When the head is spinning, the breath can be the anchor in reality that you need! You can never experience a past or a future breath. The only breath that you can experience is the one happening right in this moment.
I want to invite you to a short exercise. Read this slowly, take it in and notice how you respond. What happens in your body and your mind? The first poison is to believe that you are better than others (paus, feel) The second poison is to believe that you are less than others (paus, feel) The third poison is to believe that you are equal to others (paus, feel) You exist beyond any comparison. Now, let go of any comparison and watch the world from this place. What happens when you just experienc...
John Kabat-Zinn describe the seven pillars of mindfulness: Acceptance, Trust, Patience, Letting go, Beginner’s mind, Non-Judging and Non-Striving. Here’s a little something about Acceptance: Seeing things as they actually are in the present. If you have a headache, accept that you have a headache. In the course of our daily lives, we often waste a lot of energy denying and resisting what is already fact. When we do that, we are basically trying to force situations to be the way we would like the...
This meditation was very inspired by Alan Watts. I hope you enjoy listening to your silence!
The breath. There is so much for us to learn and deeply see in our breath. - It reminds us that we are deeply supported - Even though we have no idea how we breath, the body continues to do it for us, without us having to do anything. - Flow of life in contraction and expansion - It mirrors how life constantly flows between contraction and expansion. We see this in nature with the seasons, we see it in life turning to death turing to life again and we see it in ourselves. There are challenging t...
There are a bunch of characters living inside of our mind. The playful one, the lazy, the enthusiastic, the good friend, the one who can deal with family, the hurt and weak, the I-know-best character, etc. A few of them tend to take up a little more space than the rest; the control-gang, let me introduce the them. We have the inner critic, the inner controller, the perfectionist and the pusher (and a few more). They have some things in common: They are very into should and must, right and wrong ...
When we get triggered by life there will be a ton of different reactions in the body such as contraction, stress, lots of energy moving. This can be very uncomfortable and for most people, including me, the automatic way to deal with this activation in the body is to go into excessive thinking in the form of blaming, victimhood, passing judgements about others or ourselves, obsessively trying to solve the problem. This is not a conscious choice, it’s an automatic respons. When we are triggered l...
Today I want to dive into the topic of self love. We’ll practise some self acceptance of all our different parts; the good, the bad, the ugly, the sexy, the smelly. In my experience I feel a lot more free when I’m Being in love with myself. It makes it easier to avoid the ego-conditioning, right/wrong thinking and in general I become less defensive and more giving. How is it for you?
You are alive! Just feel that as you are reading this. Right in this moment you are living. Through some miracle that you had very little to do with your body woke up this morning and you have the incredible luxury of experiencing another day on this planet, in this life. Whatever is going on in your life, whatever struggles you have currently, whatever joys you are celebrating, you live and you breath and you have no idea about how you do it. It just happens. Life happens in this body and it ta...
To turn inwards. Many of us carry a nervousness around taking this step to sit down, take some time for ourselves and turn the attention inwards. Especially if you are the type of person who often is available more for everyone else than for yourself. We might have thoughts such as “Am I really allowed to do this?“, “Isn’t this egoistic?“. There might be a fear that there are responsibilities that you are not fulfilling when you sit with yourself. But we also know that if we just keep on giving ...
Now is the only time you’ll ever have. Everything you’ve ever experienced has happened Now and you will never experience anything outside of Now. This is where all of your life will take place, in this very moment. Stop chasing and just Be Here Now. That’s better.
As you read this, observe yourself. I really mean it. Now. Right now. Are you here or are you already on your way to the next thing? Allow yourself to stop. Allow means give permission to. “I give myself permission in this moment to just be here, with this piece of text.” There can still be other things pulling you and you can give yourself permission anyway. “I allow myself to not engage with all the things that are pulling me, so that I can just be in this moment.” Slow down. Be in the body. Y...
There is magic in our bones A north star in our souls That remembers our way home There is magic in our bones - Sleeping At Last - Atlas: Body This song reminds me about the importance of staying connected with my body through which I connect with my soul / heart / being / self. Most of us have learned to abandon ourselves, our felt sensations and emotions in childhood. When our caregivers send the message that “if you feel like this I don’t love you” we need to choose between ourselves and the ...
In life, there are very few things we have control over. Other people and external circumstances are obviously outside our control, but also our thoughts and feelings. I don’t actually know what my next thought is going to be. What we do have some control over is our attention. Our world is made up by the things we pay attention to. Whatever we pay attention to will magnify. Do you focus on possibility and creativity or on victimhood and road blocks? Do you give more attention to love or to fear...
Today is Friday and that means you are all warmly welcome to the Friday Meditation group! My hope with this group is - To lower the entry bar for you to try meditation out - Give you a space where you can let go, wind down, re-charge - Inspire you to turn inwards, I promise you it’s beautiful in there! The meditation we focus on mostly is mindfulness which has been proven to - Sharpen your attention - Increase resilience to stress - Increase compassion You are welcome as you are. There is no nee...
All of us have patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that we follow. They are automatic reactions to our surroundings. We develop those patterns over time based our experiences, how we were received by the world, many of them in early childhood. We can refer to those patterns as our programming or conditioning. The patterns can be positive, empowering, constructive and loving or they can be negative, weakening and destructive. In any case, they is there. I’ll give you some examples to illus...
As you read this, you have time to close your eyes and take three, slow, deep, breaths. I invite you to do that. Welcome back. How was that for you? Can you feel how your system seem to have slowed down a bit. That it’s easier to focus on what you are currently doing, reading this. Or did this exercise create agitation perhaps? Or maybe a bit of both, calm and agitation? There are thousands of studies that show that mindfulness have a deep positive impact on our sense of happiness and we will co...
What opinions and believes have you picked up and made into your own? What expectations do you carry about yourself and the world? Is it really true that this is what you are?
There is something inside you that knows you are enough, that knows you are worthy of love and connection, that knows you are already whole and complete. This something inside grows when we see it, feel it and surrender to it.
Is it really true that the peace and the joy that we are seeking is not already here?
Softness, kindness, care. Those words are with me this morning. Being hard on ourselves, pushing, achieving, striving for our ambition, is easy. Being soft and kind with ourselves, is harder sometimes but it’s something that we all need. Showing ourselves some love and caretaking. We will invite more of this in todays Friday meditation.
You are not your thoughts, you have them. You are the observer of them. You are the ever present space of consciousness where the thoughts appear and disappear. When we let go of identifying with our thoughts we are suddenly free to decide for ourselves how we want to act and what thoughts we want to believe in. Welcome to Friday meditation today where we observe our thoughts in a, perhaps, new way.
Beginner’s mind - Seeing things as if it was for the first time. You can try it now! Look at your hand and look at it as if you’ve never seen your hand or any other hand before. What does this attitude awake in you? For me there is curiosity, wonder, attention, appreciation.
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have” ― Eckhart Tolle Whatever is experienced in the body, is always experienced in the present moment. So we can use the body to anchor ourselves in what is real when the mind is seducing us into past regrets or future worries.
It’s so striking to me how different life is experienced when the nervous system is in stress mode compared to when it’s calm. The one thing I’ve noticed most clearly lately is how relating changes. When I feel safe and calm in myself, relating becomes easy, spontaneous and enjoyable, there is openness for true connection and giving becomes the natural flow in itself. When there is stress in the body I become more guarded and closed and relationships become more transactional. “What do I get out...
When I woke up today I felt heaviness and sadness. Through the morning I tried all the tricks I know to “fix” it, Just feel it, accept it, be curious about what it is. Nothing worked of course because those feeling were not there to be fixed. As I was writing about the body scan that we’ll do today, checking in with the body with love and gratitude, I realised that I was not being loving with myself at all. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself when the thing I really needed was some self-co...
Today I feel tired and inadequacy. I find myself believing in the lie that I have to be happy, calm, content and peaceful to have something to contribute with. This is the exact opposite of what I’ve learned and what I try to convey in those Friday meditations. “You are enough. Allow yourself to be where you are and feel what you feel.” Today I need to follow my own advice and show up as I am. You are welcome to join me, as you are, for a moment of awareness.
It’s so easy for us to be critical and judgmental about ourselves and others. Hidden underneath those defences lie our true being, the one that is overflowing with love, compassion and understanding. With this practice we strengthen our connection with this delicate and powerful part and hopefully we can meet ourselves and the world with more love.
Watching the breath is one of the fundamental practices in mindfulness. Because your breath is always available to you you can use it whenever you have the need to slow down and be more present in your life.
Throughout our day we will inevitably collect beliefs, thoughts, emotions, stagnations, blockages, that doesn’t actually belong to us in our body and mind. I find it super useful to clear this space within myself every now and then and I thought I’d share my favourite technique with you.
