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Hi everyone!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
It's Aileen.
Today I want to share
easy ways to meditate.
These are just tips and tricks for people who are lazy at meditation,
people who are having trouble making it a daily, consistent habit.
By the way, if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, make sure you click down below
to subscribe, and also click that bell if you want to get notified of all my new videos.
Hopefully, by now, you know what meditation is and how beneficial it can be for your health
and for your well-being.
If not, then you can check out this video I made already,
called "How to Meditate".
That's more of an intro video on meditation.
Alright, first tip I have for all beginners at meditation is to start small.
Don't think that you have to sit down and meditate for like thirty minutes or more
at the beginning, because it can be really overwhelming if you're not used to it.
so I would say, start with ten breaths, okay?
If you can count to ten,
then you can meditate, just taking in ten breaths in and out.
You can consider that one session, taking ten breaths.
And you can do that in the morning, in the middle of the day, and in the evening.
Honestly, that's already a good start because when you're taking those ten breaths,
you're bringing yourself to the present, you're centering your mind,
and you're kind of getting a taste of meditation and what it's really like.
For me, meditation is a lot of just listening to my breath, bringing my attention
back to my breath, making sure I'm fully aware of the present moment.
Start with the ten breaths, and if you feel like you can go longer than that,
then you can start meditating for two to five minutes at a time.
Make it real easy.
I like using a meditation timer.
I use one called Zenfriend,
which I've shared in a lot of my videos.
Start with two to five minutes at a time.
And you can do it once a day,
twice a day, three times a day.
It's really up to you.
But just start small,
start manageable, and take it from there.
Remember that you can meditate any time during the day.
You can do it in the morning, right after you wake up, or in the evening,
before you go to bed, or any time.
Just take a break in the middle of your day
to re-center yourself and just meditate midday.
If you look at it that way, there's really no excuse to not meditate, because everyone
here
can carve out five minutes, some time during their day.
There's always time to meditate.
We just have to make that time, slip it in wherever it fits.
My next tip is to use mantras and affirmations to help you focus during meditation.
If you've tried to just sit there and meditate, sometimes your mind just wanders
and it goes crazy, and it's really hard to remember to stay present and focused on your
breath.
That's natural, because our human brains are all over the place.
That's the purpose of meditation, to learn to train our brains to focus more.
But if you're still a beginner, it could be really hard to sit down and be still
for a long period of time.
So something that's helped me is to just repeat a mantra or affirmation,
which is a positive or empowering statement.
Just repeat it over and over again in my head.
Just pick a phrase like, "I am supported, I am guided, I am protected,"
or "I am worthy, I am beautiful, I am strong."
Whatever type of phrase
gets you feeling positive and empowered, use that phrase and say it over, over,
and over to yourself in your head, during meditation.
You notice that that phrase
is kind of like your anchor during meditation.
It helps you focus on one thing
so that your mind doesn't wander like crazy.
And it also has positive side effects,
because when you're saying an empowering, positive statement over and over again,
you just feel better about yourself.
You feel more of whatever it is
that you keep repeating to yourself.
And repetition is really a way to ingrain something
into our brain, especially during meditation.
So it can really add a positive effect to,
not just meditation, but your entire life, the rest of your day as well.
My next tip is to remember that you don't have to sit down to meditate.
Meditation comes in many different forms.
You can technically meditate
when you're doing autopilot things like driving, cooking, cleaning, walking.
You can use those activities as a meditative practice.
All meditation is,
is bringing mindfulness to the present, being mindful of exactly what you're doing,
immersing yourself fully in the present, and just not letting your mind go on autopilot
and wander around here and there.
For example, when you're driving,
instead of letting your mind go on autopilot, what I do sometimes is:
I turn off the music and then I just focus on my breathing while I'm driving,
and I treat that as my meditation.
You can essentially bring more mindfulness
into any of these mundane activities that you do throughout the day.
And I think that's the goal.
The goal is to be able to be fully present
and mindful, throughout your entire day.
My next tip for an easy way to meditate is to listen binaural beats.
Binaural beats is essentially an audio track that you have to listen to on headphones.
You have to make sure the left and right ear are separated.
The reason is because that audio track plays a slightly different frequency in both ears.
Your brain is not used to hearing two different frequencies in both ears at the same time.
What it does is: It cancels out that tone and it hears an invisible,
third frequency that is the difference between these two frequencies.
The science might be kind of hard to explain, but I'll link an article down below
that helps explain it a little better.
But essentially, listening to binaural beats
puts your brain into a meditative state after at least seven minutes.
You have to listen to it for at least seven minutes or more, then you'll notice that …
It's kind of like a massage for your brain.
That's how I feel.
I've been using this app
called Synctuition.
What it is: It plays binaural beats, but it's also highly produced,
high quality meditative sounds.
It just sounds like relaxing music
and each track has a different theme to it.
So I listen to Synctuition right before I go to sleep.
At night, I just put the headphones on in bed.
And the track is like 25 minutes.
Usually I doze off in the middle of the track.
I get really, really sleepy,
really, really relaxed, so that by the end of the track,
I just take off my headphones and I'm already basically half asleep.
I love it because, for me, I kind of have insomnia sometimes.
It's hard for me to fall asleep.
So listening to binaural beats, it really is a lazy meditation
where I feel like I'm meditating, but all I'm doing is lying in bed,
listening to music, right before I go to sleep.
Plus, it helps me sleep better.
I'll link the app down below where you can listen to three free tracks.
Synctuition claims that it helps you strengthen your intuition,
so if you're interested in exploring that, then check that out down below.
You could also do a quick YouTube search of "binaural beats"
and you'll find a lot of different tracks.
But the ones that I found on YouTube are pretty boring.
It's literally just the tone.
So I like Synctuition because it really is highly produced audio.
They put a lot of effort into making it sound good for 25 minutes.
So it's not boring in my opinion.
Another alternative is to just find soothing meditation online.
You could find that
on YouTube or on Spotify.
These are not binaural beats, but just soothing sounds
that help you get into that meditative state.
If you don't like meditating to silence,
then it may be helpful to just play some nice meditation music in the background.
My last tip–and a lot of people love this one–is: You could totally try a guided meditation.
There are apps like Calm and Headspace that are really, really popular,
that have guided meditations that will lead you step-by-step through your meditation.
And for some people, it's their favorite way to meditate.
For me, personally, not so much.
I don't know why I don't like following someone
tell me what to do.
I just kind of like doing it on my own or listening to music.
So it's really up to you.
Give it a try.
There's Calm, Headspace, and you could also find
guided meditations on Spotify.
Headspace has a Spotify playlist of their own guided meditations.
Also, you could find some good ones on YouTube.
I know Louise Hay
and Deepak Chopra are really, really popular for guided meditations,
just because they infuse this purpose and meaning into their guidance.
Actually, before I discovered Synctuition, my favorite thing to listen to,
to help me go to sleep, was Deepak Chopra's guided meditations.
I really, really, really loved those, because I think Deepak Chopra's voice is really calming.
And he sounds wise, so give that a try.
Hopefully, by now, you have some new ideas on how you can incorporate meditation
into your life.
Just really look at all these different options.
There are so many ways
to bring more mindfulness into your day and to always remember
to center yourself with your breathing.
Let me know if you try any of these techniques.
Let me know which one is your favorite.
And hopefully, hopefully you could build a more consistent meditation practice
so that you could reap all the benefits, because it really does enhance your life.
It enhances how you feel.
And it'll bring more peace within you.
Alright, hope you have a beautiful day.
Thanks so much for watching this one.
I'll see you next time.
Bye!