Meditista: Recent Episodes
Meditista
Moving from old year to new, what are we bringing with us? Is there a way of travelling more lightly into our future? What if we were to let the old year go, like snow falling to the ground...?
Winter Solstice is an invitation to go inwards. To dial down the activity and welcome rest. Can we hear and heed this call? In 2020, the power of this time is heightened with a planetary event known as The Great Conjunction, as Saturn and Jupiter come closer together than they have in more than 1000 years. Astrologically, these planets move into the House of Aquarius, which is an air sign. Having been lodged in Earth signs for some time, placing the emphasis on material things, their energy now shifts towards matters of art and spirit. This heralds The Age of Aquarius, and the potential for deep change. Song 'Black Smoke' at the beginning of the meditation sung beautifully by Meg Bryan. Written by Emily Wurramara. Image by David Menidrey.
What if a meditation could be an invitation to visit ourselves. To drop by as we might on an old friend. To sit close and listen to what they have to say, and for them to listen back?
Spending some quiet moments, hanging out in an aimless way. No grand intentions to discover or to fix anything. Offering ourselves an experience of gentle companionship. Allowing the world to fall away. Could this be a doorway to somewhere we'd like to go?
All week I've had this song by Mamuse in my head. It's one we are learning in my choir. The words begin :
Every time I feel this way, this old familiar sinking...
You know that feeling? I think we all do. The song goes on to suggest we can :
lay our troubles down by the water, where the river will never run dry.
What is this river for you? Where you can take your troubles and feel supported? For me, it's meditation. The kind of meditation that takes us towards and into the flow of life. The kind of meditation that lets us be lifted...Will you join us?
Image by Simon Wilkes
Gathering our scattered selves into the body and resting, we begin to discover more about our deeper nature and the cycles of flow that move through us. As the season changes, so our animal body responds and adjusts, if we will only allow it... This journey through the chakras can help uncover where and how energy might be blocked, freeing more of our deep self for creative living. Is there a spirit animal bringing a message? Tune in and listen in to what your spirit animal might want to say. Let yourself be surprised!
Image by Hannah Troupe
This 25 minute meditation was sponsored by our weekly meditation group. If you enjoy it, I invite you to join us live online or offer a donation.
When traversing the inner landscape, there are places bright with light and colour and places that feel quieter. Dropping deeper, what do we hear and see? In the silent spaces, can we get to know ourselves with more clarity? Knowing ourselves means knowing when we are reactive. When a trauma response might derail a balanced view. Coming home to our deep okayness, we learn to ground in a place where response is measured. More equanimity is possible. Less drama happens. Life is still real, but we are able to deal with events from this place of balance. It takes practice, but it's worth it.
Image by Johannes Plenio
This 25-minute meditation is sponsored by our weekly group. Like it? Join us live online, or show your appreciation by offering a donation.
Daily pressures and anxieties can be like barking dogs. They call for our attention and refuse to be quiet. What happens if we let them know that we are resting? That we will come back to them later, but for now, we are resting. What do you discover when you rest deeply inside yourself? When you allow the layers to drop away. When you ungrip? Let's rest together, shall we?
Image by Angelina Kichukova
This 30 minute meditation takes its theme from our weekly live meditation group. Share your experience in the comments? Contribute a donation? Sign up here to join us live.
In the Tibetan meditation traditions, the Mahayana is the Great Vehicle. This vehicle, or practice container, carries the bodhisattva towards enlightenment on the dual wings of compassion and wisdom. The bodhisattva promises to delay complete enlightenment until all sentient beings are liberated. What kind of vehicle are you travelling in? Is it fit for purpose? This meditation takes us under the skin and finds space for knowing to arise. Let your inner wisdom show the way forward.
Image by Meditista
Meditation 30 minutes. Recorded during our weekly live meditation session. Will you join us?
What if everything was always leading here, to this moment? Might we allow contentment to visit, like a cat curled in our lap? In this world there is so much striving. What does it feel like to let life take charge?
Image by Ankush Minda on Unsplash
A 30 minute meditation from our weekly online group. Like to join us?
When we honour our process, we allow time for nothing to happen. Or for everything to happen. Giving ourselves a wide berth, we find space to rest. Leaving nothing unwelcome, everything is allowed to rest.
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A meditation from our weekly online group circle. Like to join us?
Our modern world is designed to help us scratch the itch. Constant notifications from email, social media and phone apps offer temporary pleasure and provide distraction from what is present in our body and mind. In this meditation, we take time to explore sensations and feelings, reaching beyond intial responses for a deeper experience. When we apply intention and attention in this way, it's possible to reach a state of absorption where the mind, curious and engaged in inquiry, is able to focus on its own qualities. This naturally brings relaxation to the body, release of tension, and a calm state of being.
Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
In the healing world, body imbalances can often be resolved internally or externally. Fixing structural imbalance without addressing the tissue systems that keep it in place makes change short-lived. As does massaging tissue without examining how unhelpful patterns came about. For it to be lasting, outer and inner change must come together. A 30 minute meditation from one of our weekly online groups. Photo by Mahir Uysal on Unsplash
Meditation 10 Minutes
An adaptation of a somatic meditation by Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen, designed specifically to aid restful sleep. In this practice, we focus on the physical heart, holding it with attention and embodied awareness. Click the link above to find the original meditation from Bonnie herself.
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Meditation 10 Minutes
Quarantine - a period of 40 days, a state of enforced isolation.
In quarantine, are we entering a liminal zone? A time out of time. A time between times? How can we find rest in this, in spite of the spinning wheels of our conditioning?
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Meditation 8.5 minutes
A gentle practice to bring awareness to the breath. An enhanced awareness of lung well-being will help us stay healthy during this time of C-19, and to know when we need to ask for help.
Meditation 5 Minutes
Kapalabhati, or Shining Skull Breath, is a traditional yoga pranayama exercise. It supports respiratory health and is recognised as a purification practice.
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Meditation 5 Minutes
Nadi Shodana or Alternate Nostril Breathing is a traditional yoga practice to balance the body and increase respiratory well-being.
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Meditation 12 minutes
Anxiety is a thief who steals our life away. Meanwhile, deep in the body presence is calling.
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Meditation 9 minutes
With the heart all wrapped up There is no getting in or out. Unwrap your heart. Open up to the flow.
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Meditation 10.5 minutes
This irritation is but skin deep. Diving below, I find a calming presence. A space. Where irritation has permission to dissolve, and response arises. Free.
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Meditation 10 Minutes
How to describe the formless? That state of being Resting in pure awareness.
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Meditation 10 Minutes
Taking and Giving Receiving and Offering The Tibetans call it Tonglen. A practice rooted in Love.
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Meditation 10 minutes
Breath like water Water-like breath Body in Flow.
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Meditation 12 minutes
After the storm The calm.
Gifts to Meditista. Your generosity helps support these offerings. Image by Gavin Kelman.
Meditation 10 Minutes
It takes courage to be honest. With ourselves, with the Earth. But how else can we know What needs to change?
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Meditation 10 Minutes
Are you lying to yourself? Are you better than you think? Please don't hide your light. In dark times, we need all the light we can get!
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Where there is suffering
and contraction,
can we find space enough
for surrender?
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As the climate tips into crazy,
What's the weather like inside?
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...now you don't.
Hiding away, or time to shine?
Holding ourselves with a generous gaze,
All is welcome.
Image by Helen iles courtesy of instagram.com/clodaghmeiklejohn
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"Who do you think you are?"
Hanging out with the Inner Critic.
Does it have anything useful to say?
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You, Loud One.
Shush a minute.
Let me hear what Quiet One has to say.
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Meditation 10 minutes
Nature has a way
of reminding us
How wild we really are.
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Sometimes, I go to the beach
And no-one comes to join me.
It sounds like this.
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Meditation 12 minutes
We know how to give the body a workout,
but how do we work-out the mind?
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Meditation 12 minutes
If patience is the art of not wanting anything to be any different,
how can we still take action?
How do we make plans, but also leave space
for surrender?
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Meditation 10 minutes
When anxiety is present, feel it in the body. In the breath.
Meeting breath where it is, we meet anxiety too, right where it is.
Right where we are.
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Meditation 13 minutes
What kind of life is possible when we bring intention to actions, words and even to our thoughts? What aliveness might we experience every day, if we could set our intentions as carefully as we do on our birthday?
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Meditation - 10 minutes
Is more always better? Can we plan without burdening ourselves with expectations? And is capitalism suffering a mid-life crisis? All this and more from our (rather windy) beach.
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Meditation 15 Minutes
Finding the ground-space
That allows fullness to be
Just as it is.
Until (maybe) it isn't.
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Meditation 13 minutes
Let's wind it back.
Right back, behind our defenses.
Where belly lurches, skin tingles and something fresh can be known.
Now, let's begin again from here.
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Meditation 9 minutes
Beyond the clouds, a warm sun.
Beneath the sadness, a bright mind.
Birds, like stolen moments flying.
Reminders of what is possible when we let life be.
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Meditation : 12.38
May 1st. Beltane. In the Northern hemisphere, a time of rich fertility.
In the garden, we plant seedlings, but first we prepare the ground. Without good soil, our crops will not grow well.
How can we feed the being, so that our life will be rich and fertile?
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Meditation 13.34 minutes
We are all in service of something, but do we know what it is? Does what we serve align with our true values and principles? Do we even know what they are?
Through the efforts of the School Strike led by 16-year old Greta Thunberg, and the actions of Extinction Rebellion in the UK and around the world, the crisis facing life on earth is making headline news. What we need right now, says Greta, is cathedral thinking - the ability to take steps, without yet knowing how we will finish the job.
In meeting ourselves, each other and the earth, exactly how and where we are, we find connection. We find self-knowledge, friendship and community. We find home. We find life.
What does life want of us? What does life want of you? Do you want to know?
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Meditation 14.05 minutes
Safe.
Inside me.
Inside the group.
Inside Nature.
Are you ready to emerge, little one?
To let your voice be heard aloud?
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Sometimes, when coming to meditate, we find ourselves circling, unable to land right away. Can we find patience to wait, gather ourselves slowly, land gently? Then, in the stillness, drawing in energy and waiting some more, for when the time comes, and life lets us know it's ready to move again.
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It could be said that when the outer and inner worlds collide, we get synchronicity - a sense of oneness. This can happen by chance, but it is also possible to attune ourselves - bringing outer and inner worlds closer together through our intention. In meditation, we bring our worlds into focus, noticing more of life as it happens, both internally and externally.
In this way, we become more available for the flow of life, just as it is.
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Meditation 12.51 minutes
Where do we feel pressure in the being? What does it feel like? Is it internal, or external - coming from something inside, or outside?
Even in asking these questions, we can feel some release. Some freedom. What does it feel like to be free? To be available for life, just as it is?
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Meditation 15 minutes
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Thoughts, swirling like a cyclone. Rushing in frantic circles before crashing down.
Thoughts, swirling like a leaf storm, Blown higher and higher, scattered and torn.
Thoughts, swirling like pollen, Layering shades of yellow on brown.
Thoughts, swirling like snow Making their gentle way to ground.
Thoughts.
When thoughts swirl too hard, they squeeze out joy. When thoughts can settle and the air clears, space opens up. Small moments resonate, chiming in ways not seen before. Not known.
The comfort of warm bed. Kind voice. Gentle touch.Sunlight on wood. Cool drink. Splashes of colour.Softening of heart. Stilling of mind.Welcome. Home. Love.
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Staying still is the new travelling. Low cost and carbon neutral, inward travelling can take you places that blow conventional travelling out of the water. Want to explore your own body? Go for it. Wander distant realms? Alright then. Travelling inwards is a way of experiencing more space and time that is possible on any tropical island or rural retreat. All that's needed is a little practice and you're away.
Not convinced? Take a trial flight with with this free 15 minute meditation.
Meditation 15 minutes
Leaning in,I find hurt, anger, rage, desire.
Leaning back, I find rest, renewal, space and time.
Cultivating patience.Knowing truth.Accepting how things are.
Right action becomes clear.
Meditation - 15 minutes
"We need roots in order to bear fruit" said Father Daniel, as he explained why, in the Cistercian tradition, monks and nuns take a vow of 'place'.
What does it mean for us, in this rootless world, to grow roots? What does it mean to bring forth fruit? Is it about mere productivity? Or can it be about something more, perhaps creativity? A flowering of the soul?
Meditation 15 minutes
Start where you are. That’s what they say, isn’t it? But what if I don’t like where I am? What if my throat is sore and my head aches and I have a coughing fit every few minutes which distracts me and I forget what I’m supposed to be doing?What if I try to force myself into some other, more comfortable place? Drink some water (I may be dehydrated). Run a bath (the steam might clear my head). Do some yoga (maybe a stretch will help).
I may try to settle down to meditate, with the idea that meditation will 'fix' me. But what if there is no 'fixing’ to be done? What if this is just where I’m at right now? Or, as Tara Brach says :“Who am I when I am no longer believing something’s wrong?”
Meditation - 15 minutes
“It’s in the past”, I say, but my mind keeps bringing it into the present, like a cat dragging in a poor, injured bird. I turn my head. Wave my hand. Dismiss the painful offering. And even though it is painful, it is surely an offering, brought up by the mind for reflection and perhaps, a fresh response. Though I would like to ignore it, or put it out of its misery, this bird, maybe with its dying breath, has one more lesson for me. Am I brave enough to listen?
Allowing space for the everything of it, I feel my heart open, lighten. I wanted to make it go away, but I see now that it is part of me. Part of the whole of me. This is me, then, coming home to wholeness.
Meditation 14.23 minutes
I am the diverplunging below.I am the water,I am the flow.I am the rock, the crab and the fish,I am the golden coinmaking a wish.I am the shipwreckon ocean’s deep floor.I am the treasure -a wealth to explore.
https://youtu.be/OnvQggy3Ezw
Meditation - 15 minutes
I Go Among Trees
by Wendell Berry
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
~ Wendell Berry from Sabbaths
https://youtu.be/3ZCyb_DECsc
I go among trees and sit still…
Really? I have to sit still? But there are so many fun things to DO!!!
When the energy of spring is rising, it’s tempting to rush into all those projects we’ve been sitting on during the winter. To throw all our energy at them, in the hope of quick results. But then here comes Imbolc, the Celtic festival marking the beginning of Spring. Celebrated on or around February 1st, the word Imbolc is thought to come from Gaelic meaning in the belly and is a timely reminder that creativity begins ‘in the belly’ and needs a while to cook before it sees the light of day. Jumping in too soon can be like dragging a seedling out of the ground to see if it has grown roots yet!
In Wendell Berry's beautiful poem, despite his taking time to rest, the day, in its own time, turns. The trees, in their own time, move. Even bees rest, you know?
Meditation : 15.11 minutes
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
This line from one of Mary Oliver’s most famous poems came to mind while we meditated on a cold, winter beach. Ironically, the poem is entitled The Summer Day, but I spoke it aloud to honour, after her recent death, the woman, her work, and the wildness that brought our little group together this January morning.
“When, during the guided meditation, you mentioned ‘wild’, I was actually feeling very peaceful” she says, her expression quizzical. She is finding it hard to equate these two. Wild and peaceful. As though they live on opposite sides of her experience. And so there, huddled together on the beach, we discuss what it means to be wild…
Being a multilingual group, we consider words like the French sauvage and Spanish salvaje, both of which arise from the Latin silvāticus, which literally means "of the woods”, from the word silva, meaning “forest” or “grove”. And we agree that the forest can be both wild and peaceful. That wild flowers are not threatening. And that wild means also natural.
Over time, as we have strayed further and further from our wild, natural state, the words wild and savage have come to mean uncultured and uncivilised. Something to be feared. But we can reclaim it, especially as civilisation does not seem to be serving us very well.
Knowing that wild is also peaceful. Also natural. Can this help us re-connect with it?
Wounds into Wisdom - Meditation 20 minutes
Turn your Wounds into Wisdom
I saw this written on the side of a bus in Sitges yesterday. I was a bit confused. What was such a thing doing on a bus? But there it was. In English. On a Spanish bus. Que raro!
The words stayed with me, and then showed up again in the meditation session on the beach this morning. The quote is from Oprah Winfrey, so I can’t take credit for it, but I feel the meditation we expanded a little on how we might do this. If you have 20 minutes to spend in a relaxed position, listening to the sound of the sea and being guided to ungrip in body and mind, you might like to take a listen.