Now all of that feels pretty good in the moment, but later on? Well, not so much. What’s having a healthier, better way to deal with all the stress in your life, worth to you? Isn't it time you started nurturing yourself, instead of numbing yourself? Can you relate to any of this? Because life IS so incredibly busy and stressful, I believe making self-care a priority really is a very smart professional as well as personal choice to make. Spending time in daily meditation is an absolutely essential piece of any healthy self-care. The new research shows that taking breaks during your day for as little as 60 seconds can significantly reduce stress and increase overall productivity. Even just a few minutes of meditation is a quick way to relax, de-stress, relieve physical tension in body and release the feel-good endorphins and dopamine. With regular daily meditation you're quieting your mind, increasing peace and well-being while improving your focus and level of productivity. You're deeply relaxing your body and relieving stress and anxiety, too. This helps you to become more present and aware, allowing you to respond more calmly, patiently and creatively to challenging people and situations. We all need something to help us to calm down and get more centered. And since meditation can be done anytime, anywhere (just have a pair of big, dark sunglasses and you’re good to go), you can meditate in a coffee shop, on a bus, as a passenger in a car, in the ladies' lounge, waiting for a meeting to start at work or waiting to pick up the kids at school, just to mane a few uncommon places. As a life coach working with all ages and kinds of women for over 17 years, it's been my great joy and honor to help busy Moms, Generation X and Z students, millennials just entering the work-force, Retiring Baby Boomers, women entrepreneurs, businesswomen, coaches and other professionals learn how to have happier, healthier and more successful lives. Regular meditation is the key to that and the best way to counteract stress in your life. That's why I created Busy Woman's Meditation, a simple meditation technique for relaxing your mind and body. I believe that EVERYONE who wants to meditate, CAN meditate. It's just a matter of desire combined with proper training. That being said, you've got to find the right meditation that works for you and fits into your life, as well. I also want to see you get quick results, that's why my meditation coaching is deliberately designed to be SIMPLE, EASY and CLEAR. Making meditation accessible and appealing to busy women and helping them achieve the life-changing benefits of meditation by creating a supportive environment in which to learn how to meditate, is my deep intention with Busy Woman's Meditation. If you’re too busy to meditate for a few minutes a day, then you’re just too busy! I love helping women get started with meditation and I'd love to help you get started, too! In my meditation course, the Busy Woman’s Meditation Program, I show today's busy woman a clear and super-simple way to meditate. We do that quickly and easily using your computer, smart phone and just a few minutes of your time, but whose benefits last you a lifetime! The list of meditation benefits is truly endless. So if you're an experienced meditator who's frustrated with your current practice and want to be able to do a simple, super-easy type of meditation designed for busy women, or are just learning how to meditate and want help with starting a practice, I hope you'll consider coaching with me. I invite you to see how easy it is to get started on your own solid meditation practice and fit meditation into your lifestyle, no matter HOW busy your life is! *According to a 2017 survey published in the "Daily Mail," the new data suggests that significant stress levels are on the rise in the US for the first time in 10 years. We now know that excessive stress can have both short-term effects, such as headaches and poor sleep or insomnia and long-term health impacts, such as memory loss, weakened immune system or disease. 11/27/2018 0 Comments What Is Meditation For Women? Women’s meditation needs are very different from the traditional methods used for centuries by men in monasteries. - Dr. Christiane Northrup To answer that question we’re going to look at 2 different basic types of meditation: Traditional meditation
designed for monks in the ancient world and modern meditation designed for busy women in the present-day world. The first type is the old monastic style of meditation, developed 2,500 years ago by men and originally created for people who live a reclusive lifestyle. It’s a style of meditation that was designed as a contemplative practice. For thousands of years people practiced hermitic meditation where a guru or a monk, went to his cave or a mountain top and like a hermit, meditated for several hours each day. Meditation was a tool that was used to support their monastic and sacrificial lifestyle and to help them to fulfil the different vows they took of poverty, chastity, etc.. Even today, many people still try to practice some form of monastic meditation, where you’re patiently enduring discomfort as you sit for long periods of time in an uncomfortable, pretzel-like position, trying to completely empty your mind or stop your mind from thinking. I think the reason why women today struggle so much with meditation, is because we’re still trying to do the first type of meditation, traditional meditation, that’s better suited for reclusive monks, than it is for busy professionals, Moms or Millennials. We women fall into the second category of regular, busy people who need an alternative approach to meditation. Dr. Christian Northrup, author of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” reminds us that, “Women’s meditation needs are very different from the traditional methods used for centuries by men in monasteries.” We are living in a time when the challenge of meditation is it needs to be adapted to integrate into 21st century living and to the needs of our lifestyles and schedules, not the other way around. So the practice of meditation with its emphasis on tradition had to evolve and it did evolve to be a non-religious and more secular practice. It needs to support and sustain today's busy women who just want to have a way to get rid of stress and quickly relax and nourish themselves, rather than numbing themselves, which is what many women have been doing. The old rigid rules, with an emphasis on structured and lengthy time frames, formal posture and intense disciple just don’t work for us anymore, especially not for busy women like the type of clients I serve who are busy working mothers, millennials, businesswomen and entrepreneurs. And we don’t live isolated in caves anymore, we live in the modern world, filled with constant interruptions and interactions. We can’t be a hermit meditating all day long - we have busy lives to live! So I decided to create a meditation practice for other women who might be like me; too busy for and also not enjoying doing traditional meditation that’s been designed thousands of years ago, for men, by men. I wanted to demystify meditation; to update it and make it less mysterious, archaic and monastic and make it more accessible, practical and simple. I wanted to help women learn how to meditate by creating a practice for them that was simple, easy and able to be done in short, bite-sized meditations. It needed to be effortless, yet highly effective and provide all the great benefits of longer meditation, without the usual restlessness, boredom and frustration. I also wanted a practice that once women learned how to do it, it was self-sustaining and they didn’t need to rely on me, or anyone else, in order to do it. It requires no focused concentration and no struggling to clear the mind. Above all, it had to be busy-woman friendly and meet the needs of contemporary women living in this modern, secular world. I created a meditation that I believe is very well-suited for today's busy women's lifestyles and schedules and although this program is simple - it is also extremely powerful. Check out Busy Woman's Meditation in a FREE Strategy Session and see for yourself how meditation for women can make a big difference in your life! 11/27/2018 0 Comments 2019: Embracing The Energy Of Change And now we welcome the New Year. Full of things that have never been. - Rainer Maria Rilke The year 2018 has now ended and we are entering what is expected to be by all accounts, a very interesting year filled with lots of changes.
I wanted to remind everyone of the importance of embracing the energy of change and really taking stock now of what changes in your life YOU wish to make. What are you choosing to leave behind in 2018 and what are you choosing to have come with you into 2019? Take time to reflect back over the past year on the people, things, beliefs, experiences and accomplishments you choose to keep; what you’re most proud of, wish to value and honor, choose to hold on to, are thankful to learn from, want to celebrate, choose to forgive, want to envision and consciously create, choose to love, want to be supportive of, are happy about or truly appreciative of and grateful for. Next, take stock of all the things you’d like to release; the relationships or situations that aren’t working, the things you’d like to do over, or at least do differently, the beliefs and behaviors that no longer support or serve you, the painful unhealed wounds that block you, the fears that keep you small, the lies you tell yourself and the "stories" you hide behind, the issues and experiences you’re thankful to learn and grow from, let go of, and then choose to move on from. Making all these choices and necessary changes creates the space for something new to come in. And finally, fill some of that new space you’ve created for 2019, with some really good energy. Using the awareness of what you are choosing to keep and what you are choosing to release, make consistent and conscious behavioral changes in your life; changes like replacing your negative beliefs, thoughts, emotions, focus and behaviors with powerful and positive ones or being open to healthier people, situations, opportunities, and actions for you to take that will move you forward with your life (like learning how to meditate) – right into a glorious 2019! Happy New Year everyone!! 11/25/2018 1 Comment The Many Benefits of Daily Meditation One of the great benefits of meditation is the power it has
to positively impact us, regardless of how long we site for. We don't meditate to be better meditators, we meditate to be better humans. - Elizabeth Glasser For thousands of years, the practice of meditation has shown us that even though meditating is a fairly simple technique, the results it produces in the life of the meditator, are not. Science is starting to show us a really clear picture of how awesome meditation can be as every day, more and more studies are coming out saying that meditation has a real and positive impact on your life and is one of the best things you can do for your overall health and quality of life. If you listen to motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and Lisa Nichols, you’ll notice that most of the top performing people all have the habit of daily meditating. There are many different types of meditation, so each of them may have a different approach to it, but they all do some form of meditation regularly because they know with certainty that it helps them to be more productive and perform at the top of their game. The time you invest in meditation will come back to you exponentially, in the form of many tangible and intangible benefits to your life. The greatest benefit meditation provides for me, personally, is peace of mind. I am much more peaceful and I have more inner peace, when I am consistently engaging in a twice daily practice of meditation. The practice of Busy Woman's Meditation only takes up 2% of your day and investing that 2% of your time in meditation will positively improve the other 98%. Truly, the Benefits of Daily Meditation are endless. With regular practice, you too will notice subtle shifts begin to take place as you become more peaceful, calmer and more present. This allows you to experience real relief from stress and anxiety, as it provides you with a better sense of joy and well-being. Meditation lets you handle life's demands with greater resources at your disposal; like responding rather than reacting and increased concentration and clarity. It helps you to sleep better and wake up feeling refreshed, energized and ready to take on the day. And that is what creates lasting changes in you, in how you relate to yourself, how you relate to others and in how you relate to life in general. The real meditation is how you live your life. - Jon Kabat-Zinn |
