Hey everyone, it's Lucie Fink! Welcome back to my YouTube channel. In today's video,
I'm going to share my meditation story and I'm going to give you my tips on how
I actually meditate. I am by no means a meditation pro, but I have done a couple
of meditation videos in the past, and meditation has been something that I've
been wanting to incorporate into my life more regularly. And I can say that over
the past two months I have meditated every single day, without fail. I guess I
can say I'm a meditator. A lot of people seem to think that they're doing it
incorrectly... If you're sitting in silence, if you're breathing, if you're focusing
on your breath, if you're focusing on being inside of your own head and just
being present... then you are meditating. And I get the question from people a lot
about How do I actually meditate? If I've learned anything about meditation after
all of the research I've done, and the books I've read about it, and the podcasts I've
listened to on the topic... there's really no way to be meditating
"wrong". You might not walk away and feel Zen, and feel like you've accomplished
something or you've been enlightened, but if you sat there and you were present
and focused on your breath, for one minute or ten minutes... you meditated. And
I do think it's very important for people who are just starting out to know
that it's not going to be that easy. You might sit down and you might notice that
your mind is racing. You may feel a little bit jittery. You might not feel
relaxed, and calm, and centered, and focused, and that's okay. You might have to
continue to pull your brain and your attention back to your breath, and that's
all part of the meditation practice. And this IS a practice, so you do have to
practice it to get quote "good" at it. First and foremost, before I dive in and
tell you actually what I do when I'm sitting in my silent state, the first
thing I want to let you know is that the only way that I've been able to actually
get meditation to be something that I do regularly, is that I have scheduled it
into my morning routine. So, every single morning without fail, when I wake up my
phone is in airplane mode because I sleep with it in airplane mode... and
before I take it out of airplane mode--I just don't allow myself to do that until
I've done my ten minutes of meditating and my 10 minutes of journaling. Some
people might find that a little harsh to put this hard and fast rule on
themselves, but for me, I know that I want to meditate. I know that I want to journal.
And if the only way that I can get myself to do it is to set a strict rule
for myself that no phone can be used until it's done, then that's what I'm
gonna do. And that is exactly what I've done, and I honestly feel really good about it.
For the past two months, every single morning--no matter how early I have to
get up, no matter what else is going on in that day--I know that first thing,
before I even allow myself to start scrolling and scrolling, I'm going to be
centered and give myself ten minutes of silence. So now that you know how I've
integrated this practice into my life, I'm going to share with you what I
actually do once I close my eyes. I've personally found that when I do the same
exact thing every single day in my meditation, I get a little bit bored and
my mind starts to wander more frequently, and I have to keep pulling my attention
back to the breath... which is okay, but if I want any shot at actually being in a
10-minute focus meditation zone, the thing that I found that helps the most
is diversifying the types of meditation I'm doing. So, what I've done is I've
split my week into seven different types of meditation. So that means that every
single day of the week I'm doing something new. So I'm gonna walk you
through each of these seven right now. Monday for me is a third eye meditation.
If you've done yoga or if you've looked into meditation at all, you've probably
heard of the third eye. So I'm definitely not an expert about what the third eye
means or represents, but I'm gonna pop up some info on the screen right now. What I
do know is that the third eye is one of the chakras in the chakra system, and I
think it kind of stands for intuition and kind of an all-knowingness, and a
knowledge. It's basically this area right in between your eyebrows. And what I do
is I close my eyes and I just focus on that area. I take a bunch of deep breaths,
and I find that when I'm actually focusing on this spot on my body, I start
to physically feel something on this spot of my body. It almost starts to
tingle, feels like all my attention is going there, so it helps to relax my
breathing... and I really just think about seeing a third eye in my third eye zone.
On Tuesday, I give myself a full brain wash. And I don't mean "brainwash", in the
negative sense of the word... I almost mean like my brain is getting a shower. This
is a process that I totally came up with all by myself. This is what my brain did
one day, and then I really liked it so I started doing it over and over again. But
if I'm going to describe to you exactly what my brain is visualizing, this
is kind of the deal. My eyes are closed, and I envision that the top of my head
is being cut in a circle. So, almost like a cookie jar, my head opens up and my
brain comes out. I imagine my brain is very flexible and bendable and it just
sort of like jiggles out of my head. I visualize my brain in front of me, and it
almost looks like my brain is really clogged up with what looks a little bit
like seaweed. Another thing that I would describe to people on how this looks in
my mind is--you know those old-fashioned VHS tapes that were, like, strips and
strips of tape? It's almost like the lines and lines of tape are all tangled
up in the folds of my brain, and so what I have to do is I have to go in with my
hands and pull the strips of tape--or seaweed--out of my brain. But, now if you get the
visualization part but you don't really know what it stands for, I think in my
brain this seaweed or this tape sort of represents all of the stuff that's
cluttering up my brain and clogging it up. Any stressful situation I went
through... anything that's worrying me that's coming up in the future... it's all
just clogging up my brain, and it's actually physically there... and so I am
going through the process of washing my brain by actually pulling these strips
out. And I can see them slipping through the folds of my brain. I'm not actually
doing anything with my hands, so my hands are sitting still, but I'm envisioning
that my hands are reaching out to this floating brain and pulling all this
stuff out. As the brain gets cleaner and cleaner, I sort of put the brain off to
the side, and then I envision that I'm creating this liquid cleaning concoction.
Usually in my vision I'm using apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, and filtered
water... and the reason why I picked those liquids is because those are things that
I've actually used in my house to make DIY cleaning solutions... And I'll put them
all together in this jar, I'll sort of shake it up to mix the solution together,
and then I will spray it on the brain. And it doesn't spray like a nozzle as if
you're spritzing something on your hair... It comes out like a power washer.
After all the strips have been pulled out, I can see that it's a little dirty,
and when I clean it like this, the brain just gets shiny, clean, and pink. Then, once
I have my shiny, clean, pink brain... it's almost towards the end of ten
minutes--I do this very slowly--and I envision that the brain is jiggling back
into my head, and then the circle is sealing up, and I'm all fixed!
And from my perspective when I'm going through that visualization and as soon
as it's over, I actually feel like my brain has undergone some sort of
filtration. That's one of my favorite meditations, and I think you have to be
kind of willing to get a little creative and get a little silly when you're doing
that... but meditation is sitting by yourself, alone, so nobody's judging you.
On Wednesday, I do a mantra meditation. Mantra meditation can be done in so many
different forms. You can actually look up a Sanskrit word and be reciting a
Sanskrit word as the mantra, or you can actually just say anything you want... and
if you say it over and over again, it has the same effect as reciting any mantra.
The idea behind mantra meditation is that you're not actually reciting the
words for their true meaning anymore, but you're reciting the words for their
sounds. And, when you recite them over and over and over again, it almost, like,
resonates with your brainwaves that the same sound is coming out... and it helps to
calm your mind. I could be totally wrong about the purpose of mantra meditation,
so I'm just gonna do a quick Google search and pop something up right here...
And this is what the internet says is the purpose of mantra meditation:
Usually in my mantra meditation day, I don't actually recite one word... I recite a
sentence. And it's a short sentence. So it's usually "I am... [blank]." And I'll put
words like "I am... grounded." "I am confident." "I am happy." I'll pop up a
whole bunch of other mantras here if you want to take some ideas for yourself... but,
essentially, even though I do mean the meaning behind it... I am reciting the
sentence "I am... [blank]" more so just for the mantra aspect of it. I say it over and
over and over again, and I really do my best to stay focused throughout the
entire ten minutes. And don't get me wrong, I very often veer off-course, and
all of a sudden I'm thinking about soup and I'm wondering what happened to the
mantra... but it's okay. I just come right back in, start from the top, and keep
going. Typically, what I do on Thursday is more of a spoken word meditation...
So I take the mantra that I used on Wednesday, and now I'm actually using
that mantra for its meaning. So now I think about: What did I say? I said "I am
healthy" on Wednesday, and now Thursday for me would be all about expressing
verbally--in my head, of course--WHY I'm healthy. What I might be saying to myself
is something like: "I am healthy because I have fully functioning organs... and I have
a body that knows exactly how to take care of itself...
I am healthy because I choose to fuel myself with good food, and because my
brain is in a calm and meditative state right now... I am healthy because I moved
my body yesterday, and I plan to move my body today again..." I don't always use the
exact word that I used on Wednesday for Thursday's mantra break down. Sometimes
I'll pick a word that maybe is something that's the opposite of how I'm feeling
that day, just to help strengthen the sentiment in the other direction... So, for
instance, if I woke up feeling very tired and groggy then maybe the phrase that
I'll break down on Thursday is "I am alive"... And I'll say things like "I'm alive
because my heart is pumping, and the blood is flowing through my veins... and
I'm alive because I'm going to be awake and invigorated as soon as I get up from
this meditation..." Generally, on Friday I will do a sung mantra, and I will sing a song in my
head. Sometimes out loud if Michael's not in the room... but if he is, it just happens
in my head. I really only know one Sanskrit mantra in song form, and that's
because it's played over and over again and my yoga studio. So if you want to
learn it, it goes like this: Lokha sumastah sukhino bhavantu...
Every so often I realize I'm no longer singing it and I get myself back on
track... But it really does help to keep my mind focused in one place, and by the end
of the ten minutes you realized you didn't even have time to let your mind
wander too far because you were so focused on singing these words in this
tune. Saturday's meditation is all about
sitting in silence. So I do absolutely nothing. If that means that my brain
wants to think about what to eat for dinner that night that's what my brain
is gonna think about. If it means I want to be stressed about something, I'm gonna
be stressed. If it means I want to focus on my third eye, I can move my attention
to the third eye. Basically I'm just giving myself ten minutes
silence, and I actually always feel like Saturday is a good day for this because
it's waking up at the end of a full week... you finally have the whole weekend ahead
of you, and you can just sit in silence, and reflect. And I think that this silent
day is a little bit different from what most people's perception of meditation
is, because a lot of people do think that every single time your mind wanders you
have to pull it back to some focal point... And that is what I've done on all the
other days... But on Saturday, I just let my mind go. And one thing that I want you to
know, is that sitting there and letting yourself think and letting your mind do
whatever it wants to is still meditation. And that's just as valid of a practice.
So, especially for those of you starting out there, the silence might be the best
place to start. Just see what is coming up for you... see what's running around
your mind like a wild animal, and maybe as soon as you're done with the
meditation practice, just write it all down and just get that stuff out of your
mind. Then on Sunday, the last day of the week, I do something called the four- seven-eight
breathing exercise. This is... I close my mouth and I'm only using my
nose, and I breathe in for four counts, and then I hold my breath for seven
counts, and then I breathe out through my nose for eight counts. One thing you'll
notice when you're doing this for the first time is that it is kind of
confusing. If you've only breathed in for four breaths, how are you supposed
to be able to breathe out for eight seconds? And the answer to that is that
you have to breathe out a lot slower. When I do this I use ujjayi breathing, which
is basically where the back of my throat is sealed and I'm breathing through my
nose... but I'm making, almost, this Darth Vader, ocean sound... but you're basically
taking a breath in through your nose while the back of your throat is
restricted, so it winds up sounding a little something like this... I'm gonna
come up close to the microphone... *breathes* But that's how I do it, and I think that it's
a very calming sound. It almost makes you feel like you are an ocean producing
waves... So I like it. And those are the seven forms of meditation that I
currently practice Monday through Sunday! That being said, there are so many other
types of meditation out there. If you feel like you need guided meditation,
there are a ton of apps. Some of my favorites are InsightTimer and
Headspace... Both of those apps will have a person who's actually guiding you
through 10 minutes, and sometimes that can really help you if you don't know
what to do. Another great thing to do with meditation is to do a body scan.
I used to do this meditation where I was sit and I would envision that a roll of
toilet paper was being wrapped around my head... and I would actually see it going
past my nose, past my lips, past my chin... and then it was wrapped around my entire
body until it got down to my toes... and once it got to my toes, it would unwrap
until I was completely de-mummified, and then I came back to life. You can also do
a group meditation, whether that's with friends or in a class setting... I know
that in New York City there are a lot of meditation centers where they have
guided meditation in a group room. The one that I love is called Inscape, and
you're in this really cool dome, bubble-type room... There's an audio track that
guides you through the meditation, you do some breathing exercises, even some light
stretching back and forth... and the track does leave a little bit of time for just
pure silence... So some of it is guided, and some is not. The main thing that I want
you to take away from this video is that when it comes to meditating, there is no
right or wrong. I think when you're just getting started, the toughest part is
just sitting down and doing it because you feel like you're doing it wrong, and
you feel like it's not working... but there's no right or wrong way to do it,
and as long as you're giving yourself the space and time to dive in, that is
good enough. When it comes to the posture and the way that you're seated during
meditation, there's a whole variety of ways to do this. You can sit upright in a
chair, you can sit upright on your bed, you can sit with your back against a
wall or a couch... you can even be lying down with your back on the floor. I think
a lot of people think they need to be sitting erect in full Lotus in order to
do meditation properly, but that's just not true. You can meditate lying down, you
can also meditate while moving. If you'd prefer a moving meditation, there's
walking meditations where you're basically just taking breaths along with
every single step, and matching your breath to movement... and that is
considered meditating, too. Some forms of martial arts like Tai Chi and Qigong are
also considered forms of moving meditation. After incorporating
meditation into my life regularly over the past few years, I can say with
certainty that this is a practice that affects your everyday life. It's not a
cure-all or a magical pill. Yes, you will still get stressed out in your everyday
life. Yes, you'll still have emotions and cry. It's not going to fix everything. But
it is going to bring a lot more clarity to all aspects of your life and help you
really focus in on what's important. And I've definitely found in my life that
it's helped change a lot of my reactions to things that happen in my life that
are just outside of my control. I hope that this video did give you some tips
and that you found it useful. If you've never meditated before, I hope that you
can put some of this into practice. Comment below and let me know if you do
or don't currently meditate... and if you don't, let me know below which of these
seven options you would want to try first. Thanks for coming back to my
YouTube channel, and I'll see you next time!