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Meditating Learning to still the mind can benefit everyone. Meditating needs no religious or spiritual input although many who meditate do have a spiritual background. It is also very easy to learn. But difficult to get good at! Why? Because it takes regular practice. Regular practice means putting aside a few minutes every day, preferably at the same time of day in the same place, undisturbed by mobile, telephone, work, reading matter, computers, TV, radio, food, drinks, friends or family. At this time, learn to ignore the door-bell! How long? Try it for 5 minutes to start with, every day. As the weeks go by, increase the time every few days by a minute until you are doing it for 30 minutes every day. Then consider doing it twice daily. Position yourself so that you are sitting upright, comfortable, bum a little higher than your knees, feet flat on the ground, in a room that is neither hot nor cold. Prepare a timer. This could be an alarm clock, or your mobile set to go off in 5 minutes, or some other way of telling yourself time is up. Set the alarm and put it behind you, preferably under a cushion so that if you have reached a very tranquil state of mind when it goes off the noise of the alarm won’t upset you. (When at the end of it the alarm does go off, take your time about getting up. Stretch a bit, take a few deep breaths, then slowly unwind yourself and stand up. Don’t rush it!) Now breathe normally, with eyes closed, hands gently clasped in your lap. On each out-breath, count. Say “one” on the first out breath, “two” on the next out-breath, “three” on the next, and so on until you’ve counted to “ten”. Then return to “one” again, and so again to “ten”. Repeat indefinitely. Meantime concentrate on the breath and its number. Whenever you notice your mind thinking about something else, return to “one” again and start counting on each out-breath up to “ten”, and so on round again. As you practise every day, ( but give yourself one day off every week ), you may find that your mind plays tricks on you. You may find that you can’t get further than “two” sometimes before your mind loses concentration. Don’t worry! That’s normal. Just return it gently back to the out-breaths and the counting. Indeed, you may find that you never reach “ten” without losing concentration. That’s all right too. Just keep practising. Eventually you will find that as you do it your mind grows quieter, you reach a relaxed still centre, and even a few minutes of it refreshes you. You will also find that in almost any situation where others are worrying or anxious, cross or desperate, you can quickly put yourself into a quiet calm state, just by starting to count on each out-breath. It will also help you get to sleep faster. Some people do it before going to bed, in which case it is not advisable to read a book once you get into bed. Just meditate, climb into bed and put the light out. We suggest you don’t do this if you are very tired, very hungry, very weak. Nor should you do it if you have just eaten heavily, or if you are intoxicated. If you have any worries about how to do it, contact us. If you want to accelerate the rate at which your ability to get calm and centred develops, click HERE. They have free demo CD which shows you what they do. They also have a support team whom you can ring for advice and help, and plenty of information on their website about what they do. Jonathan Clogston-Willmot
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