This week’s exercise is an adaptation from one of the exercises on Deepak Chopra’s site.

This week, your homework is to have fun. Do one thing each day that is totally childlike, something that will evoke the feeling of your own childhood in you, that will release the inner child hiding underneath the adult roles that we have been playing for the last however many years.

The idea is not to pretend to be a child again, but to bring up that feeling of pure joy in just being. To do something just for the sake of doing it, and not as a means to an end. To find value in your own beingness.

Here are some ideas to get you going:
 - lie on the grass and find pictures in the clouds
 - eat ice cream for dinner
 - go to the park and swing on the swings
 - make your whole room into a tent using furniture and blankets
 - howl at the moon
 - run around naked
 - have a midnight feast
 - do a silly walk through a shopping centre
 - run in the rain
 - do a puzzle
 - do a finger painting
 - put on some loud music and dance round your living room
 - bake a batch of cookies (and don’t forget to lick the cookie dough out of the bowl)
 - take a trip to the zoo or the aquarium

The possibilities are endless. Most importantly, have fun!

Wishing you a crazy, joy filled week.

This meditation is originally from the ancient Tantric techniques, but is also found in Buddhism.

This week, set aside two times in the day – once in the morning when you wake up and once in the late afternoon or early evening – and for at least ten minutes, just watch the breath. Don’t try to change your breathing -  it will naturally slow down after sitting for some time, but don’t force this. Just be conscious of the breath coming in through your nostrils, and watch every moment of it going out again. Then try to notice the small gaps at the end of the ingoing breath before it goes out again, and at the end of the outgoing breath before it goes in. Small pauses where you are not breathing at all. This may be for only the slightest fraction of a second. Again, don’t try to make the gaps longer or to do anything at all – just notice them.

The idea here is twofold: The first is that when you are not breathing, you are not alive. So, for a fraction of a second you can experience being dead, but still being. The second is that for the majority of your life you are focused on things – work, objects, thoughts – and the focus here is essentially on nothing.

Focus intently on this nothingness for the ten minutes (or longer if you can afford the time) twice a day, but also try to bring moments of this awareness into the rest of your day. Stick a simple post it note up at your desk or in your car that says “Am I Still Breathing?” Often my students or friends will say that they just can’t meditate – all that sitting still doing nothing – and my reply is always the same: One conscious breath is a meditation.  And the more often you can take a conscious breath, the more meditation you bring into your life, until eventually every breath is a conscious one and then there is no need for ‘meditation’ anymore as you have become the meditation.

A NOTE ON MEDITATION AND EMOTIONAL DETOX:

On thing to be aware of when you start meditating is that you will naturally start to clear stresses and traumas and negativity that you have been hanging on to. In order to clear, these things must first come ‘up and out’ so to speak. In my experience, people often give up on meditation fairly quickly as they start to feel worse – more irritated or aggressive or depressed – than they were before they began. If you can keep in mind that these emotions are coming up to clear and you are not going mad or having a nervous breakdown or anything, then it makes this phase easier to transcend.

Simply allow whatever comes up to be. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to run outside and scream, do so. I’ve found that because all that emotions are is energy, it helps to simply find a release for this energy – run round the block, swim a few lengths, get out the punching bag.

Life will find ways to help you to bring these emotions out into the light for you to clear them – usually this comes in the form of something that we would consider a “negative event” – the dog pees on your favourite carpet, your partner forgets to unpack the dishwasher, someone skips the traffic light and crunches your new car. The event or trigger is irrelevant, it is simply the messenger – what counts is the emotion that is triggered in you. The emotion is yours. So, don’t shoot the messenger. Don’t kick the dog, or murder your spouse, or torch the offender’s car. However, don’t pretend that you are not experiencing the emotion that is triggered. Don’t judge it. Allow it to be and find a creative way to release this energy and let it move out of your life.

This phase does end, and the rewards for making it through this are immense.

Good luck, and wishing you a meditative week!

This is an adaptation from one of Eckhart Tolle’s exercises.

This week, set a reminder on your phone or computer to go off every hour (if you can) or at least 5 times in your day. When it does, take one minute to connect with your inner body (explanation below). To put this in perspective, for those of you resisting the interruptions to your day, this will only take 5-10 minutes out of your entire day ie less than one smoke break!

How to connect with the inner body:

Close your eyes and hold up your right hand. Without any movement or wind etc, how do you know that your right hand is still there? Your brain will want to come up with all sorts of logical explanations – ignore it. FEEL that your hand is there. In this way you are connecting with the inner life within your body. Now, keeping your eyes closed, feel your left hand, then your feet, and eventually extending this feeling throughout your body.

To feel the whole body might take some time and practice, so don’t feel disappointed in yourself if all you can feel is the one hand for now. In feeling even the one hand you are drawing your attention away from the external world and into the internal. Ideally we want to feel this to some degree all the time. That way we will not get lost in the world of objects, or in the constant antics of the mind. The world and the mind will still be there, and you will still be able to function in your life and job, but you won’t have your full attention lost in it. That is the point.

If you are struggling to get the feeling and not sure if you are on the right track, you can try the following: Standing with your legs slightly apart and your arms hanging loosely at your sides, bounce gently on your heels, letting your whole body hang loose and move with the bouncing. Do this for a minute or two and then stop and close your eyes. You should feel a tingling throughout your body, and this is basically the feeling that you are looking for when connecting with the inner body.

Once you have the hang of connecting with the inner body as described above, you can start feeling it without closing your eyes and extend this more and more throughout your day. Other great times to practice are standing in queues at the bank, when you’re stuck in traffic (yes, only once you can do it with your eyes open!), while you’re watching tv, while chatting on the phone....

Try this every hour for the next week, and then try extending it throughout your day.

This exercise was taken from an online show with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle and I have found it to be a most valuable tool in changing my headspace and starting to focus on all the positive things in my life rather than constantly dwelling in the negative.

Take a small notebook and every evening write down 5 things that you were really grateful for that day. These can be small things – the sun filtering through the trees on your morning walk, the cup of tea waiting for you when you woke up, the smile exchanged with a stranger in the traffic. Or, they can be larger, ongoing things – that you have a healthy fit body, that you always have food on the table, that you have amazing friends. Some days you’ll scribble down 10 things without any effort, other days there may only be two. Even if the only thing you can be grateful for is the fact that the day ended, so be it.

It doesn’t matter what or how many, what really matters is the feeling that accompanies it. So, as you write, feel what it feels like to be grateful. Where can you locate it in your body? Do you feel more relaxed? Does it come with an external smile or simply an inner glow?

Try this for the next week. This one I highly recommend continuing beyond this week. Try it for a month and see how your view of your world, and thereby your world itself will change with this small shift in focus.