Enjoy your breath. Notice when you are breathing in, and observe when you are breathing out. Continue to luxuriate in the beauty and majesty of your biology, breathing as you read on, and ask yourself, “How do I know what is true for me?”

Now, float this question around and within you for a few breathing cycles; create space for insight to emerge and allow the wisdom of your body sensations to respond. You may need to ask the question several times before a response arises from within.

With thoughtful breathing, you are practicing mindfulness or meditation. When you give yourself the gift of your generous attention, you are meditating. And you are likely meditating throughout your day—every time you step out of autopilot and reconnect yourself to the present moment.

Disconnect to Reconnect

More than ever, there’s an assault on our attention as external messengers vie for our eyeballs and pocketbooks in ways that diminish our inborn capacity to source and know what is true for us. Being inundated by perpetual digital notifications, popups, and sales campaigns—compounded by the recent advent of “fake news” and notoriously erroneous “alternative facts” on social media—results in widespread feelings of confusion, FOMO (fear of missing out), alienation, or even enemy patterning.

To dissolve feelings of disconnection, doubt, and uncertainty, we turn to the self-care practice of meditation. Self-care is all about becoming more self-aware, and meditation is a reliable practice for reconnecting us to our true nature. Our true nature is connected, focused, calm, and open to discovery, and meditation allows us to experience our own truth like a wellspring rising up from the inside out.

Meditation is not reserved for enlightened, holy, or sacred people, and it is not hard. Meditation is not about stopping thoughts. You don’t have to do it for a long time to get benefits, and you need zero religious or spiritual beliefs to practice it. Meditation is simply an activity that sustains our attention and/or broadens our consciousness.

Meditation is personally experienced as an expanded awareness of our self and our relationships with others, the universe, and the present moment, which is embodied in moments when time flies, when you feel energized by a connection, or when you’re feeling immersed in what you’re up to. You might experience this mindfulness while walking in nature, playing with your kids, washing dishes, or making dinner. And for many of us, mindfulness is experienced during a bodywork session. A regular meditation practice allows us to let go of unnecessary effort, tension, and resistance in favor of feeling at ease and dropping into the flow of life.

Let It Go, Let It Flow

Many athletes describe the feeling of being in the flow of life as a meditative state or “being in the zone.” Psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi calls it the “flow state,” which he describes as occurring “when every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one.”¹ The meditation app Headspace describes flow state as: “When your whole being is totally focused on something beyond the point of distraction, time slows down, your senses are heightened, you are at one with the task at hand, when action and awareness sync to create an effortless momentum.”² The beauty of the flow state is that it is accessible to everyone.

When we’re in a flow state, we open a space for insight and discovery to emerge. We discover the perfect technique to unlock our clients’ pain. We may discover the right words to create closeness with a family member, child, or loved one. Or perhaps we discover new ways of being and doing that generate creative possibilities, ideas, or visions. And when we are regularly generating a flow state, we access and reconnect to our personal truth. We make space between the conflicting messages outside our mind (or the jumbled thoughts within) in favor of coaxing, revealing, and expressing our true nature.

Becoming the Source of Truth

Just as there are many forms of meditation, there are many pathways to your truth. Flow states and embodiment practices allow us to acknowledge the unimpeded nature of our true self. Meditation, in any form, trains our focus to the present moment and promotes a body-mind connection that is calm, clear, content, and at ease. Studies demonstrate that a host of benefits (including clearer purpose, pleasure, and life satisfaction) can be obtained in as little as two minutes of daily meditation.³ We invite you to choose a pathway each day that nourishes and reveals your true nature!

Perform a Body Scan

We invite you to try this body scan as a way to invite your personal truths and body wisdom to emerge.

1. Begin by asking your body whether you’d like to be sitting, standing, lying down, or moving, and also whether you’d like to practice with your eyes open or closed.

2. Follow your body’s requests, and begin to locate yourself in the here and now with three luxuriously deep belly breaths.

3. Now bring your attention to your feet. Imagine you can breathe into your feet. Imagine you have X-ray vision, and you can explore your feet in multiple dimensions. Notice any sensations in your feet, including pain, thoughts, or emotions that live there. Acknowledge these sensations and gently breathe into them.

4. Once you feel complete at the feet, bring your attention to your calves and shins and breathe into the elegant engineering of your lower extremity. Send your breath and awareness into all the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and layers of fascia. Notice how it feels to be in your lower legs.

5. Start to move your attention up to your knees and thighs. Visualize inflating the soft and hard tissues in this area with each in-breath, and imagine the areas deflating and releasing on each out-breath. Again, notice any feelings, thoughts, or emotions that arise as you circulate your attention here.

6. Now, inhale and exhale your awareness into your pelvic bowl, lower abdomen, and low back for a few cycles. Notice. Feel. And breathe.

7. Circulate your awareness in and around your rib cage, heart, lungs, upper spine, shoulders, arms, hands, and fingers.

8. Allow your awareness to permeate in and around your head, neck, and jaw as you feel these areas expanding on the in-breath and softening on the out-breath.

9. After you’ve traveled a complete journey through your body, scan yourself as a whole, bioelectric, biological masterpiece. Feel yourself vibrating, pulsating, breathing, and connecting to the matrix of life and the world around you. Feel your essence resting in the awareness of your true nature.

Optional Variation: If you would enjoy an active version of your body scan, squeeze or tighten your muscles with each inhale in sequence from feet to cranium. And then practice becoming as still and relaxed as possible on each out-breath.

Continue giving yourself the gift of extra breaths and time to luxuriate in any newfound awareness, refreshment, and flow you’ve generated during the body scan. If you fall asleep, trust that is exactly what your body and mind needed in the moment.

The Benefits of Meditation

The following resources discuss the multitude of health, wellness, and longevity benefits of meditation.

• Improves mental health and diminishes pain            (https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13018)

• Slows and even reverses the aging processes             (https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2016.164)

• Reduces the shrinking (and may even extend the length) of telomeres (www.bluezones.com/2018/11/can-meditation-really-slow-ageing)

• Decreases inflammation (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2012.10.013)

• Curbs caloric intake (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-017-9884-5)

• Grows cognitive and emotive intelligence                    (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006)

• Upregulates immune response                                         (https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1376)

• Alters and diminishes pain perception
(https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5791-10.2011)

• Encourages happiness and contentment (Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones of Happiness)

Notes

1. John Geirland, “Go with the Flow,” September 1, 1996, www.wired.com/1996/09/czik.

2. Headspace, “What is a Flow State and What are Its Benefits?” accessed March 2021,                 www.headspace.com/articles/flow-state.

3. Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons from the World’s Happiest People (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2017).