How To Meditate

Meditation helps to balance the body, mind, and spirit. It allows you to be who you really are — the spiritual being in your body. Consequently, meditation brings various benefits such as improved health, clearer mind, better performance in your personal and career life, and even psychic development.

There are many techniques and approaches in meditation. In this article, I’ll introduce you to the basics of meditation so you can start it right now.  (Photo credit)

1. When & Where: Choose the time and place you can enjoy quiet solitude. First thing in the morning is a great idea — it starts your day right. Meditating when the stomach is full may be difficult. But of course, meditating any time is better than not meditating.

2. Position: There are two basic positions, open position and closed position, and various variations of each.

To meditate in open position, choose a firm stable chair. You want to keep your lower back straight while you meditate, so reclining chairs and soft sofas are no good. Office chairs with wheels are not recommended, either. A firm upright chair or bench is good. Adjust the height or use foot rest so that you are sitting with your knees at the right angle and your feet comfortably landed on the floor. Think of ancient Egyptian figures.

To meditate in closed position means you sit on the floor. You don’t have to do the lotus or half-lotus position. You can just put one leg in front of the other. It helps you to use a firm pillow under your butts, but not under your legs, so that your butts are plopped up to the height of your knees. Some yoga stores sell “meditation pillows” for this purpose, but any firm and large pillow works. It helps you to relax your leg joints and to keep your back straight.

In both cases, you want to keep your upper body upright and straight, but relaxed. Place your hands comfortably on your lap without stretching your shoulder joints. There are many hand gestures used in meditation, as you see in Buddhism arts, and each has different effects, but for now, let’s just place your hands palms up and form circles with your thumb and middle finger.

Be sure to loosen up your belt. Tight underwear are no good, either. Close your mouth and keep the tongue touching to the ceiling in your mouth. It probably helps you to close your eyes even though there are techniques to keep them “half-closed”.

3. Breathing: Now breathe in to the count of four, hold, then breathe out to the count of four, hold, and breathe again. This breathing patten helps you to bring your focus to breathing. It also regulates the breathing — the point is to take about the same time breathing in and out and to have a short period of holding in between. You only need to count your breath for a few minutes. As you progress in your meditation practice, you will notice your breathing slows down naturally, and this is very good. It means your body is getting adjusted.

I tried to count my breathing to share as a reference. I cannot count right when I’m meditating — I can only check my watch right after meditation, and as soon as I do this, I can feel my breathing start to speed up a bit. But just as a reference, I think I breathe about 3 times a minute when I meditate. On good days, maybe 2.5 times a minute.

4. Mindset: But don’t force yourself to do this. Don’t force yourself to achieve anything in meditation. Just be. The various benefits may happen, but chasing them is counterproductive.

Most of the time, we operate from our head. By not thinking anything particular, we give rest to our logical mind and let our soul come through. When thoughts try to distract you in meditation, don’t fight it. Fighting and trying to push away your thoughts only gives energy to the thoughts and let more thoughts come to you. Just gently let them go. Notice that you are noticing the thoughts — you are not your thoughts, the true you (your soul) is noticing your thoughts — and sit quietly there without chasing them. This way, they will go away. And yes, more thoughts will come to you, almost constantly, but keep releasing your thoughts.

5. Experience: As you get more experienced in meditation, you will reach a quiet state of no thoughts and no words. At this point, trust whatever happens in your meditation is good. Let your soul be in full control rather than judging with your mind.

Also, because meditation is about both body and soul, you may experience physical change while meditating. For example, your body might start swaying without your intention. If the movement is too much and uncomfortable, stop. But if it’s a gentle swaying, let it do what it needs to do. You may also see unusual vision or sense your spirit guides around you. I also heard men get election due to increased blood flow, but I haven’t made sure about this.

6. Closing: Don’t force yourself to meditate, say, for 30 minutes. Just meditate for the length of time you are comfortable with. 10 or 15 minute meditation is great.

When you want to end your meditation session, don’t suddenly get up. Gently come back to this world, open your eyes, maybe shake your hands gently, and then get up.

7. Additional ideas: You may like to do the visualization of self-protection at the beginning of meditation session. Visualization of a grounding cord, stretching from your first chakra to the center of the Earth, is also helpful.

I like the simple and open-ended meditation I just described, but if you want to do more extensive visualization, that is fine. Just don’t overload it and make meditation yet another project in your life.

Do you meditate? Please share your experience in the comment. Thank you.

What Is Spiritual Healing?

So Yes to Me has a new tagline: Spiritual Healing and Growth for Greater Success. But what is spiritual healing anyway? This post explores the fundamental concepts of spiritual healing and its underlining premise, the soul. (Photo by Bemep)

Definition of spiritual healing

Here is my understanding:

Spiritual healing

1. Healing of physical, mental, and emotional conditions and patterns by the power of spirituality or spirits.
   This includes faith healing and energy healing.
2. Healing of the spirit, or the soul, of the client, which is the basis of the aforementioned healing. The soul is restored to its full potential, resulting in the optimal health of physical, mental, and emotional bodies.

This is an old and at the same time new field. Wikipedia doesn’t yet have “spiritual healing” and redirects searches to faith healing, which I think is only the subgroup of spiritual healing. Just as we can be spiritual but not religious (a growing group of population who do not affiliate with any organized religions but believe in the existence of higher power), healing can be spiritual but not faith-based.

I also like to think of spiritual healing in the bigger scope than the conventional healthcare – by that I mean you realize you have negative physical or mental conditions and try to get rid of them. No, spiritual healing is a lot more than that. People who are “healthy” can benefit from spiritual healing – our potential is a lot more than the passing grade level of “health”.

What is the spirit and the soul?

To understand spiritual healing, we need to think about the spirit and the soul. And this is right where most people get bogged down because most people identify themselves with their body and mind. Many people think they only have body and mind, and whatever that is not the physical body, they throw them into the category of mind. “Oh, it’s all in your mind.” Wrong.

You have soul. More accurately, the soul is the true you. Your soul came from the Divine Source, and on this planet Earth, it takes physical body to incarnate. The mental and emotional bodies (the mind) develop on the physical body. So we can say your body and mind are the manifestation of your soul.

It is only natural, then, that the wellbeing of your soul affects your physical, mental, and emotional health. By bringing your soul to its fullness, your physical and mental health can improve.

The word “spirit” has several meanings. Sometimes it means the soul. It also means entities or beings in the spiritual plane. They don’t have physical bodies, so most people don’t see them, but being invisible is no proof of their non-existence.

Everything we do and experience in life is our souls’ way of healing and growing

Even the negative symptoms we so hate are the soul’s signs to get your attention so that you can make appropriate adjustments to get back to its fullness. Sometimes you heal your soul by doing spiritual work such as meditation. Sometimes you heal your soul by interacting with certain people. And sometimes you heal your soul taking challenges and experiencing new things.

I have experienced spiritual healing myself and also have witnessed some spiritual healing in others. I consider my major healing to be the courage that has led me to start my own business (which I have discussed many times in this Yes to Me blog). This courage continues to grow within me. Another healing was my persistent shoulder pain.

I’m expanding the scope of this Yes to Me blog from entrepreneurship / personal development to the spiritual foundation of entrepreneurship and various other manifestations of success. I keep sharing my stories as a new entrepreneur and spiritual consultant, and I keep the doors wide open. Whether you are consciously doing spiritual work already or you are rather skeptical or afraid about spirituality, or if you just want to do some personal development to be successful, you are welcome.

What do you think about spirituality and spiritual healing? Are you skeptical, or afraid? Let me know by leaving your comments!

Gratitude And Train For Humanity, Online Gratitude Journal #13

Gratitude for the opportunity to give

As I wrote in my last post that reviewed my year without paychecks, I believe sense of service is empowering. I also wrote the opportunity to give is a gift. (Photo by Mr. Greenjeans)

Just as I was preparing to post that article, Kelly let me know about this project called Train For Humanity. Started by three handsome bloggers, Mark Hayward, Dan Clements, and Leo Babauta, this is a great fundraising that aims to help Darfur Peace & Development Organization. (Each link takes you to the blog post that the respective bloggers wrote about this project.)

What I really like is that they are literally sweating to raise funds. I love that attitude. Talking about humanity is nice for sure. Doing a fundraising is respectable. But actually training to participate in a race is a gutsy. I don’t see myself doing this (yeah, I’m such a wimp ) so I made a donation. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to give!

Please check them out. There are various ways you can help.

Gratitude for the opportunities to participate in great projects

Recently I’ve enjoyed the opportunities to participate in two great projects. One is Jenny Mannion’s Heroes of Healing group writing project. This is a list of spiritual healing resources with personal reflections. The list is currently growing and when it is completed, will be huge. I’m encouraging her to take it to a higher level so that more and more people can see it. My contribution is here.

Another is the interview Hunter Nuttall did. He asked so many great questions about my Akashic Record Reading service. In fact, some questions were quite tough to answer, but I’m glad I did it. It helped me to see my service in third person’s perspective.

My Law of Attraction Dream Money Project, Week 12, $204,800

I was talking with a client the other day. Like many other clients to my Akashic Record Reading service, she was suffering from a loss of part of her soul. Of course, she never thought of the possibility of her soul fragmented, but as I explained how the loss happened and how she was experiencing the loss, she could relate so well. And she asked a critical question:

“What happens when a soul loses more part of it? Is there a point that the loss is fatal?”

I don’t have a complete answer for this honestly, but this is what I think. When the loss is relatively small, they can bring themselves up to services like mine for the healing. When the loss is bigger, that becomes increasingly difficult. And there may be a “fatal” point. Just like physical injury.

I’m proud I can help my clients who come to me. But going forward, I want to expand my service. I want to help those who can’t bring themselves to me. When I think of so many souls out there without access to help, I fell so sad.

This takes raising the awareness of soul issues so that the people around the troubled souls can notice and bring them to me. I suspect there are many many such souls – some are probably considered to be having psychiatric issues.

So with this dream money, I want to start the foundation to explore the soul – mind – body relationship. Maybe we can collect data of before and after the healing / clearing to show the difference in physical energy field and / or the brain. We can fund reading and clearing work for those who can’t afford it while collecting case studies. We can call to experts of other spiritual healing modalities to see collaborative work potentials. There are a lot of possibilities.

We are seeing a significant surge in the interest in spirituality at this time, and I don’t think this is by accident at all. We are becoming more and more aware. With this dream money, I want to think big and help this shift.