10 Meditation Activities and Strategies to Get Started

I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on meditation techniques. I will be your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. So today we're really just going to do an overview. We're not going to go in depth into any meditation because obviously some of you aren't in a place where you can do that. And we're going to hit the highlights of what clients might prefer so you can explore it maybe more in depth. So we're going to learn the benefits of meditation and identify the goals of meditation. We'll also talk and differentiate it a little bit from mindfulness. We'll describe how to get started with meditation because it's easier than you might think, and explore 15 different types of meditation. I know in this hour we're going to get through all that, I promise. So reviews to date have demonstrated that both mindfulness and mantra meditation techniques can reduce emotional symptoms like anxiety, depression and stress, and improve physical symptoms, especially pain, from a small to a moderate degree. Mindfulness meditation, however, was found to show moderate improvement for anxiety, depression and pain. And you see those numbers are pretty robust there. 44% of people who participated in mindfulness meditation who had anxiety felt like there was some improvement, and 52% for depression, 31% for pain. The effects were seen during treatment and maintained at the three and six month follow up marks. So once we get people meditating, and I'm speculating here, they didn't talk about it in the review whether the people were continuing to do meditation after the after the study was over or whether they stopped. My guess is they continued to do meditation after the study was over, which is helping to maintain their treatment gains. Either way, meditation does not take that long. We're not asking people to do something that takes 20, 40 minutes or an hour every single day. Now, obviously you can spend that much time, but you don't have to. So we're going to go through some benefits really quick just because it's helpful to highlight these for a lot of our clients. Many clients hear meditation and they think mantra meditation right off the bat and only one type of meditation. And they're like, no, I'm not a meditation type of person. I know I felt that way when I first heard about meditation. So, you know, I'll admit I had some biases. And once I learned more about meditation and the different types, I found that it's really easy, if you will, if you're curious to find a type of meditation that will work for different people. I do want to put the caveat in here. That if you're working with people who have a trauma history, which we know is a preponderance of the people, that we need to be especially careful when we introduce meditation. When people are in a meditative state, they feel very vulnerable. So people with a history of abuse, people with a history of trauma of some sort, may not feel comfortable doing meditation in a group, may not even feel comfortable doing meditation in your office. They may want to do it in their safe space at home. So we want to make sure that the meditation itself, the activity itself doesn't re traumatize the person. But we'll get into that more later. So benefits of meditation help people see why this can be useful. And they don't necessarily need drugs for everything. Eight weeks of mindfulness based stress reduction Increase the thickness of the hippocampus, which they don't really care about, the area of the brain that covers learning and memory and in certain areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation. So, so good parts of the brain tend to get thicker, they tend to develop, which is good. We can develop our brains through our entire life. And if you are trained in EMDR or you've done any studying in emdr, you will understand the significance of the fact that mindfulness based stress reduction also led to decreases in the volume of the amygdala, that is your fight or flight center, if you will, which match the participants self reports in their decrease in stress levels. So those were all very, very good findings. People who learned mindfulness were many more times likely to have quit smoking by the end of a smoking secession training and at 17 weeks follow up. The hypothesis is that meditation helped people decouple the state of craving from the act of smoking. So when they would craving, they would engage in a meditative act instead of lighting up. And that helped them calm themselves in an alternative way as opposed to lighting up. Mindfulness meditation has also shown utility in the treatment of other addictions. And you can see that I have the references here if you want to go read the journal articles. You know, I'm kind of a nerd like that. I really enjoy journal articles. But long term meditators, they found, had better preserved brains than non meditators as they aged. Participants who'd been meditating for an average of 20 years had more gray matter volume throughout their brain. So that supports that initial study that said there were increases in the hippocampus. Mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the area of the brain network responsible for mind watering and self referential thoughts, which we often call Monkey mind. So mindfulness meditation can help us tame that monkey mind. And with a lot of the clients that I work with, this is one of our core goals is to tame that monkey mind so they're not worrying about the future or dwelling in the past or you know, ruminating on those resentments. I want them to be in the present. So mindfulness meditation can help with that. The goals of meditation, so we know there's benefits and I really highlighted the emotional benefits because, you know, being mental health professionals, that's kind of what we focus on. But there are a lot of studies out there that will also underscore the utility of meditation and relaxation skills, but meditation for the management of chronic pain. So those are all studies that you can look at. If you go to PubMed, which is the National Library of Medicine online, you can research a lot of those studies or just go to the Cochrane database. Anyhow, goals of meditation. We want to help people reduce negative emotions, thoughts and behaviors. That seems like a no brainer. So okay, that's a goal. But we also, and you know how I am about Yin and yang, we also want to help them increase positive emotions, thoughts and behaviors toward themselves and others. And there are some really awesome meditation techniques in here, one called Loving Kindness that we will talk about. Another goal of meditation is to alter relevant physiological processes. If you're working with a client who has high anxiety, well, what physiological processes go along with high anxiety? Increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, increased respiration, all those things. With meditation, we can help people learn how to calm down. For some of us who really like to have objective measures, just go figure. If they have a fitness watch and it's actually better if they wear a heart rate strap because that's a whole lot more accurate. But either way, they can practice meditating and reducing their heart rate. They can practice meditating and through focusing on their breath, they'll be slowing their breath, which naturally reduces the heart rate. There are some watches out now. I think one of the Garmins does it that actually periodically checks on your heart rate throughout the day. And if it sees that you're showing a pattern of stress because your heart rate keeps going up, then it will trigger you to start to calm down. It will actually send you an alarm. So if that doesn't annoy you, then it might be something to encourage clients to look at. And meditation can boost people's ability to empathize with others. And we're going to talk about how these things actually manifest from meditation as we go through. So the first Thing is to help people get started and people think meditation. I've got to go to classes, I've got to learn, I've got to find something. No, start with two minutes a day and don't get caught up in how to do it. Just encourage clients to spend two minutes focused on the present moment. And that's where the mindfulness comes in. Focused on, how do I feel right now, what's going on, what am I actually feeling, what are my sensations? If they do it right before they get up in the morning, they're laying in bed, you know, they can feel if they're achy, they can feel if they are having anxiety, they can feel a variety of things. So encourage them just to spend two minutes doing a focused, focusing on the present. And that's the beginning of meditation. When you are focusing on the present for those two minutes, what are you not doing? You are not entertaining monkey mind. So you're pulling it together. You're focusing on what's going on in the here and now. Do it first thing in the morning or right before bed, or both. If we can get people to do it both times, it's not really that difficult for two minutes. So all I'm asking is for four minutes a day. It has shown significant benefits in improvement of mood and reduction of that monkey mind. Encouraging people to just start practicing. Another thing that can be done to encourage people to be more consistent or to start doing it is to consider doing it with a friend or family member. If you want to do it as a ritual, if you will, first thing in the morning, before breakfast or after dinner or something. As a family, you know, we're just going to take two minutes and meditate about our day. No, it's an option. Encourage people during that two minutes. You know, they're like, well, what do I do? There's a lot of things you can do. One of the first things that you can do, and probably one of the easiest, is just to focus on your breath and your heart rate. Breathe in, count to four, breathe out, count to four. When you breathe in, feel the air going into your nose, into your chest, and hopefully into your abdomen. And then when you breathe out, feel that air going out. You can think in with the good air or in with the good energy, out with the bad energy, whatever you. However you want to think about it. But if you're just focusing on that breath and how it feels, not even thinking, just focusing on how that feels, that's meditation. That's getting people to start. And some people will Be like, well, how do I know how long two minutes has been? Set a timer. If you're one of those people who's insistent on only doing it for two minutes, you can get an app on your phone and set a timer during that two minutes. And I found this this morning. I was trying to meditate this morning before I got out of bed and for some reason my monkey mind was just all over the place and it was dominant. So my mind kept wandering. I usually don't have that problem, especially first thing in the morning. But you know, today was different. And instead of being judgmental, every time I would notice my mind wandering, I'd be like, nope, bring it back and focus on the moment. With practice, generally people get better at focusing on the current moment. And there are going to be days like for me today, where it just doesn't happen. And that's okay. Encouraging people to just continue to do it, continue to practice. Just like football players go out and not every game is going to be a winning game. They don't play their A game every single time. It doesn't mean they're failing, it just means they didn't play their A game that day. So encourage people, just be consistent. Develop a loving, non judgmental attitude towards yourself. It's not, I can't do this, I'm not doing it right. I blah, blah, blah blah. I am trying to do something that is good for me and I am doing it the best I can. Another issue that some people have is they worry about clearing their mind. Sometimes clearing your mind is not going to happen. It's kind of like trying to prove something didn't happen. You can prove something did happen, but proving the null is very difficult. So encourage people not to worry about clearing their mind because then that's what they're going to be thinking about. Just practice focusing their attention on something, whether it's a candle or their heart rate or their breath, whatever it is for them and that can help. Now again, if somebody has a trauma history, this can be very daunting. If they have a history of dissociation as a way of coping, this may not be a recommended practice. It's important to really take each client individually and figure out what's appropriate and what would be useful and non traumatizing. Because we certainly don't want to encourage dissociation. We want to encourage people to be in the present moment, be in their body and be in their mind. Help people learn how to do body scans. That's one of the easiest forms of meditation. Starting I like to start from the top and work my way down and move negative energy out through my toes. Some people work up and move energy up to their brain. Whatever works for you is a good thing. But a body scan, you just start. We'll say at the top and say, okay, how's my head feeling? You know, do I have a headache? Is it achy? Do I have an itch on my scalp? What is. How am I? How's my head feeling? And then move down to the neck. Do I have neck tension? What does that feel like? The shoulders, the back, gradually moving through every single body part. There are good videos. There are some really bad videos, but there are some good videos on YouTube that will walk people through progressive muscular relaxation or a body scan if they want somebody. If your clients want somebody who has a script and walks them through it so they don't have to try to focus on that, that's perfectly fine. Another way you can meditate is just to be still and notice the lights and the sounds and the energy or just one of those things in your presence during that two minutes. I like to focus on sounds. I'm an auditory kind of person. That way, what do I hear? And I can pick up everything from the wind to the dogs next door to whatever. Just noticing, not judging, just being present in the moment. Stay with whatever arises. Instead of feeling like frustration, anger, and anxiety need to be gotten rid of, just stay with them and be curious. If you start to feel frustrated, this is the time to start learning how your mind works. Okay, I feel frustrated right now. Where is this coming from? And explore. Think like Alice in Wonderland. You know, she kept going through these little doors and exploring. When something comes up, it's kind of like that bottle that says, drink me. You know, stay with it for a second and see where it goes. Or maybe a better analogy would be following the white rabbit. Become friends with yourself and have a friendly attitude instead of one of criticism. When you're working with your friend or your child or a client, they are not always going to be doing and acting and saying exactly what you want them to do. Act or say, well, your brain is the same way, just like mine. This morning, that monkey mind was taken over, and I could have gotten frustrated and angry at myself, but that would have served no purpose. That would have solved nothing. So instead, I was just friendly to myself. I said, well, you tried. You know, you did what you were needed to do, and we'll do better later, or maybe we'll try this again in a couple of hours. So once we get people started, and usually when I work with clients, I have them start on the two minute meditations for about two, three weeks, where they're just getting used to focusing on the present moment before they leave my office. After the first, when I introduce it, I want to make sure they have a plan. So during their two minutes, what do they want to focus on? Do they want to focus on their breath? That's what I usually recommend. But if they want to focus on the light or something else, well, that's cool. And I want them to practice that. Twice a day I shoot for the moon and hopefully I'll reach the stars. Or I guess that's the other way around. But in any event, I want them to do it ideally twice a day, two minutes each time, and I want them to journal afterwards. And it's what I give them is a Likert scale, 1 to 5. Do I feel better or how do I feel after meditating? You know, it's not a hard thing. They can add notes if they want to, but they don't have to because I want them to see if it's helping. When we get more into it, then I start adding a few more questions to that questionnaire. Again, Likert scale. How helpful was this? When I started, my anxiety was at a 1 through 5. And when I finished, my anxiety was at a whatever the number is to encourage them to see if it's helping. And if it's not, then I want to explore why. You know, maybe this isn't the best type of meditation for them. Maybe there's something else going on, but it's important for them to monitor it. Focused attention. Meditation is one of those more common meditations, focusing your attention on a single object during the whole meditation session. It can be your breath, it can be a mantra, it can be a visualization. Maybe you close your eyes and you see where you want to be. You see a happy ending in something. You see in your mind's eye a beautiful beach where you wish you were laying right now. Whatever it is, you focus on it. And it can be something that's tangible, visible, or it can be something in your mind's eye, but you're going to focus on that for the entire session. You can also focus on body parts. So if you have, for example, back tension, sometimes you can focus on that back tension and you can feel it and you can tense those muscles, feel what it feels like to be tense and relax those muscles and then just focus on that area and imagine angels rubbing the knots out that's what one of my instructors had suggested one time. Envision angels rubbing the knots out of the stress in your back. Zen meditation is a type of focused meditation, which has some rules to it. Not everybody's cool with that, and that's okay. If they've got pain issues, this may not be good for them. If they just don't like having the formality of it, that's okay, too. In Zen meditation, you keep the back completely straight from the pelvis to the neck. So that would mean I would have to sit back like this, which does require a little bit of core strength. The mouth is kept closed and the eyes are kept lowered with your gaze resting on the ground about 2 or 3ft in front of you. I know I've done that in doctor's office waiting rooms before. I just, like, stare at the carpet. It's not all that hard to do, but if you're not comfortable in that kind of position, then this may not work for you. Focus on the breath, that's the next thing. And every single one of these types of meditations starts with a focus on the breath. Because we want to encourage people to start becoming one with themselves and focusing inwards. And when you inhale, what are you doing? You're bringing oxygen and energy inwards. So focus all your attention on the movement of the breath going in and out through the nose. Now, that's a little bit difficult because a lot of us are mouth breathers. So that, again, takes some focus, but focusing on what it feels like when it's coming in and going out. Vipassana meditation. Vipassana is a Pali word that means insight or clear seeing. So you start with the breath. In order to achieve concentration, you start with that focusing and breathing in and out through the nose. Once the person is concentrating and they feel like they're focused, then they start the meditative act, if you will, the object. That's the focus of the practice. So we'll stay with breath for this one. As they inhale and they exhale, the breath is the primary object. A secondary object is anything else that arises in the person's perception that draws their attention away from their breath. Whether somebody knocks at the door or they hear a sound or they get an itch somewhere, those are secondary objects. So we want people to focus on the primary object. What do you do when your attention gets called away? Well, if a secondary object grabs your attention, you note it with something like thinking, hearing, memory, desiring, sensation, whatever you want to label it. Don't spend too much time Labeling it and thinking about what it is and what you need it to be. It's just okay thought coming back and return to focusing on the primary object. Open monitoring meditation. Some people find this extraordinarily easy. Some people find it ridiculously difficult. So encourage clients to try focused meditation as well as open monitoring. Instead of focusing the attention on any one object in open monitoring meditation, we keep it open monitoring all aspects of our experience without judgment or attachment. Now you can do this, and this is one of those that can be really helpful for people who have trauma histories or whatever and don't want to feel completely vulnerable. They don't want to focus on one thing and close their field of vision. They want to be aware. And open monitoring meditation, you can do it when you're sitting, just sitting calmly in a place and being aware of everything that's going on around you. Sitting outside and just being aware of everything. One of the activities I used to do with my class is we would go out into the plaza and we would spend five minutes out there. They would just sit down and practice open monitoring meditation, just sitting and being aware. And then we would go back inside and I would have them write down everything that they noticed, what they smelled, what they saw, what they heard. And we would kind of compare notes to see what different people picked up on. I do a lot of open monitoring meditation when I'm out hiking because I'm just enthralled with everything that's out there. I'm listening for the different kinds of birds. I am trying to watch where I walk so I don't fall. So those sorts of things that focus your attention on the immediate here and now can be useful with open monitoring meditation another time. People sometimes do it, and I know I used to do it when I would sunbathe. When you're sunbathing, laying on the beach or on the chair or wherever you're laying, just focusing on everything, feeling the sun's rays beat against your skin, feeling the warmth, feeling the breeze, hearing different things. Encourage people during open monitoring meditation to pay attention to all of their senses. Mindfulness meditation is probably one of the easiest to do. So this is a good place to start with a lot of clients. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of intentionally focusing on the present moment, accepting non judgmentally and paying attention to the sensations, thoughts and emotions that arise. So a lot of this can be thought of as a repackaging of what we've just talked about. And you can either do a focused mindfulness meditation and focusing on one thing or an open mindfulness meditation. Again, you start out by paying close attention to the movement of your breath in and out until you get focused. And this is kind of a way of switching gears with some students. When they transition between classrooms, for example, or they transition between activities, they have a hard time switching gears. So mindfulness meditation can be a good way of helping them get regrounded. Or if they come in from recess, turning off recess and getting back into class mode can be difficult. So mindfulness meditation can help them focus a little bit and switch those gears. The effort in mindfulness meditation is to not intentionally add anything to our present, but just to be aware of what's going on without losing ourselves in anything that arises. So if you're doing mindfulness meditation, being aware of the car alarm that's going off outside of the office or whatever, but not getting caught up in being irritated about it or wondering whose it was or if it's yours or whatever, you just notice it and let it go. When you get distracted, recognize it and bring your attention back to your breathing. With mindfulness meditation, one of the main points is that there's a difference between being inside a thought or sensation, being tangled up with it, thinking about it, being attached to it, and just being aware that it's there. Being aware of a sound instead of trying to think about what's causing it, or having it trigger memories and associating those, and then your mind goes off into prior history. Okay, I told you this is one of my favorites, loving kindness meditation, and I think this is one we could all use today. So with loving kindness meditation, you sit in a meditation position, and it doesn't have to be Zen meditation position. It can be, but my goal is that I want whoever's doing this to be comfortable. So if that's sitting on the couch, if that's laying down, if that's with your, however it is. Now, ideally this is done with closed eyes, but again, some clients with trauma histories, they ain't gonna go there. Whether they're at home or in your office or in a group, they that does not feel safe to them. So if that doesn't feel safe to them, that's okay. The biggest thing is just to be in a safe place and feel comfortable and generate in their mind and heart feelings of kindness and benevolence. If clients are not willing or able to close their eyes because it's too threatening, encourage them to focus on a non stimulating object like a candlelight or something. If they are not focused on something visually, then they're More likely to be open to everything and see things and look around the room. So encourage them to focus on one thing that's right right in front of them. Start by developing loving kindness towards yourself, then progressively towards others and all beings. So how do we do this? Well, the first thing is encourage clients to think to themselves, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be safe, and may I be peaceful and at ease. I want them to repeat this to themselves until they can generate that feeling of calm and loving kindness, almost like getting a great big hug from somebody that is nurturing to them, whoever that might be. I want them giving themselves a spiritual hug. So they need to generate these feelings of kindness and benevolence. When you're working with clients, if you're doing this in a group to teach the basics, sometimes it's important to define, what does kindness and benevolence look like? How do we generate those feelings? If I feel kind and benevolent, what does that look like? Many times you have to put it outside the person. Talk about, who are you kind and benevolent to and what does that look like? They're forgiving, they're trusting, they are patient, they are whatever. So we might want to start defining what that looks like so then they can start figuring out how to cultivate that in themselves. With the loving kindness meditation, start out with generating those feelings towards oneself. And that may be as far as they get for the first couple of weeks or a month or maybe even a little bit more. It may take time for them to start feeling kind and accepting of themselves. The next step, once they've got that down and they feel, they start to understand what kindness and benevolence feels like, and they get that warm feeling inside. Then we want them to start generating loving kindness towards a good friend. This is one that they're not angry at right now. This is somebody that's a positive person in their life. And they repeat the same meditation with different pronouns. May you be happy, may you be well, may you be safe, may you be peaceful and at ease. They envision that person in their mind's eye when they are saying this meditation. So they practice that. And that usually is a whole lot easier than generating it towards oneself. In this next progression, they focus on generating it towards themselves first. The second progression, I usually have them do a good friend and a neutral person on the same day, because those are often not super difficult for people to add to their repertoire. So the next one is a neutral person just envisioning anybody. The cashier at the grocery store or the administrative assistant in your office or whomever. And they repeat that same phrase or mantra, may you be happy, may you be well, may you be safe, may you be peaceful and at ease. So envisioning sending loving kindness to them, envisioning, sending warmth and benevolence towards them, envisioning in your mind's eye, greeting them with warmth and benevolence. So hopefully on some sort of subconscious level, they're receiving the good energies you're sending that way. The next step, which, you know, I usually give them a week or two to master the good friend and the neutral person. And they choose, encourage people to choose different friends and different neutral people so they get used to thinking about others instead of just an other thinking about other people. Then we do a difficult person, and it could be somebody who's a challenging person in your family or somebody that you have resentments towards or whatever. And they again repeat that mantra, may you be happy, may you be well, may you be safe, may you be peaceful and at ease. If, when they're doing this, they start to have feelings of not kindness and benevolence, going back to accepting their reactions, not fighting with them, repeating their own mantra, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be safe, may I be peaceful and at ease. And then figuring out how to handle it from there. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But once they are used to trying to do those loving kindness meditations for themselves, a good friend, a neutral person, and a difficult person, then you want to try to do it for all four of the above equally. And that sounds really easy. But then when you start thinking about it, the amount of loving kindness I can generate for my best friend is immense. The amount of loving kindness I can generate for a neutral person is really pretty, pretty good. But the amount of loving kindness I can muster or demonstrate for a difficult person, that's harder to get to that same level as what I feel for a good friend. So that takes some time. And then gradually you want to move to sending loving kindness to the entire universe. Recognizing the phrase that I use with my clients and my family a lot, trying to recognize that everyone's doing the best they can with the tools they have at any point in time, and everybody just wants to be happy. So when you're doing the loving kindness meditations, when those feelings such as anger, grief or sadness arise, it's important to muster that patience and go, okay, feeling this feeling, not going to judge it. It's just, it's here, it is Practice patience, acceptance, and kindness towards yourself and try to direct loving kindness towards those feelings. Recognizing that. When we are patient with ourselves, when we have these feelings, those are natural feelings, those are natural, normal feelings. What we do with them is what can be more difficult. But recognizing that those are just natural feelings and we don't have to get caught up in them, recognizing that this difficult person just wants to be happy. And we all make mistakes. To send loving kindness, and this is one of the things we talk about with forgiveness too, to send loving kindness does not mean that we approve, condone everybody's actions. It just means that we can see clearly actions that are incorrect and still maintain a connection of kindness. And we've talked about this before, the difference between saying, you are a bad boy versus you are a good boy and I love you, I don't like what you did. Another way to address it is to find one good thing about that person that you can hone in on. And there's one person in my past that I can think of that is a difficult person, but she had an immense love for animals and she would do anything to rescue or save animals. And I appreciate that about her. So I try to refocus my attention on that. Instead of the other things, there are loving kindness meditations online on YouTube that people can find for free. And you can follow this link to one if you want. So a mantra meditation. A mantra is a syllable or a word, usually without any particular meaning, that's repeated for the purpose of focusing your mind. It's not an affirmation, it's just a word. Guidelines for picking a word. The meaning is important. You can develop something you want to develop more in yourself, feel more, or be connected to, such as love, peace, freedom, awareness, light, courage, any of those happy words. Just pick one word that you want to see yourself moving toward. The sound of the word needs to speak to you. The only way to realize this is by repeating it for a few minutes and observe how you feel before and after. So if I say, for example, light doesn't resonate with me. If I say light a bunch of times, you know, whatever. Freedom, peace, contentment. Those are words that speak to me a little bit more. Repeat the mantra with the flow of the breath. So as you inhale, think or say the word, and as you exhale, think or say the word. Repetition of the mantra is designed to help you disconnect from your thoughts. Because if you're saying a word, you can't be thinking other words. You know, it's kind of a Competing response, if you will. So repetition of this mantra helps you really get focused into the moment. The suggestion is to practice. You can either practice for a period of time or for a set number of repetitions. In traditional mantra meditations, this is often 108 repetitions, which represents the ultimate reality of the universe. So a lot of prayer beads are. Are 108 beads long. In traditional mantra meditation, you start out with verbal recitation. So you repeat whatever that word is out loud to engage your senses. So you're not only saying it, but you're feeling it on your tongue, you're hearing it, and this helps keep your attention focused. Then you move to whispering it. This practice is subtler and deeper than verbal recitation. And I never really thought about it, but when I say my rosary, when I first started saying my rosary, I would say it out loud and then I moved to whispering, barely moving my lips, but I would kind of mumble it as I would go through. And then mental recitation. Repeating the mantra only inside your mind, so you're actively engaging in figuring out what to say. Spontaneous listening is when you're no longer repeating the mantra, but it goes on by itself in your mind. It's just automatic. You hear the next word coming and you're not having to think about it. You can go to liveanddair.com mantra meditation and find more information about mantra meditations. Yogic meditations. There are three main third eye gazing and sound. Third eye is kind of cool. You focus on the spot between your eyebrows in order to increase the silent gaps between your thoughts. So you really want to focus on that spot. You can close your eyes and actually imagine looking at it. Or you can just focus on what it feels like, that spot right between your eyebrows in order to really direct your energy to one poignant place. Gazing meditation I really like. You start out by fixing your gaze on an external object, often a candle. But it can be whatever you want. It's done with your eyes open, so it encourages people to really look and see and notice and then with the eyes closed. So this trains the body. First you train on concentration, then you train on visualization. So to be able to see things that aren't exactly there anymore, you're seeing the representations. Sound meditation starts with meditation on external sounds, such as calming ambient music like Native American flute. Or you can even use any of the white noise machines, the waves, whatever sounds that that person likes. In particular, the student focuses all his attention on just hearing as a help to quiet and collect the mind. So listening to nothing but the waves coming in and out or the flute music or whatever it is that works for them. And I encourage people to try different things. Sometimes some sounds will work for you and not others. Now let's move on to tantra meditations. And this has nothing to do with sex. And they actually, there's a fair amount of irritation in a lot of the boards that they have been linked together. But I digress. Tantra is derived from the Sanskrit word tan, meaning expansion. So we're expanding our awareness and TRA meaning liberation. So when we expand our awareness, we're liberating ourselves to explore and expand what is. There are a lot of different tantra meditations. And here's one link to 108 different things that clients can do. Other activities. Some of the more simple ones that I chose. When one object is perceived, all other objects become empty. So concentrate on that emptiness. So if there's a candle that's there that you're perceiving the candle, the candle is there. I want you to focus on the emptiness around the candle and what is not there. Concentrate on the space that occurs between two thoughts. I find this one a little bit more difficult, but it's possible. Listen to the heart chakra sound. Contemplate on the universe or one's own body as being filled with bliss. So really envisioning that. And that kind of goes along with loving kindness meditation. So if they like that one, then this might be a nice alternative. And contemplate that the same consciousness exists in all bodies. We all have some sort of consciousness that makes us alive. Light meditation is another one of my real favorite ones. And there's been a fair amount of research that has shown the effectiveness of this type of meditation or a similar meditation in pain management. So with light meditation, you sit in a comfortable upright posture. It doesn't have to be sitting completely straight up. Encourage the person to bring themselves fully into the present moment by becoming aware of the sensations of their physical body and the movement of their breath. So back to this breath again. So you want to feel the sensations and hopefully feel the stress going out. I usually have people do one round of progressive muscular relaxation to press that tension out before they start doing light meditation. But you don't have to. And then they start by focusing their awareness. And again, I start at the top, but you can start at the bottom. Focus your awareness. We'll start with the foot on your right foot. And imagine that your right foot is being filled with golden light. Visualize it in your mind's Eye, see your foot being filled with golden light or liquid gold or whatever it is, and then feel it moving out and filling each part of the foot. The toes, the sole, the arch. If you want to help people visualize this before you do this activity, you can have them watch as you pour molasses into a container or honey into a container, and watch how it just slowly spreads out and fills up all the crevices. As the person inhales, they feel that body part. We're still on the foot, filling with light and warmth. And as they exhale, they feel that light spreading throughout the part. So when they inhale, the honey is getting poured in. As they exhale, it's spreading out through the foot, and then they move to the next body part, whether it's the other foot or up that leg. However you want to go through the progression. It takes a while, but it can be very helpful with people who have pain management or pain issues. They can just envision that one part being filled with something that takes the pain away and notice how that feels. And as they exhale, they feel that anesthetic spreading throughout their knee or their back or what, whatever it is that's hurting. Christian meditation. Each religion has their own set of meditations. Christian meditation has contemplative prayer, which usually involves the silent repetition of sacred words or sentences with focus and devotion. So this can be something like the rosary or the serenity prayer. I know lots of different religions use prayer beads, so this would be contemplative prayer, where you're saying the prayer or the sentences, but you're focusing on the essence of what you're talking about, the mysteries. Contemplative reading, simply contemplation involves thinking deeply about the teachings and events in that spiritual text in the Bible. In Catholicism, you might think about the teachings and events. When you're doing the Stations of the cross, there are 14 stations, and you think about an event that led up to Jesus's death and resurrection at each station of the cross, or when you're saying the rosaries, you contemplate the mysteries each different decade. Sitting with God is even more broad, and it's a silent meditation in which the person just focuses all of their mind, heart and soul on the presence of their higher power. This is really good in faith gardens and spiritual gardens, where they're just sitting and appreciating the moment and the wonder and the mystery, they're not really thinking about anything. Qigong is extraordinarily useful, and the literature on it is so robust. I just can't even begin to tell you how many articles are out there. It stands for Life Energy Cultivation. Physically, the slow, gentle qigong movements warm tendons, ligaments, muscles, tonify vital organs and connective tissue and promotes circulation of body fluids. If you've ever been an athlete and done dynamic stretching, you know how important it is to do some of these gentle movements to kind of, you know, get everything lubricated and going. Qigong takes it to the next step and it helps lubricate even the organs and really get everything flowing throughout the body. There are lots of exercises you can find at Conscious Lifestyle Magazine, books on it and videos as well. The basics of qigong. Sit in a comfortable position. Make sure your body is balanced and centered. So it's up to the person what a comfortable position is, but they need to be balanced and centered. A lot of times when they do qigong at assisted living facilities, people will sit in a hard, straight back chair, relax your whole body and breathe deeply from the abdomen back to that breathing again. This helps the person calm their body and their mind. Then they place all their attention in the lower tan tien, which is the center of gravity of the body, 2 inches below the belly button. This is where they believe that the qi or your vital energy accumulates. This is a natural reservoir in martial arts. Before and after martial arts, my kids will do a movement and you can see them focusing their energy on that lower tan tien as they breathe and calm their minds and get centered. This is a very helpful activity. This is an extremely helpful, really quick activity when somebody starts feeling anxious or angry and they need to calm down if they can breathe. And as they exhale, focus their energy down on that lower tan tien. Encourage them to feel the qi or the energy circulating throughout their body. There's a lot of activities that can be done with qigong, and I couldn't even begin to do it justice in this short presentation. If you work with patients who are either recovering from some sort of physical injury, stroke, heart attack, or if they are limited mobility, there's pretty much no end to what qigong can help with. But it's basically something that helps keep the body moving, keeps it from getting stiff and keeps that energy flowing. Because we know that when our energy is not flowing, we're not getting as much oxygenated blood where it needs to be. So people are going to tend to feel more tired and achy and stuff. Qi Kong does take some training, but like I said, there are a lot of videos online that you can find. That is the one Meditation type that I included here that you can't just pick up and do immediately. Guided meditation and guided imagery is one of my favorites with that, guided imagery makes use of the imagination and visualization powers of the brain, guiding people to imagine an object, entity, scenery, or journey. Guided meditation has been used in patients with cancer and patients with HIV in order to help increase their white blood cell count, in order to help them recover from chemotherapy. Guided imagery has been found to reduce stress and elevate the immune system and cell specific imagery corresponding to white blood cells, neutrophils or lymphocytes. So if they actually envision these particular types of white blood cells doing their job, it's been found to be helpful at increasing the effectiveness. One of the activities for guided meditation that has been recommended for immunity enhancement is to put the flat palm of your hand over the thymus gland, which is right under the middle of the breastbone, and imagine warm energy from the hand is slowly and steadily entering that gland, filling it with energy and creating white blood cells. I use the term like popping corn, because I can. In my mind, I can see those white blood cells just kind of popping up everywhere. Whatever imagery people choose is up to them. With clients, this is kind of a hard imagery to get right off the bat, partly because you can feel your heart beating right there too. So I will take a image of a torso that shows where the thymus gland is, you know, one of those medical books, so they can focus visually on that and think about it while they're doing this meditation. Progressive muscular relaxation helps people achieve deep relaxation in their whole body. And it's usually accompanied by soothing instrumental music or nature sounds. With progressive muscular relaxation, people go from the head to the toe or the other way around, gently tensing and relaxing those muscles so they can tell the difference between tense and relaxed. Once people start practicing this, they will be able to notice throughout the day that, oh, I'm kind of tense right now. Just let all that tension go from their shoulders or wherever it is. But they need to develop an awareness of how it feels different when they're tense versus when they're relaxed. The progressive muscular relaxation, which isn't on here, but it's interesting because as you do the progressive muscular relaxation, every time you relax, you say a cue like relax or calm down, your body starts associating that word with the activity of letting go of that tension. So just like people freak out when you walk into a classroom and go, okay, pop quiz. They can also. Your brain can also be trained to respond with Relaxation to an auditory cue, Affirmations coupled with relaxation and guided imagery. The purpose of affirmation, affirmational meditations, is to imprint a message in your mind. And if you go back to loving kindness meditation, that's kind of an affirmation when you're saying, I will be calm, I will be at peace, that's imprinting that idea in your mind. One of the studies that articles that I read on loving kindness meditation, a woman had been doing it at a retreat, and a few months later, she dropped a vase and broke it. And she wasn't sure that the loving kindness meditation had really done anything, but she dropped the vase and broke it. And she said to herself something to the effect of, well, that was a really clumsy thing to do, but I love you anyway. Then she stopped and she said, you know what? I never would have said that before. So imprinting that on your mind, imprinting that sense of kindness and benevolence, repeatedly encourages you to automatically respond with kindness and benevolence, in contrast to what most people have programmed in their mind, which is to respond with criticism and competition. So meditation has been shown to help people cultivate happy feelings. We need to add the happy, not just get rid of the bad, not get, just get rid of the sad, but encourage people to focus on the awesome things. I was driving home the other day from work and down the street from us, the guy had just torn up his driveway. But before he did, there was this groundhog that would sit literally at the edge of the driveway every single morning when I was on the. On the way to work and just watch the cars go by. Never had any idea why, but he did named him Fred. Anyway, when our neighbor tore up his driveway, Fred disappeared. And I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks. And I was driving home yesterday or the day before, and I saw Fred again. And it was just the happiest feeling in the world. But because I was focused in the present moment and paying attention to what was going on, instead of dreaming and worrying and planning dinner and other things, I. I noticed Fred. So meditation and being focused in the present moment can really help us cultivate those happy feelings. It can help us tap into the happy memories, it can help us tap into the happy sensations. Meditation can tame monkey mind and improve concentration and clarity. It's been shown to reduce blood pressure and improve sleep quality. We need to remember that there's a variety of different types of meditation. People need to find one that fits for them. Not everybody's good with mantra meditations. Not everybody feels like they can do open awareness meditation because their mind's all over the place. Encourage people just to try a few different things. A note of caution as I've said several times in the presentation, we need to be cautious using meditative techniques with people with trauma histories to avoid recapitulating the traumatic experience. I had one of my mentors when I was going through my pre licensure hours did a great trauma group. However, at the end of every trauma group he would light candles, turn off the lights, and people would sit in a circle and he would play soothing music. Well, there were a couple of people over the years who had a history of ritualistic abuse and the act of turning off the lights and lighting candles brought that trauma right back, front and center. So we do need to be aware that some of the things that we find calming can be re traumatizing for people. Some of the things that, you know, we wouldn't think twice about, like closing our eyes in a group might make people feel too vulnerable. So we want to make sure that they have feel like they're empowered with the ability to choose. Okay, there are several comments here that I do want to share with you. The Breathe app on the Apple Watch and my guess is there are similar apps on Android. Watches prompts people throughout the day to do a minute of deep breathing and shows their heart rate at the end of each session. So that helps people really focus and maintain a less stress oriented presence. I guess. Progressive muscular relaxation and visualization techniques can be very helpful with pain management, partly because when we're in pain, we tense. I have a knee injury right now and I'm kind of guarding that knee, tensing the muscles around it which makes the pain a little bit worse. It's counterintuitive, but we do it so encouraging people to know the difference between tense and relaxed. The Relax and Rest app by Meditation Oasis is a great one for guided meditation, according to Jessica. It has programs that are three different lengths and several choices for background sounds and music and you can choose how long to continue the background sounds after the verbal part ends and independently adjust the volume for the verbal part and sounds and music so you can make the sounds louder and the voice quieter. I guess. The Calm app has sleep stories that help people fall asleep. So Andrea points out. Who doesn't love a good bedtime story? In order to get patients who are completely disinterested in meditation to become more open to it, I introduce mindfulness first. I don't even call. We don't even Talk about meditation, because you can have mindfulness without meditation. And I want them to focus on being mindful. I have them do it at each meal. I want them to check in with themselves, how they're feeling, what they're doing and what's going on around them. It's sort of an open meditation. But if we call it mindfulness, sometimes people are less resistant to it because again, that word meditation has been associated by the media a lot of times with simply mantra meditation. And there are so many different ways to do it. So if we can avoid labeling it so much and give them techniques, sometimes they become more open to it. Sometimes that is not something they want to or are willing to do. Again, because when they used to dissociate, if they did, they would go into sort of a meditative trance like state. So when they put themselves in that state, it is re traumatizing. And then Pat shared a Christian meditation that goes, be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still and be. So you start out with something big and then finally you're just at being. So that's something that we can also share with clients. Any other questions? Well, thank you everybody for being here today. Have a great day and I will see you on Thursday when we're talking about. Oh, Thursday is prevention techniques for avoiding trauma and holiday blues and depression. So there are some interesting techniques to use in there too. All right, I'll see y' all later. Yes, it will be on the YouTube page probably Thursday afternoon. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your ceus@allce.com or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is@allce.com podcastceus that's allce.com podcastceus to sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week, go to allce.com sponsor. Thank you.