Exploring Meditation Week will show you how…

By meditating regularly you re-establish a calmer, more in-control version of yourself.

The starting point for this change begins with having-a-go at using the basics of meditation over the next 7-days. This is when you’ll find out what’s possible for you over the longer term.

Things you might notice during this week are that:

• Sleeping more soundly,  getting up in the morning will feel easier and you won’t feel so vague and foggy.
• Feeling more relaxed, it’s easier to slow down and step away from overthinking.
• Sensing your energy rising,  moving forward from where you are right now seems a greater possibility than before.

Over the 7-days,  find out if meditation is the right solution to begin levelling out your feelings right now

You’ll realise making time for meditation is straightforward when you follow a plan that takes you through meditating three or four times over the next seven days.

Taking a simple 5-minutes of meditation will help you compare how you were feeling before to how you feel afterwards. This could be a sense of being able to pause and take a breath, or perhaps sensing you’re a few degrees lighter in yourself. These sorts of feelings are the foundations for changing how much anxiety and depression have a hold on you.

Healing yourself and finding peace of mind is possible and meditation is  one well established way to accomplish that.  By following Exploring Meditation Week you’ll feel confident as you meditate and you’ll discover whether you want to continue with meditating in the long term.

The Exploring Meditation Week Programme is where you

Go from not knowing what to do

when your emotions feel like they’re controlling your life

to testing out a tool for your personal toolkit, one that helps you feel more in charge.

You will:

• Feel supported as you do this specific type of meditation called The Nine Breaths.
• Be in complete control of your schedule as you get to experience what it feels like before and after meditating. You can then decide how often to fit it into your life over the next 7-days.
• Be supported with daily help and guidance from me explaining how to put this meditation into action, knowing you’re not doing it wrong. No matter what type of meditation experience you find yourself having, it will be the right one for you to have based on where you are right now.

Here are some screen shots from the Nine Breaths Meditation showing how simple and straightforward it is:

Feel comfortable sitting still and able to calm your mind with Nine Breaths

Feeling restlessness, twitchy or trapped, or that your mind is always talking to you and it could never be still or quiet, not even for a minute are very common when you begin meditating.

I’ve got your back with this because the chair-based Nine Breaths Meditation includes simple relaxing and calming movements that flow alongside your breathing.

Because your body and mind are not seperate, the slow movements of your body help the movement of your thoughts to slow down and settle too.  Then it becomes easier to feel like you’re doing it – you are meditating!

You’ll start getting acquainted with the Nine Breaths Meditation by following a Learn-How-to-Do-It video.

Once you feel comfortable with what you’re doing, you can either stick with using video, or change from watching to listening by using the audio version. Plus, you’ll have access to a cheat sheet PDF if all you need are a few written reminders of what to do.

Choose the meditation format you prefer depending on the situation you’re in.  You might find one works better for being at work and a different one at home.

It’s not unusual to feel guilty about taking time for yourself and that you ought to be getting on with your list of things to do. Fit meditation in whatever time you have, using either the 5-minute or the 14-minute version.

The 5-minute option is great for when you’re a bit short of time.

• It’s long enough to remind you that relaxing and calming down are an important precursor to changing how you feel. And it’s still long enough for you to see progress when that’s all the time you have.

The 14-minute option allows you more relaxation time.

• The longer meditation allows more time for relaxation, and as a result your mind can relax more deeply. Afterwards thoughts feel like they flow more freely and have more clarity to them.

The 14-minute meditation has extra benefits, so go for this option whenever possible

The increased amount of relaxation and clear-thinking time makes it easier to sense the possibilities of change and act on them. Alternatives suggest can themselves, new ways of feeling and acting , even in the space of a week.

Things like:

• Eating better, getting to sleep more quickly and sleeping more soundly.
• Feeling pleased and more positive because you’ve been able to help yourself feel better.
•  Your creativity juices start to flow so you can see how to solve a problem or get round it, rather than feeling stuck or trapped.

TIP: Give yourself enough time to practice so you get a feel for the rhythm and pace of the meditation process, and begin to feel the micro-shifts towards feeling better.

Knowing what to do each day from the email I send out, you’ll recognise and understand your responses to meditating.

Alongside this information, you’ll have motivational reminders about why you’ve decided to meditate over these 7-days and what you want to know by the end of it.

Even as you’re learning meditation, you’re already seeing the benefits it can have for you:

• Realising you’re a wee bit less stressed than you were.
• Feeling a few degrees brighter and more upbeat.
• Having more confidence you can relax and unwind when you follow the Nine Breaths Meditation process.

When these 7-days are complete, you’ll be able to make the decision about whether or not  meditation can help you reduce anxiety and depression, cope better with the difficult things that happen in life and improve how you feel.

Why Exploring Meditation Week could help you decide if meditation is just what you need

Hi, I’m Annya Stoddart, your meditation teacher 😊 and I’d like to tell you why Exploring Meditation Week is important.

I started meditating when I got fed up with feeling either miserable or hacked off for long periods of time, and not being able to shift those strong emotions without doing some extreme levels of exercise first.

Creating these horrible feelings were a number of things, but the primary contributors were my relationships with my parents and my other half.

I’d had a fraught and difficult relationship with my Mum and Dad for decades.  But I realised time was moving on quickly. They were getting older and frailer.  If I wanted to improve my relationship with them before it was too late, now was the time to take positive action and do something to change it.

As for the relationship between me and my husband, it was getting a bit rocky after 20 years of being together and needed some pro-active work on it, if it was going to last another 20 years.

Fed up with feeling stuck in a cycle of anxiety, anger and depression, whilst exercise helped me out to a degree, I knew needed something else to make it all stop!

The meditation escape route

At this point in my life, I’d already trained as a Yoga Teacher and an Acupuncturist, so understanding the mind-body connection was an essential part of my work.

I remembered that meditation could be an escape route. It could help me take back control of my thoughts and feelings and the negative ways they were affecting me.

Once I’d started meditating, the techniques I learnt gradually enabled me to unwind and feel less tense. As time went on what I learnt about myself and my habitual ways of doing things made me realise I wasn’t helping myself by repeating the same patterns of impatient, irritable behaviour.

This insight or realisation helped me change.   It motivated me to use meditation and mindfulness to shrink my percieved problems and difficulties, so they didn’t take over my thoughts any where near as much.  Meditation also gave me the the opportunity to plan out new ways of thinking, talking and acting in ways that made me feel good about myself and my life.

I tried the new ways of communicating out with my parents and hubbie, and was chuffed to find it made being with them a whole lot easier. This success encouraged me to continue meditating and use the process to embed these ways of doing things into myself, so they became my new norm.

This calmer, kinder, more patient way of being revolutionised my life so much, I wanted to bring it into other peoples. I wanted them to be able to guide their thoughts and feelings in more optimistic and upbeat directions, and feel healthier and happier as a result.

This is why I went on to become a meditation teacher and have designed this Exploring Meditation Week for you to try.

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