How Meditation can Help You Move Forward after a Loss

Last week I was interviewed by Lois McCullough for her free online summit "Unstuck & Unstoppable -- How to move past your past, get off the emotional roller coaster and create a life you love". Each day of the event features a different expert offering inspiration and positive steps to take for someone who wants to create a new life after a loss.

You can hear the interview with Lois if you register for the summit, including a special guided meditation done for summit participants. While speaking with Lois, I shared two important tasks anyone must accomplish to move ahead after a loss, and how meditation helps.

Task 1 - Mourn the loss completely. Grieving a loss takes time and energy, and unless you've done it thoroughly your energy will be bound up and it will be hard to move ahead. The only way through grief is straight into the heart of it, and that means feeling the painful feelings all the way. In doing so you cooperate with the body and mind's natural healing process, and when you've done this enough, you will naturally start to have more energy to move ahead.

How Meditation Helps - Meditation will help you to relax into the feelings of loss, letting them flow through and resolve. It will help you to stay centered, giving you an anchor so that you are not lost in the sea of grief. For Task 1, you might want to listen to our Guided Meditation for Grief.

Task 2 - Find the Spark of your Passion and Let it Grow. You may already be involved in fulfilling work and activities, but you may have lost your enthusiasm for them. Now is the time to reconnect. Or perhaps you are challenged to find a new direction, new interests that engage and fulfill you. In either case, you need to connect with your passion. Time to find what sparks your interest, your joy in life, and when you sense that spark, nourish it with your time and attention.

How Meditation Helps - Meditation helps us to settle down and experience ourselves more clearly and deeply. In meditation, you can connect with even the faintest spark of a passion you didn't even know was there. It can help you to recognize feelings you may not have been aware of. For Task 2, you might try the Enhance Your Creativity Guided Meditation or Guided Meditation for Intuition.

The guided meditations mentioned are all available on our Meditation Oasis podcast. You can register for the free online Unstuck & Unstoppable Summit here -- http://bit.ly/206iUH3

Rest in Stillness Guided Meditation

Stillness is at the very core of your being. In this new podcast meditation, you will be able to discover stillness in your own awareness.

As you listen to the Rest in Stillness meditation, you will be guided first to notice what is being perceived in the present moment -- sounds, thoughts, feelings, sensations. Then you will become aware of the stillness in the background of these experiences. Everything is experienced in awareness, but usually we are lost in our perceptions -- sights, sounds, thoughts, emotions -- without noticing the awareness at the basis of our experience.

With repeated practice, you will start to notice quietness in the midst of noise, stillness in the midst of activity, as you go through your day. Let us know how the meditation goes for you. We love to hear your experiences and are happy to answer any questions.
 

Welcome to our new website - reflections on change...

Welcome to our new website! Many of you have been using our website for years. Most of you listen to our podcast and may have been surprised by the change when you came to listen. We hope you were happily surprised. I imagine reactions will range from happy excitement to disgruntlement. I know I get irritated when things are not in their usual place in the grocery store. It's so easy to go in and head straight for what I want when everything is in its usual place. Please let us know if you can't find what you are looking for. Almost everything from our old website is here, but simplified. Hopefully the new website will be easier to navigate.

Creating something new fills me with a happy, fresh energy. There's a joy in the process of something new emerging. But bringing in the new also means letting go of the old. It reminds me of when get got our latest car. We really needed a newer car and it was so much nicer than our old one. But there were some sentimental pangs - the old car had taken us on so many memorable journeys and served us well. The old website was, well, old. It didn't represent us well anymore. But it was built with love. And the hardest thing was that in the transition we lost thousands of comments left by our visitors. Each comment was meaningful and special to us. Chances are you won't notice that your comment is missing, but if you do, know that we loved hearing from you and hearing your thoughts. Do feel free to comment again!

Last but not least, we built our old website ourselves. You might even miss that "homemade" look, but it was high time we had a logo and a more "professional" face for the world. So here's a shout out to Yesh & Tash for our beautiful logo and new website.

Deep Centering Guided Meditation

Are you feeling scattered or ungrounded? Is your mind going in many directions at once? Do you feel you've lost your center? This latest podcast episode - "Deep Centering Guided Meditation" - should help. As you listen, you will be guided to relax, and then to let your mind sense a center point in your body. Allow this to happen easily, just letting the awareness of the center come to you. It could be anywhere -- in your abdomen, heart, head. Let it be whatever naturally comes. If it shifts during the meditation, that's fine. It's can be just a vague sense of a center. This center will be the reference point you return to when you realize your mind has wandered. This meditation is a recording of the meditation I did with my meditation group. We all enjoyed it. Leave a comment and let me know how it went for you. As always, I am happy to answer your questions.

NOTE: Please go to our Podcast page to listen to the this and other podcast episodes.

Relax into Sleep Guided Meditation

How often do you go to bed tired, but with your mind busy and your body restless? Our gift to you from our iSleep Easy app, this Relax into Sleep Guided Meditation is designed to help you fall asleep more quickly and sleep more soundly. It can take some time to unwind from the stress of the day. Your mind can be quite active as this “unwinding” goes on.  This meditation helps you to unwind more quickly and easily. It gently guides you to relax, let go of the concerns of the day and allow yourself to drift into sleep.

You've undoubtedly noticed that the more you worry about falling asleep, the harder it is. It helps to let go of the concern about falling asleep and focus on simply resting instead. You can’t make yourself fall asleep, but sleep will come on its own once you are relaxed. Just listen easily to the words of this meditation and allow your mind to drift.