A guide to guided meditations

1. Breath awareness

I was inspired to read ‘The Happiness Trap’ possibly by reading an article in the Guardian. I became obsessed with ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’, thinking that it held a vital message for my struggling family. The ‘Breathing to connect’ exercise is in the middle of the book. This passed me by to begin with until a light bulb moment told me we needed to do this exercise regularly and others like it if we were to get out of our continuing state of crisis, I now have a number of breath awareness exercises we practice. One of my favourites is Exercise 1 from Jon Kabat Zinn’s ‘Full Catastrophe Living’; it features friendly images which make it extra pleasant.

 2. Body scan

The body scan from ‘A beginner’s guide to mindfulness’ by Bohlmeijer and Hulsbergen was the first mindfulness exercise I tried with my daughter (on 23^rd March 2018). At the time I knew we should be doing something different and these mindfulness exercises, starting with breath-awareness and the body-scan, would be the foundation for a new approach to life, I find exercises that include both breath and body awareness to be the most helpful, like the one from ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’.

3. Loving kindness

I have recently felt that we should make an effort to move forward, to move on from our breath and body work and try other meditations as well. I have been a Christian surrounded by atheists and getting virtues on the agenda in my family has been tricky. Love and kindness are two of the fruits of the spirit. The other seven are joy, peace, patience, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control. Luckily the Buddhist tradition is keen on these ‘fruits’ too. The loving kindness meditations we use regularly are from ‘The Book of Joy’ by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu and also the befriending meditation on the Mindfulness CD by Williams and Penman.

4. Acceptance and letting go

I feel acceptance is the key to moving on in life. Even if you don’t like something, you have to first accept the reality of its existence, before you can deal with it effectively. I have read many books on ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’, they all have good exercises in them, my favourite is the one from ‘The Book of Joy’ by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Other useful exercises related to acceptance are ‘Observing your thinking’ from ‘A Beginner’s guide to mindfulness' by Bohlmeijer and Hulsbergen and ‘Defusion’ from ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’.

    5. Food meditation

There are good food meditations in the Penman and Williams 'Mindfulness' book and also much about mindful eating in ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’. There is much more scope for mindful eating and drinking in our lives, seeing as we eat and drink everyday!  The important thing is to savour our food and to be grateful we have enough to eat. You can extend mindfulness of eating practices to other mindfulness of routines practices such as doing household chores or watching TV.

6. Walking meditation

I would like the opportunity to go on more mindful walks with my daughter, hopefully that will arise more in the summer holidays. Thich Naht Hanh has written extensively about mindful living, in particular relaxing walking meditations. Walking meditations usually involve connecting with nature in some way, like walking in a wood or by a river, but you can also partake in mindful walking in urban settings, in your garden, on the treadmill in a gym or just walking backwards and forwards in your living room.

7. Music meditation

We all enjoy our music in my house so being more mindful while listening to it is a very good idea. My favourite guide to mindful music enjoyment is from the teenage ACT book ‘Stuff that Sucks’. Music is one of the best, most human, things in life. Music meditation involves deeply tuning into the music, maybe moving to it, completely immersed, but remaining present. Also relevant is the mindfulness of sounds, tuning into the everyday sounds that surround us in our everyday lives.

8. Being still

My favourite ‘Being Still’ meditation is from ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’. It is a refreshing alternative to the ‘doing’ culture. I think my family and I spent too much time in doing mode and not enough time in being mode. Other meditations related to ‘Being Still’ are ‘Being a tree’, ‘Standing in the garden’, ‘Finding balance’ and ‘Feeling gravity’. I think too often we lose touch with the fundamentally important basis of being alive and in the world; a ‘Being Still’ meditation brings you back to the core of yourself.

9. Meditation ‘On-the-go’

When I first attempted to introduce mindfulness into everyday life it was met with suspicion and people didn’t think they had enough time for it. Therefore one of the first guided meditations we attempted was the one minute meditation from the Williams and Penman’s ‘Mindfulness’ book. This book also included the very useful ‘three minute breathing space’ meditation. There are many quick ‘on-the-go’ meditations available. I have a range that last between 1 minute and 10 minutes. I think when you get up to 15 minutes you are becoming a more serious meditator.

10. Yoga

My daughter and I attempt to do one and a half hours of mindful yoga once a week at the local Buddhist centre. We also attempt to do our 7 poses stress relief exercises once or twice a week. Many of my therapy books include mindful movement practices and Jon Kabat Zinn is always recommending getting in to ‘corpse pose’ at least once a day. Another useful selection of mindful movement exercises comes from my Sophrology book, the foundation practice involves exercise in each of the 5 body zones, these exercises comprise of head rotation, shoulder pumps, arm windmills, deep breathing and walking on the spot.

11.   Visualisations

In our mindfulness journey (which began on 23^rd March 2018), it took me a long time to get my head around visualisations. When I eventually got around to paying them more attention (about four months into my journey) I could see that they could prove very useful in our progress. The first visualisations we tried were really the defusion exercises from ACT and DBT, involving waterfalls, clouds, leaves and rivers mostly. Now we use the Bubble and the Reflex meditations from Sophrology, also futurisations from various sources, I would also like to delve more into useful visualisations to help with fear, anger and other difficult emotions.

12.   Beditation

My journey into mindfulness has coincided with the long, hot summer of 2018, so it has been even more of a challenge to stay calm and get a good night’s sleep. Using guided meditation to help get a good night’s sleep is a new area to explore. I have found some tips from ‘The Sleep Book’ where the sleep therapy is based on Mindfulness and ACT and also various beditations from the internet. My home made beditation that I use with my daughter involves breath awareness, the body scan, loving kindness, acceptance and defusion, visualisations, ‘teddy bear therapy’ and Alpha brain-wave meditation music.