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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Do you ever feel like you're too stressed or busy to experience peace? Vidyamala offers some perspectives to stay connected to inner peace.
Hi, it's Vidyamala here and I've been
asked to answer the question, how
do I find inner peace with a very
demanding schedule and a stressful life?
Great question.
And I can totally relate to this as it's
been a question for me for a long time.
And I'm guessing it probably is for
you too, if you're taking the time
to listen to what I've got to say.
I'll try and keep this answer
quite brief, because if you've
got a busy, stressful life, you're
probably quite time pressured.
And yeah, I'm just aware how
many of us lead really busy,
stressful lives these days.
And how many of us have
got really big challenges.
Lots of pressures, financial health,
big responsibilities, and so on.
Many of us live a very fast
pace, and inner peace can
seem like a far off fantasy.
So I'm hoping to give you hope today,
give you something quite optimistic.
And that is that inner peace is always
available to us in this very moment.
It's not some far away goal of a perfect
life, but every moment that we use our
awareness to step out off the hamster in
the wheel, even for just a moment, come
into the body, come into the breath,
rest the body in gravity, settle, we
have a little taste of inner peace.
So the main message in this
particular talk is to take a break.
Take regular breaks.
And I'm not talking about, you know,
going and sitting down for half an hour.
I'm talking about taking a break
for one minute, two minutes, three
minutes, regularly, throughout the day.
Maybe even just 30 seconds, just hitting
the pause button when we're getting
really overwhelmed and stopping and
settling and resting and breathing.
That in itself can be really helpful.
A little saying that I sometimes
use in my teaching is, take
a break before you break.
Or take a break before you need it.
So you're not always functioning
at the very end of your resources,
see if you can leave a little bit
of juice in the tank and have these
regular breaks throughout the day.
And during the breaks, what can
be really helpful is to move from
conceptual mode to experiential mode.
Most of us are very caught up with
thinking dominance during the day.
We're very heady.
And we're not so aware of our senses,
but we've got the five physical senses
always available to us, seeing, hearing,
tasting, touching, and smelling.
And if we drop our awareness inside
our senses, then that lessens the
tendency for conceptual dominance.
There's been some studies with
very advanced Tibetan meditators.
They're called the Olympic
athletes of meditation.
And they've all got at least 10,000
hours under their belts as it were.
And their brains have been scanned and
their brains are really quite profoundly
different through the training that
they've engaged in, in meditation and
awareness and compassion training.
And one of the main differences or one of
the profound differences is they've moved
from evaluation mode to experiential mode.
Which means they've moved from a
conceptual thinking dominance to
a direct experience dominance.
So they're in their experience as
it happens rather than ruminating
and worrying about their experience.
So the tip today or the practice
today is to simply take these regular
breaks, drop into your senses.
And that might mean going to
the window and looking at the
sky for 30 seconds, one minute.
It might mean stopping and
smelling a flower in the garden.
It might mean really
tasting your cup of coffee.
That will be an amazing practice.
When you're having a cup of tea, you're
having a cup of coffee, just have the
cup of tea, just have the cup of coffee.
Put your phone down.
Pause, rest, settle.
So that's the main tip I'm offering today.
Take a break before you break
and drop into your senses.
And this can be really quite profound
in terms of accessing more stillness
and more inner peace, even if you live a
very demanding, hectic, stressful life.
I think your brain, your nervous system,
your heart, your mind, your soul will be
grateful if you introduce this idea of
regular sense-based breaks into your day.
So, thanks so much for giving me the
gift of your attention to listen to
this talk, especially if taking five
minutes out to listen to this is actually
quite a significant step for you.
I hope you found it helpful and please
know that I'm walking beside you.
So when you're having your breaks,
even if it can be so hard to stop,
just know that I'm trying to do the
same thing as well and my own life and
there'll be many other people who've
listened to this talk who will also
be trying to introduce these present
moment sens-based breaks into their day.
So I wish you all the very, very
best and thanks again for listening.
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