Physician Healer

Issue 83 Meditation: Can It Be That Easy? Part II

First of all, thank you to all the new subscribers supporting us this week on our Physician Healer Meditation Podcast! We extend a huge loving welcome to our family! These are exciting times! If the Podcast resonates with someone you know, please help support us by encouraging them to join our growing family!

Now, let’s deep dive into more ins and outs about starting a meditation practice.

Meditation: Can it Be That Easy? Part II

Many clients and students have asked me if there is a right time to meditate and if they could just go for a walk, a bike ride, or even clean the house and call that meditation. They then confessed that sitting still was challenging for them. Although I do encourage everyone to connect with nature via a walk along the beach, or through the woods amongst the trees and mountains, whenever we are walking or biking, we are giving the mind a job to do, so it isn’t completely free.

Quiet types of meditation in which we sit and allow for our thoughts to show up and wander serve a therapeutic role of cleansing whatever needs to be seen and released, which results in clearing of the mind, opening up space for us to receive new ideas, solutions and answers to issues we may have been having. It releases emotional clutter that just get in the way of living our lives fully day to day.

There are many ways to include meditation and exercises that foster wellbeing. I always say that meditation is best practiced in the morning and in the evening before bedtime. Usually, I do everything at least twice a day. I would journal my gratitudes first as soon as I wake up in the morning and when I begin the evening routine. I then spend a few minutes doing positive affirmations in front of the mirror and then a few minutes of visualization and imagination exercises that lead right into Meridian Meditation with additional affirmations or intentional statement-questions.

Now, throughout the day, depending on what else I have going on, I will spend a few minutes doing more affirmations with the mirror technique, journal more gratitudes and do just a few minutes of imaginative visualization work. I don’t always stick with the same agenda. Sometimes I will do more of one than another depending on how I feel. I let my heart guide me. Again, I remind all my clients/students that there is no right or wrong way. Whatever is right for them is the right way.

For clients who have shared with me that sitting still is a challenge, I do tell them that I believe that active and sitting meditations are both important. From my personal view, active meditations using visualization and anchoring deep emotion into it to facilitate a specific goal outcome can be more effective when balanced out with time spent in quiet contemplation and reflection, so as to allow a quiet mind to receive answers from higher intelligence, if you will, to allow our intuitive powers to elevate. We hear commonly that whenever we cannot seem to find a solution to a problem, we need to stop thinking about it, merely need to sit quietly or go to sleep and in the morning, a solution will be available.

I discussed Part I of the most commonly asked questions about meditation in last week’s issue. I will discuss further the rest of the myths and troubleshooting questions that our beginners frequently ask regarding the basic quiet sitting meditation and how to interpret the different issues that pop up. This is Part II.

9) My mind is racing whenever I sit still and close my eyes — Remember that everything you see and hear from the mind, everything it is showing you are things making their way out. Your job is to let them leave.

10) I can’t sit for an hour because I keep thinking about the list of things I have to do —I then usually ask if they have that list in front of them right now in the present moment. If not, then that list in their mind is not real but familiar images that are making their way out.

11) Why do I have to start with a full hour and not 10 minutes at first and work my way up? — The brain cycles between noise (release of trash and clutter) and quiet. Anything shorter than 1 hour allows the mind (Ego) to control your sitting time. I had a client who was able to sit for 30 minutes peacefully until the noise started and he thought that was meditation until I told him that his meditation time actually started on the 31st minute when the noise began. Remember, meditation is about letting the noise come up and leave. In the following week, this same client was successful in sitting for a full hour but discovered even 1 hour was not enough. His mind was still noisy after an hour. He would then have to find out at home how long he would need.

12) Do I need to sit cross-legged, have a mantra or have my hands in a specific way? — Not for the method I’ve chosen to teach. Just keep it simple. Find a comfortable chair or couch on which to sit but avoid lying down or leaning your head on a pillow. But, if you begin with the intention of meditating, then you doze off to sleep, that’s ok (it’s called Medi-sleep, short for meditative sleep) and this sleep is restorative. If your goal is to be awake, then try again later on.

13) How do I know I’m done with the meditation session? — Keep a source of time accessible so that if you think you’ve sat for 1 hour, look at the time. If it’s been less, then close your eyes and stay seated. If an hour has passed, ask yourself if you are ready to get up. If the answer is a calm and quiet yes, then get up as you’re done. If you start hearing a bunch of words like, “Haven’t you been doing nothing long enough? You’re wasting so much time. You should’ve been doing this and that, etc.,” then there is more trash and clutter that need to leave and so my advice is to close your eyes and sit for a few more minutes until the noise subsides.

14) Should I sit in silence or have music playing while I meditate? What about the phone apps for guided meditation? — Everyone’s preferences are different here. It depends on the programs. For instance, a common issue I run up against on phone apps and Calm programs is that the sessions are short and so you would have to either set up continuous play or stop and change the programs, which interrupts your full hour of sitting time. I usually start everyone with ambient music at first, which is music that you cannot sing to; such as the albums by Jordan Jessep called Ambient Worlds or healing Solfeggio frequencies from Relaxing Music and ZenLifeRelax both on Spotify but likely on other platforms, as well. Again, it is important to find music that resonates with you. There are also guided programs for those who prefer to experience powerful visualization or you can choose to sit in silence. There is no wrong or right way here.

15) Should I expect answers to come to me after meditation? — Sometimes you get them in the middle of it and so you could keep a journal next to you and write them down. Most of the time you will finish the sitting and not feel differently one way or another. But, don’t let that fool you. The mind spent all that time clearing the room. In the days, weeks, and months ahead, you will realize how easy everything seems, that you appear to “just know” the answers and the people and things that used to bother you, don’t seem to bother you anymore. Life becomes effortless. These are some of the signs you know something is different; something new is happening, and that whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it in alignment with what is.

Next week, I will conclude with a summary of helpful hints to help you sit and stay seated. For now, I encourage you all to just keep sitting. Remember that there is no right or wrong way. The way I learned and became consistent with the practice of meditation was to turn this into a project. I gave myself a goal date which was 100 days but discovered that after about 2 weeks, I found myself looking forward to making time to do this. I began looking forward to and preferring to stay home on Fridays instead of going out and just connect with myself and to open up what was possible for me in my life and if there were new directions I could take.

Let me know in the COMMENT section if you have other questions about meditation that I haven’t covered yet. Be sure to check out our YouTube Physician Healer tutorial where I merge Meridian technique with meditation to create a powerful method of designing the life you wish to live. We are also on TikTok for short sessions, so check us out there! Remember to SHARE, LIKE and support us by inviting others to SUBSCRIBE.

Again, help support us by inviting others to subscribe to the Physician Healer Meditation Podcast and join our growing family!

Until next time, we send you an abundance of much to be grateful for. Thank you for reading!

With Love and Gratitude♥️🙌

Dr. Celeste Amaya♥️🌞🌻