How to Meditate: A Guided Meditation with Jack Canfield

Hi there, I'm Jack Canfield. I have a question for you. Do you ever find yourself irritated and it gets in the way of your performance? Are you ever so stressed out that you can't sleep at night? Are you ever so overwhelmed that you just can't seem to stay focused? Or maybe you're feeling burned out and you're experiencing a lack of creativity? Do you ever have to make a major decision and just don't know which way to go? Or you're looking for a solution to a problem and you just can't find it? Me too. So don't feel bad now. Today I'm going to share with you a technique that has helped me over the last five decades and has helped millions of my students around the world as well. People often ask me, if you could only pick one success principle to focus on, which one would it be? And I always answer the three M's Master your craft, meditation and mastermind groups. And today we're going to talk about meditation. You know, most people that I meet have a resistance to meditation. They think it's too woo woo, it's too weird. They say they're too busy. You know, I saw a cartoon once. It showed a general in an army and there was all these people out there and all his army had with spears and behind him was a guy with a machine gun. It was a salesman trying to sell him a machine gun. And in general saying, I don't have time to talk to a salesman. Now when I think about that cartoon, I think about meditation. Most people say, I'm too busy to meditate, I don't have time to do that. Like he didn't have time to talk to the salesman who would have given him the weapon to win the war. And so the reality is you have to find time to learn how to meditate. Now meditation can occur in 3, 4, 5, 12 minute bits. You don't have to sit there in the lotus position with your legs crossed on a pillow. If you in an ashram somewhere for an hour or three hours or months at a time in order to have the value of meditation. And you can start simply and build yourself up. Now what I want to tell you is there are many, many forms of meditation, many forms. If you look up meditation on the Internet, you're going to see literally millions of entries. And the reality is for most people, a lot of those meditations are somewhat complex. The truth is that when you're meditating, if you're just sitting there with your eyes closed, try not to think a Thought you're going to be very frustrated because your mind is simply going to do its thing and you'll think like you're failing. It's much easier when you have a guided meditation when there's music, when someone's voice is guiding you through the steps, your mind doesn't wander as much. And it's much easier to follow along and not get lost in all the stories and the to do lists and the thinking about the past and worrying about the future than we normally do. So today I'm going to teach you a form of meditation that I teach in all of my live trainings. Now, before I do that, let me tell you why it's so important to meditate. You know, meditation really helps you be more creative in my life. The title for Chicken Soup for the Soul came in a meditation. That brand is now worth hundreds of millions, some people say a billion dollars. The Transformational Leadership Council, which I started, which now has members from like 24 countries around the world. We meet all over the country or all over the world, really, in exotic locations that came to me in a meditation. My being in the Secret is the result of a meditation. I was asked to let them come to my conference and film people, and I said, no, that's going to be a big distraction. And that night I meditated for about 20 minutes, and I got this resounding say yes. Another thing that happens when you meditate is that you get greater productivity because when you are focused, which meditation allows you to do, you come out of meditation, and then what happens is you are able to be focused because you're in the present moment. Meditation also de stresses you at the end of a day or at the beginning of a day if you didn't sleep well at night. Meditation allows you to de stress your body. Your hormones reset, you're less reactive, less angry. You can think better, and you make better decisions. Now, that's only a few of the benefits we know. It creates longevity. It has effects on the positive of your brain healing. You heal faster, you get sick less often. We could go down a long list. Now, I teach meditation at all of my live events and my private retreats. And people have major, major, major breakthroughs when we do that. They get in touch with their life purpose. Their intuition builds. Some people discover that they have a higher self and an intuition that they can connect to that they never did before. So it's very, very powerful. Now, what exactly is meditation? Primarily, it's this. Meditation is simply shutting down for most people, closing your eyes some People teach you can meditate with your eyes open. I like to close my eyes. Slowing down your breathing and then focusing on something that allows your mind to focus on that rather than be distracted by everything else. So one thing you can focus on is the sensation of your breath going in and out your nose. When you inhale, it feels cooler. When you exhale, it's warmer because it's been warmed by the being in your lungs. You can focus on the rise and fall of your chest and stomach as you breathe in and out. Some people choose to have a mantra or a repetition of a phrase. There are many, many phrases that come from different spiritual traditions. If you don't want to go into that, you can simply imagine inhaling the sound, re exhaling lax. Like re lacks, you're giving yourself a subliminal command. The reality is that you're focusing on one thing so that everything else begins to drop away. Now, the truth is, what's going to happen is your mind will, in fact, come in. If you want to do a really cool experience sometime, try to count to 10. Like, 1, 2, 3, 4, without having a thought. I remember the first time I did that. I went, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5. Wow. I haven't had a thought yet. Oops. That's a thought. One, two. I never did get to 10. Oh, I'm doing better now. You know, whatever it was. If you can count to 10 without having a thought, you're doing really, really well because you're able to focus on one thing, which allows you to also focus on one thing in your life. Get a lot more done. We know multitasking doesn't work a lot of research on that. Now, where do you do this? What you do is you can do it sitting in a chair, like I'm doing right now. You can do it sitting on the floor. You can even do it lying down. If you do it lying down, a lot of times people fall asleep. What I recommend is you're lying down, have one arm resting on the floor like this. If you start to fall asleep, it'll drop. It'll wake you up. You know, Ben Franklin. Most people don't know this. Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest leaders of our country in the early formation of the United States, used to meditate holding a hammer about a half an inch above his head so that if he fell asleep, the hammer would hit his head and wake him up. Now, not a long way wouldn't hurt him, but he was that committed to meditation. And we know what a tremendous influence he was on Our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and all of that. Now I'm going to teach you a simple four part meditation that you can do anytime. You can do it for 4 minutes, 8 minutes, 12 minutes, 16 minutes, just in increments of 4. In other words, 1 minute, 4 times, 2 minutes, 4 times, whatever. Now, there are four parts to this meditation. The first part is called preparation. And what you do is you simply sit. I recommend you put your hands together in your lap like this. And then you focus on your breathing for about six breaths. And then you imagine light coming up the left side of your body and down the right. And light is a very healing energy. You know, we often talk about, you know, light. We see light in the sky, we see spiritual pictures with light coming down. We see pictures of Avatars and Jesus and things like that with light coming out of their heart. Light is healing. It's like we like the sun so much. And so we're simply going to imagine that three times. And I'll walk you through this in just a minute. The second thing we're going to do is called repetition. Your hands are still in your lap and you can take the phrase relax or so hum or hum sa or anything you want to repeat that's positive to you. I am love. And we do that for a minute. And then we're going to go into the third stage, which is receptivity, where we're going to open our hands on our lap like this and we're just going to allow ourselves to stop doing the repetition and to just notice anything that comes into our awareness and just allow it to move through. This is one of the most powerful forms of meditation, to notice our thoughts but not get caught up in our thoughts. So like a little boat going by, you don't want to get in the boat, you just want to watch the boat go by. If you find yourself in the thought, just step back up on the shore. Let the thoughts go by. That's a good way to not get caught up in your thinking and let it run you. The last stage is simply called closing down. We're going to close our hands, imagine ourselves surrounded by a protective white light, and for about 30 seconds I'll ask you to focus on imagining your number one goal in life and that already accomplished. What would you be seeing if you were looking at your eyes, at your number one goal already accomplished is a great way to accelerate success in your life. Okay, so let's just quickly do that. So go ahead. If you're at a place where you can close Your eyes. Close your eyes. I'll do that with you. And just focus on your breath for a moment. Take a few deep breaths. Long, slow, deep breaths. Inhaling deeply and exhaling. And now imagine a ball of light below your left foot. And that light streaming up the left side of your body, up through your leg, up into your hip, up through your chest, up through the left side of your neck and head, across your brain, down the right side, all the way down to your waist again into your leg, into your foot. And imagine it doing a U turn and coming back up the left side. And when you do this on your own later, you can do this a little slower, taking your time, but you get the idea. See your whole body filling up with light, all the way down to your foot. And then one more time coming up the left, all the way to the top of your head, across the corpus callosum in your brain, to the right hemisphere, down to the right side of your body, through your chest, your stomach, your lower back, your hips, your leg, your knee, your lower calf, and all that out your foot. So your body filled with light. And now moving into the second stage called repetition. So pick a phrase or a word that's uplifting to you. And as you breathe, if it's a two syllable word, imagine inhaling on one syllable, exhaling on the other hand. If it's a phrase like I am love or be still and know that I am God or so hum or omni PA me hum, whatever it might be from whatever spiritual tradition you might be a student of. And if not just repeating, relax and I'll be silent for a moment while you do that. If your mind wanders, bring it back to the word or the phrase. The third step is called receptivity. So just open your hands, resting on your legs, palm facing upward, and just stop the repetition. And now just be aware of whatever comes into your field of consciousness. Sounds, physical sensations, thoughts, images, whatever they are, just observe them. Allow them to be there. If you find yourself in the thought, rather than watching the thought, just step back and observe. You're building this. Observer witness. Position. It. And finally, the last phase is closing down. Just close your hands and imagine yourself now surrounded by radiant white light. Like you're sitting inside an eggshell. There's white light coming through or spotlight shining down upon you. This white light is filling you, surrounding you, and protecting you from any negative influences that might come your way during the day. Let's keep holding that image for a few more seconds. Healing, radiant white light all around. And now Using the power of your imagination, visualize whatever your major goal in life is right now. Your breakthrough goal, your main goal. See that as if you were looking out through your eyes at what you would be seeing if you had already achieved that goal. It sets up the subconscious mind to come up with solutions for you and also activates the law of attraction to attract to you the resources you need to fulfill that dream or that vision. So see it like a movie happening outside you. Whatever you would be seeing if you'd already achieved that goal. Hear the sounds that you would be hearing. And most importantly now add feeling. The feelings you'd feel if you'd already achieved this goal. Whatever those feelings are, feel them. Now create the feeling in your body. Very good. Then very slowly open your eyes, come on back. So just take a moment to tune in. Notice what you're feeling right now. Does it feel any different? There's something called the relaxation response. And when you meditate, you'll often find your shoulders relax, your face relaxes, your whole body starts to feel a different energetic. It's very healing, very powerful. So you now have a four step meditation that can combines four kinds of meditation into one that will help you be more relaxed, more focused, more creative. In that time when we had our hands open, receptivity, that's when you get major breakthroughs and creative ideas. And then by visualizing at the end your goals as already achieved, you're activating the law of attraction as we said, and also activating the subconscious mind. So here's a few more tips to help you get started and turn this into into a daily meditation habit. Remember to start small. You know, eight 12 minutes, just great work. Up to 20 minutes a day. If you have more time, you can do more. Even if you just have five minutes, just do a simple breathing exercise, close your eyes and just focus on that part where we were breathing deeply. Now the other thing you can focus on, the sensation coming in out of your nose or the rise and fall of your chest. It gives you a physical sensation to focus on. Very simple. So here's your homework. I want you to meditate for a minimum of five minutes a day for the next week. If you have to use a timer in your smartphone or a stopwatch or your cell phone, whatever it is, set it so it goes off so you don't go over. What you'll find once you get into this is you'll actually want to go longer. Now notice you're going to have increased peace of mind, greater clarity and energy throughout the day. Now, I'd love your feedback on the meditation we just did, so please write a brief comment below. And thanks for watching. And remember, nothing in your life changes until you do. And if you found this video helpful, please make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel. For more videos like this one, and for some additional resources on how to use meditation to attract more success and fulfillment and peace into your life, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.