This week, I want to talk to you about a different way of managing distractions during meditation.
This works particularly well if you're doing the guided visualisation type of meditation – but you could also use it with the focused awareness type – and that is to simply allow the distractions to become part of your meditation.
So, what you'd probably do is to refocus a few times – be it on the visualisation you're doing or on your breath or whatever other focus you're using for your meditation – and if you find that your mind just really needs to wander off – particularly if there's a subject, perhaps an anxiety, something that you keep coming back to, that's on your mind, keeps intruding – is simply to take a compassionate observer approach to what is happening.
One way that I find quite helpful to do this is to imagine that I have an inner theatre – an inner stage – and that I draw back the curtains and simply allow this part of me – know that it's only a part of you, that's a key aspect to this – to be centre stage, and bring in that wise, compassionate part of yourself, which is what you are accessing during meditation – consciously or unconsciously that is what is happening.
You are opening your human mind up to this wise, compassionate, expanded awareness that is in all of us.
So, you let that wisdom, that compassion, that kindness hold the worried part of you gently, and you might imagine that you are being held like a child on its mother's or its father's knee.
Or you might imagine a light – a beautiful, soft light – good colours are gold or white or soft pink – just embracing this part of you and the scenario that keeps going around, and all of the emotions and the thoughts and the drama when that has got its grip.
You're not trying to fight it, because it won't go away. You are simply bringing compassion from this meditative state, from your expanded awareness, into your human reality as it is right now.
So, I hope that's helpful.
If you can't refocus, go with it. Bring compassion, bring gentleness, bring acceptance, bring a witness, so even just observing how this feels in your body and what particular thoughts are going round, without having to believe them, is one magnificent way of using that meditation time to help your growth, to bring kindness and a re-centring to your human experience.
I'd love it if you could pop into the box below, things that you have done to help yourself manage distractions and manage worries that keep intruding during meditation time.
Have a fantastic week.
I'll see you again
Jasmine
So, what you'd probably do is to refocus a few times – be it on the visualisation you're doing or on your breath or whatever other focus you're using for your meditation – and if you find that your mind just really needs to wander off – particularly if there's a subject, perhaps an anxiety, something that you keep coming back to, that's on your mind, keeps intruding – is simply to take a compassionate observer approach to what is happening.
One way that I find quite helpful to do this is to imagine that I have an inner theatre – an inner stage – and that I draw back the curtains and simply allow this part of me – know that it's only a part of you, that's a key aspect to this – to be centre stage, and bring in that wise, compassionate part of yourself, which is what you are accessing during meditation – consciously or unconsciously that is what is happening.
You are opening your human mind up to this wise, compassionate, expanded awareness that is in all of us.
So, you let that wisdom, that compassion, that kindness hold the worried part of you gently, and you might imagine that you are being held like a child on its mother's or its father's knee.
Or you might imagine a light – a beautiful, soft light – good colours are gold or white or soft pink – just embracing this part of you and the scenario that keeps going around, and all of the emotions and the thoughts and the drama when that has got its grip.
You're not trying to fight it, because it won't go away. You are simply bringing compassion from this meditative state, from your expanded awareness, into your human reality as it is right now.
So, I hope that's helpful.
If you can't refocus, go with it. Bring compassion, bring gentleness, bring acceptance, bring a witness, so even just observing how this feels in your body and what particular thoughts are going round, without having to believe them, is one magnificent way of using that meditation time to help your growth, to bring kindness and a re-centring to your human experience.
I'd love it if you could pop into the box below, things that you have done to help yourself manage distractions and manage worries that keep intruding during meditation time.
Have a fantastic week.
I'll see you again
Jasmine
