Physical excercise is my personal favourite grounding technique, because it benefits me on so many levels simultaneously. It gets me out of my head and into my body. When I feel frazzled, yoga is definitely my most effective centering practice. I believe that it is so effective because the poses actually stretch all the meridians, and move with our breath. Focussing on our breathing brings us back to the present moment. In ancient India, yoga was designed to prepare the body for meditation.
In observance of the #WorldMentalHealthDay2020 I would like to share the power of a calm and peaceful mind with you through a regular meditation practice. Mental health and hygiene is just as important as physical health and hygiene.
Mindfulness = Happiness
The Why of Meditation:
Neuroscienticfic research has shown us that our minds wander 46.9% of the time! What’s even more disturbing is that even though it might be our default setting, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Controlling the mind not only physically strengthens the brain, but even boosts our cognitive performance. In other words, by quieting the mind we become smarter and more productive! Meditation turns out to be one of the most effective ways to stop a mind from wandering aimlessly.
Mental health and hygiene is just as important as physical hygiene: we need to clean and groom it daily just like our bodies. Meditation should become a regular practice for the rest of your wholesome life.
There are loads of accessible meditation apps, as well as local meet up groups that offer a variety of meditation techniques. Some meditation apps even have a built in buddy system to keep each other accountable to boot! Groups are a great way to practice meditations, especially for beginners. Not only can it be one of your most supportive communities, but it has been proven that meditating in groups exponentially amplifies the profoundness of the individuals’ experience. Our quantum fields are affected by our collective consciousness. Additionally, there have been several studies conducted in the past few decades proving how (group) meditations are even powerful enough to influence our physical environments! One of the most best known studies proving this was documented by the TM (Transcendental Meditation) University in the early 90s. “A number that exceeded one percent of the population meditated together every day from 1988 to 1991, and the crime rate dropped so much that Merseyside went from third highest to the lowest-ranked city in England during the time of the analysis. Meanwhile, the control town of non-meditators held a steady crime rate. Meditation was the only factor in the study that could account for the change, as the scientists calculated that police practices, local economics, and demographics remained the same throughout the study.”
Simply put, not only are you improving your own wellbeing by practicing regularly, but you are also making the world a better place by meditating. If you have a hard time meditating for your own wellbeing, meditate for others!
“Be the change you seek in the world.”
Mahatma Ghandi
Practice for Peace of Mind.
The HOW of Meditation:
Experiment to find out which styles and which techniques resonate most with you. If you are brand new to meditation, know that ‘single point focus’ calms the mind. A lot of people start their practice by simply focussing on their breath. If you make your exhale longer than the inhale it will calm your nervous system even more. You can simply count: three counts in, 4 counts out. Another easy exercise is to imagine you breathe in love and light, and exhale any stress and tension in your body. Visualisations are terrific mind-exercises as well: imagine you are breathing in a yellow golden light filling up your entire body from the toes up. Or start from the lungs and heart centre of the body and expand into every cell of our body till it reaches your fingertips, toes and hair follicles.
Remember our mind is programmed to wander. Don’t fight your nature, just observe it with loving kindness. Whenever you catch it wandering, don’t scold it and beat yourself up about it! Just say something like “Hey, I know you’re just doing your job, but I don’t need your help right now. Just take a break and rest, you’ve deserved it! Thank you for sharing, but I am not interested in your story at the moment.” What you resist, persists, so don’t fight against the nature of your mind, but learn to work with it instead. You waste a lot of energy by swimming upstream, learn to go with the flow.
According to yogic technology it takes 40 days to change a habit, to fully retain the mental process and integrate it in our nervous system. According to yogic principles, practicing anything for 40 days allows you the opportunity to fully incorporate it into your being. So for your own wellbeing, commit to meditating for the following 40 days until it becomes a habit, until your “life is bliss”.
“Life is Bliss.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
(The Beatles’ guru)
I would suggest you set aside at least 10 minutes every morning for the next 40 days to sit quietly and observe the mind. Explore different meditation styles to find out which technique is most calming and centering to you. Some people practice TM (Transcendental Meditation), Mindful Meditation, repeat mantra’s or affirmations, say an affirmative prayer, use visualisations, listen to a podcast or music recording, etc. Explore and be open to find out what modality resonates most with you these days.
WOOP your Meditation into shape!
I would like to gently introduce you to coaching through a brilliant meditation practice called WOOP. Gabriele Oettingen is a scientist who ‘stumbled’ upon this meditative sequence and has been able to track its efficiency over the course of 20 years. WOOP combines the best of both worlds: meditation and coaching. It blends detachement with goal setting in a quick and easy daily practice.
Our thoughts create our reality, so through visualisation we design the life we desire. Athletes have been using visualisation techniques to achieve success. But what’s new is a concept called mental contrasting and negative visualisations. Well, negative visualisation has been around for thousands of years. It’s the opposite of visualising the outcome you desire. You imagine your life without someone of something you value, to appreciate it even more! If you need a powerful reminder of how blessed you are, imagine your life without your blessings. Revers psychology works for our mind in more ways than one. That’s the task I have sneaked into your daily to do lists the past couple of days. When the going gets tough you imagine what your life would look like without it. What would you miss?
Scientist Gabriele Oettingen (and colleagues) took it one step further, and has you imagine a desired future goal and than imagine what obstacle might prevent you from achieving that. They found that this mental contrasting is a self-regulation strategy essential to strong goal commitment. It is also a fabulous tactic to set attainable goals and prevent disappointment. Your dream, might not be as great as you originally thought. When you concretely observe and truly imagine everyday life having attained that goal, you might not actually like the reality of it. What the dream would look and feel like might turn out to be undesirable to you.
WOOP is the sequence in which you meditate and ponder your goals:
- WISH What do I want for me? What do I want for my life? What do I want for me today?
- OUTCOME What would be the best way to manifest this?
- OBSTACLE What stops me from achieving that? What in me stops achieving that?
- PLAN What will I do when that obstacle arises? Come up with IF… THEN… action plan.
Please visit their website for more information: woopmylife.org. There are some delightful short video’s listed to help you along.
Need a little help from your friends?!
If you have a hard time creating a new wholesome and healthy routine for yourself, I would strongly encourage you to start my 40 Day Reset self-coaching program today. You could see this program as your at home self-care retreat. This self-coaching sequence is designed for you to feel your best at the end. This 40-day process is intentionally created for your sustained wellbeing. By the time this program ends in savasana, you will be basking in bliss.
“Life is Bliss.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Nathalie on the mat:
Nathalie Francois was born in Belgium and raised in a health conscious, artistic and spiritual environment. At the young age of 12 she was introduced to an intensive yoga practice incorporating meditation and Hatha Yoga. This upbringing was an influential and integral part of her ongoing life’s journey.
In 2011 she completed the 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training course at Yogaworks (RYS-200 and RYS-300) in Soho, NYC and has continued practicing with several different teachers and styles ever since. In 2023 she added the EMYoga Teacher Training to integrate the meridian systems within her yoga practices. She is now both a Nationally Certified and a NY State Licensed Massage Therapist, as well as a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and a Certified Yoga Teacher. During the pandemic Nathalie even completed the professional certification courses of “Nutrition and Healthy Living” at Cornell University, to add to her holistic bag of tricks.
Namaste.