The 3 Week Mindfulness Course on Healthy Living

08/04/2024

08/04/2024

This book will take you through the basics and beyond when it comes to living mindfully and taking care of our most basic needs as humans. In a busy modern world, we often tend to neglect important parts of our overall health and happiness while trying to take care of our responsibilities as adults.

If you feel like you are in need of a reset to reconnect with yourself, your inner voice, and the world you belong to, you have come to the right place. Over the next three weeks, we will rebuild the foundation for a happier, more fulfilling life for yourself and the people around you.

Just sit back and enjoy the journey. Expect to feel renewed, energized, and blissful as you cultivate a deep feeling of inner peace within yourself. Expect to notice changes all around you as you carry this feeling with you and into the world.

Introduction:

Welcome to this course on cultivating mindfulness, living well, and connecting with your true nature. Together, we will lay the groundwork and foundation for living a healthier, happier lifestyle. My hope is that you will take what you learn, utilize it, and that you are able to use this course to live the best life you could have possibly ever imagined for yourself. You are free to implement all of these techniques in your own style and at your own pace. Please cater these techniques to your personal needs and abilities. Listen to your own inner voice, and allow yourself to go at a reasonable pace when implementing these lifestyle changes, techniques, and other useful life practices. I recommend doing just one chapter per day to really sink into and implement each lesson. Try building these habits on top of each other or try them each separately.

I created this course as a way to reset the groundwork and foundation for living a healthy life. Too often, we become distracted and start to neglect our most basic needs as humans, which can lead to feelings of depression, fatigue, irritability and many other negative emotions. Once we start to feel this sort of way, we often tell ourselves a story as to why we feel the way we do, when really it comes down to how well we are taking care of ourselves and what habits we have in place to ensure we continue to do so. I have tried all of these techniques over the course of my life, and have gained so much from using them as much as possible. Never, have I been able to sustain all of the topics covered in this course perfectly myself everyday, but each time I do them, the more it makes a difference and sends ripples throughout all areas of my life. I hope just having the knowledge in this course helps you to experience positive changes in your life.

No single topic covered in this course is really considered more important than another in terms of order or sequence, and every individual may gain more from a certain chapter or concept than another. It really depends on what areas of life specifically are calling you to be mindful of them for your own personal growth, so be sure to listen to yourself when it comes to what you might think you should pay the most attention to. I encourage you to try each and everything laid out here at least once and consider doing each of them as much as you can. If there are two challenges written in a single chapter, choose one or do both. Many of the methods discussed in this course are self proving, meaning that as you do them more often, you will start to believe in their benefits. Even if it is hard for you to keep to a strict schedule and you find yourself going a few days without being mindful, remember that every day is new, and we can always try again.

We will be covering a lot of ground fairly quickly, so be sure to go back and review each topic whenever you need to. The more you implement these techniques, the more you will benefit and notice a real difference in your life. Every day, try focusing on a new topic discussed in another chapter and take your time with it. You can even choose to focus on just one thing for several days or longer to make it easier to implement. The course was designed for you to get through about one chapter per day, so that you can take the time to implement each discussed technique. Some may need more time to feel they’ve absorbed and benefitted enough to move on, and some may need less. Just go at your own pace and have fun with it.

We have the power to do anything we wish with our life. It is what we do with this power that determines how each moment of our life is spent.

WEEK 1

Chapter 1: The Meaning of Mindfulness

In order for us to cultivate new habits, it takes a certain degree of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of being fully present while you go about your day so that you will have more control over your actions and decisions in day to day life. Mindfulness is a “waking up” to life, where you realize the power of your own free will and direct your life according to your own true innate desires, once you know what those are. It is up to us to use our own personal free will to make good decisions for ourselves, and in order to do that, we must be mindful of our decisions as they happen.

Being mindful means we are tuned into the present moment, and are able to do with it what we will by either actively deciding or doing what we are passively accustomed to through our already formed habits. Chances are, if we were not being mindful when we developed these old habits, they may not be the greatest of choices. By becoming mindful, and providing ourselves with new information and knowledge about how our choices affect us and affect the world around us, we automatically begin to make subtle, positive changes toward a better life and future.

Mindfulness can be used during any given moment of your life, no matter what the task is in front of us or whether or not there is a specific task. Being mindful requires that we pay attention to what it is we are doing and give it our full consideration. Even a daunting task like washing dishes can be enjoyed when we implement mindfulness. Instead of thinking about the gross food we must scrape off our plates, think about the warm, sudsy water on our hands as our problems rinse themselves down the drain. Don’t think about getting to the end result of having the dishes done, just simply wash the dishes to be there while presently washing them and notice any thoughts of resistance that come up and change them to be more positive and look at the brighter side of things.

If we are mindful towards any given task, we create an opportunity to make it more fun and enjoyable. If we cannot focus on the task or the moment in front of us, how can we possibly even begin to enjoy it? We will be wherever our thoughts are. Further than that, how will we be able to actually make an influence and difference in our lives and the lives of the people around us, if we are not living in the present which controls our actions? Implementing mindfulness allows us to fully savor each moment as it happens and find the silver lining. It also allows us to find awareness for the needs of others in our lives that we encounter and take them into consideration with our actions and behaviors.

Challenge #1:
Be mindful of the task in front of you every time it comes to mind throughout the day. Make a point to enjoy it no matter what it is. Smile. Life is good!

Chapter 2: Waking Up

Not only is it essential to “wake up” to the fact that we are directly in control of our own lives and have the power to change them or enjoy them more fully, it is also essential to fully wake up to our day each morning by putting healthy habits in place, so that we can start each day at the right pace and not in a rush. When we rush, we tend to miss all sorts of details and make poorer choices for ourselves, since our minds are occupied by something else we have going on, and we do not give the moment at hand our full attention. The way we wake up in the morning helps to set the tone for our day. Carving out additional time in the morning by waking up early allows extra time for us to spend on the things we love. When you wake up each day, don’t think straightaway about all of the tasks and obligations you may have to take care of. Instead, take a moment to realize that this day is completely new, and it is a glorious gift to us.

No matter what the troubles of yesterday have been, today is new, and it means that we have a new chance to make the most of what this day will bring. Take the time to watch the sunrise if you can, or if the sun is already risen, go out into the sunlight and let it sink deep into your being. Be still. Take time to notice how you feel. Breathe in new life. Breathe out old, outdated patterns, and anything that is no longer serving you. Breathe in joy, breathe out past disappointments and failures. Make peace with all that is at war inside and out, and radiate loving kindness. Mornings can also be a good time for early walks in the fresh morning air. Listen to the birds. Enjoy the scenery. Be mindful.

The early morning is typically the coldest part of the day, since the sun has rested a full night, and it has not been out long enough to warm the earth back up again just yet. Sometimes, this makes us want to retreat back into the covers to keep ourselves warm. Things you can do in the morning to wake and warm yourself up include getting out into the open sunlight, or opening the curtains or a window inside, drinking warm liquid such as tea or coffee, dressing yourself in warm, comfortable clothes before jumping in your day clothes, turning on a heat source, or taking a warm shower, followed by a splash of cold water to wake the senses. Bursts of cold water at the end of a shower is also good for hair and skin health. Soon you’ll be able to jump into icy cold waters during a hike on a hot day with ease!

Tricks to waking up a little early include getting adequate, healthy sleep the night before, rewarding yourself for getting up early by treating yourself with a small snack you enjoy like a piece of fruit or candy, or laying out your clothes to wear first thing the night before. You can also try setting your alarm clock across the room, and going to the bathroom right when you wake up as a motivation to get up and stay up. Do something you enjoy with this time like reading a book, enjoying a cup of coffee, meditating, doing yoga, working out, going for a walk, journaling, watching the sunrise or cooking your favorite breakfast. You can switch up your morning routine whenever you need to find what you enjoy and especially benefit from. Making extra time for ourselves in the morning can be life saving, especially when it feels like you can’t catch up and just live for the day.

This extra time we gain by waking up earlier should start to feel more sacred the more you practice it, as we can use it to gain extra peace of mind before the day even starts and spend it on our favorite things and on being more presently mindful as we go about our day. It is a time to spend on what we need to feel like we are being fulfilled, and the effects of this will bring a sense of clarity and calmness throughout the rest of the day.
If you work a type of graveyard shift or have another difficult sleep schedule, be flexible for yourself. The point is to create a morning routine when you wake up, however that looks for you. Make sure you are always getting enough sleep, about 8 hours.

Another thing you can try is getting up without using an alarm clock at all. Alarm clocks can startle us awake from our deeply needed REM sleep cycles, while the body is designed to wake up slowly on its own, going through the necessary brain waves to readjust to waking life. If you want to try waking up without an alarm, do so on a morning where you don’t have something important to be on time for the next day to get some practice first and see whether you can trust yourself to wake up on time without one. Simply just hold the time you want to wake up in your mind before you fall asleep and trust your body to do the rest. Our deepest rest actually happens just before we wake up, so startling ourselves awake can really do some damage to our rest levels and cause fatigue, especially over time.

Allow yourself to sleep in from time to time when you need to. Giving yourself this little wiggle room is actually an act of self love. There is also self love in showing up for yourself, so implement this morning space as much as you can but be sure to balance it by listening to your specific needs. By waking up to our day, we are waking up to our life, and are showing up to conquer anything that stands in the way of our true desires. Once we can conquer how we use this time, we can carry that into the rest of our day, and use it as a force for good.

Challenge #2:
Start by waking up 15-30 minutes earlier than you normally would. Do this for a few days, and then try waking up 15-30 minutes even earlier. Keep doing this until you can wake up with the sunrise or two hours before your normal wake up time.

Challenge #3:
If you are already a pro at waking up early, use this time for something you enjoy that you might not normally have the time for. Switch up your morning routine and get out into the fresh morning air. Find a good place to watch the sunrise.

Chapter 3: The Rising Sun

Stepping out into the sunlight in the morning is an excellent way to warm, energize, and refresh ourselves, and it is what nature calls us to do. As we are normally daytime creatures, it is natural for us to want to wake up with the sun. In yoga, a common pose sequence is called the sun salutation, giving honor to the sun for rising another day, and is meant to be practiced facing towards the sun, east in the morning and west in the evening. Many ancient cultures and traditions paid tribute to the sun for rising each day. In today’s world, we tend to ignore the sun’s value, and the fact that it is the life-giving source for our planet to flourish. Without it, Earth would be a cold desolate wasteland.

In places far north like Alaska, the winter months can be extremely tough to get through because of the lack of sunlight. Because it is so close to the arctic circle, near the winter solstice, residents experience a near 24 hour period or more without daylight. Days slowly start to get longer little by little after the solstice is over, but it still takes several months for the summer to return and the days to feel normal. People often use artificial lamps or Vitamin D supplements to offset the effects of not getting enough sun. For those that do not find a way to offset the dark in the winter, they will almost always experience depression and fatigue through the cold winter months. Nature compensates for this by prolonging its sunlight in the summertime, where northerners go months without the sky getting dark enough to even see the night sky, known as the midnight sun. If you are looking to get an extra dose of Vitamin D, just visit Alaska in the summer! It’s well worth it to experience this phenomenon.

There are tremendous benefits to getting enough sunlight each day. These include providing your body with Vitamin D, a natural vitamin that supports mood, memory, and more, supports bone strength and health, reduces stress, wards off depression, improves sleep, extends your life expectancy, helps us to feel most alive, and can even help you to lose weight. No really. Links have been found between a lower body mass index and the amount of sunlight you receive each day, especially early morning sunlight. Science has shown that increased exposure to early morning sunlight actually affects our satiety hormones which can cause us to feel like we just ate and feel less hungry. Our hunger literally can be satiated by the sun, meaning our bodies eat or absorb sun rays like food.

Even the things we eat, whether we are vegan, vegetarian, omnivorous, or carnivorous, are fueling us with the sun's energy. Plants absorb this energy directly from the sun through a process known as photosynthesis, and we eat those nutrients in the form of leaves, greens, herbs, nuts, berries, fruits and veggies. Even carnivores eat meat from prey that has absorbed its nutrients from plants, which have absorbed their nutrients from the sun. Scientists are now finding that humans and animals also have a very similar process to photosynthesis in which their skin is able to absorb vital nutrients from the sun that, in turn, fuels their bodies much like food does.

The next time you find yourself standing in the sunlight, picture the rays fueling up your body, and concentrate on its warmth on your skin, wrapping you like a blanket. Give thanks that the sun exists and that it is able to host life here on our planet. Wear sunscreen when outdoors if needed, but the use of sunscreen can actually block out some of the essential nutrients like Vitamin D that your body needs to feel energized and put you in a better mood. Early morning walks or outdoor hikes, projects, and sports are a great way to get your daily dose of sunlight. Try finding an outdoor activity you enjoy or just simply sit outside in the sun and relax.

Any exercise you do during this time, will help to fuel the rest of your day, but it’s not necessary to receive all the amazing health benefits of sunlight. Wearing clothing that allows some of your skin to be exposed to the sun such as shorts or tank tops has shown to improve how well the sunlight can be absorbed by your skin. Simply opening the curtains and allowing light into your home through a window can be pretty effective in increasing your sunlight exposure, but it is not as effective as direct sunlight outside.

Be sure not to overdo it, especially if you have sensitive skin. Prolonged exposure to the sun’s UVA and UVB rays has been linked to certain types of skin cancer. If this is a concern of yours or you are particularly at risk, try limiting long hours of sun exposure to mornings and evenings, when the sun rays are a bit softer. It is likely that the pros far outweigh the cons of sun exposure, but by being mindful of how much sun we receive each day we can improve our livelihood and prevent cancer simultaneously.

Challenge #4:
Get at least 15 minutes of direct sunlight each and every day. Do this first thing in the morning for some added health benefits. Really pay attention to the feeling of the sun on your skin while you bask in its light.
Chapter 4: The Breath

Every living plant, human, and animal on the planet must breathe air in some form to survive. Although our body does this process almost automatically, and takes thousands of breaths per day, being mindful of the breath can be extremely powerful for mood, movement, and longevity. You can survive about 30 days without food, 3 days without water, and only 3 minutes without oxygen. With all of the other things to think about in this world clouding up our minds, there seems to be no room left to think about this nearly autonomous process, but doing so could make drastic improvements on our health and wellbeing.

Breathing has long been rendered as integral to health in many ancient medicinal practices such as the ones found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and in Native American traditions. Meditation is often practiced by focusing on one’s breath, and a core concept found in many yogic practices is that of aligning the breath with the body’s movement. It has been discovered that in sports and even cognitive tasks, people who breathe in alignment with their movements and actions, tend to be more precise and have less sporadic tendencies when making decisions.

In the Framington study performed in the 1970’s, researchers found that the biggest indicator of lifespan was not due to diet, genetics, or amount of exercise as previously thought. It was lung capacity. Big lungs and full breaths allow the body to work less hard to carry all of the vital nutrients, namely oxygen, to our cells. Our body is consistently doing the act of carrying oxygen through our blood stream, so the more work we can do to assist it in this, the longer our lifespan becomes.

The most important key factor in healthy breathing is increasing the duration of our inhalations and exhalations. Try to breathe in for a full five seconds through the nose and then out for the same amount of time or a second or two more also through the nose, averaging just 6 breaths per minute when not exercising. Taking longer, fuller breaths is one of the simplest ways to improve lung capacity and in turn, life expectancy. It will also help increase circulation and decrease stress, anxiety, and even blood pressure.

Nasal breathing is another layer to healthy breathing and it is better for you than mouth breathing for several reasons. Breathing through the nose absorbs 18% more oxygen than breathing through the mouth. It also retains more water than breathing through the mouth, so it is good for endurance when exercising and decreases the risk for dehydration. Breathing through the nose has also been shown to lower the risk for tooth cavities and lowers the chance for respiratory problems and disease.

The next layer to our peak health in relation to our breath is enhancing our air quality. If you live in a place with a lot of rough pollutants in the atmosphere, try your best to gravitate toward areas with lots of plants and trees as they filter fresh oxygen for us through their own respiration process. If you can get out of the city and into nature easily, opt for that, but you can also try your hand at tending to a few houseplants if you want naturally better air quality right at home.

Challenge #5:
Extend the length of your inhales and exhales to five seconds. Making this a regular habit, will prolong your lifespan and improve your overall health and happiness.

Tip: Doing this even for just a few minutes will lower your heart rate, blood pressure, and produce feelings of peace, clarity, and calmness. Try it out!

Chapter 5: Connecting to Earth & Nature

As highlighted in the last two chapters, getting our resources like air and sunlight as close to nature as possible tends to have the best results on our wellbeing. Nature is meant to support us and provide us with everything that we need. It is only in this current world of endless consumption and separation from nature that we feel like our needs are not being met and that we need more. The natural state of nature is to provide for every living thing on the planet with its fruits, its sun, its fresh air, and its clean water. Nature wants to take care of us, but sometimes we refuse what it wants to offer to us.

Getting into nature means getting to our roots of where we come from. Man sometimes loses himself in the concrete jungle of manmade society, but being in nature brings out our most instinctual and primal selves. Connecting with these roots is important for understanding ourselves as humans. Spending time in nature has been shown to decrease symptoms of depression and improve cognitive abilities due to the amount of external stimuli present in nature. A lot about our natural world is unknown even to scientists, so connecting with it connects us to the mystery that is life. Being in fresh air and a purely natural environment decreases stress and brightens up our life by providing us with a natural sanctuary that understands us perhaps better than we do ourselves.

The meaningfulness of nature is not really something that can be well put into words, it is more of a feeling you experience first hand. The peace that comes with just sitting in nature in pure silence is extremely profound and personal. You can leave all other worries behind, and simply just be. It is important to remember that the world does not just host humans, but a huge intricacy of different plant and animal species. All of these species are just as much alive as we are, yet they haven’t ever felt a need to cut themselves off from nature like humans often do. Listening to the birds sing, watching the squirrels play, or observing a deer calmly graze in the grass is all a reminder of how simple life can be, and how all life on earth is intrinsically connected. If we had no nature to support us, we would have no life at all. Without thousands and thousands of edible plants that exist, and without the fresh oxygen they provide for us, nothing on the planet could survive.

Every day, we lose about 80,000 acres of the planet's tropical rainforests to deforestation, and about another 80,000 acres of terrain on top of that. If we just continue to turn a blind eye as this problem grows, eventually we will not have any wilderness left, and that can have terrible consequences on everything else in our world, as we lose oxygen, fresh water sources, and vegetation for us and the animals on the planet. If that doesn’t make you want to jump up and go hug a tree, you may be suffering from a nature deficit in your life. The thing we need to remind ourselves of is that we are intrinsically connected to everything in our world, and so its health reflects our own. If we truly want to be healthy in life, we need to take care of our planet. The pollutants we release come back to us in our own air and water and become part of us too, which decreases our quality of life in the form of disease, sickness, fatigue, and depression.

Spending time in nature is a great way to appreciate it while it is still here, so that we can feel that sensation of being a part of something larger than just ourselves and just be. It helps us to understand its value not only as a resource, but as a sacred source of life. Without us taking time to be mindful of nature, we fail to realize its importance and therefore not take appropriate measures to protect it. Making direct contact with the earth especially is shown to reduce stress and anxiety levels and improve overall mood. It has been shown also to alleviate depression symptoms and provide us with energy.

This exercise, known as earthing or grounding, involves making direct physical contact with the earth, usually through the soles of one’s feet. It has been shown scientifically to connect us to the earth’s electric field and activate our body’s internal matrix that connects each of the living cells in our body electrically. This electrical matrix that connects our cells is believed to activate and aid our immune response, so it is extremely important to our health and survival. Connecting directly to earth’s natural electrical field in the ground recharges our own electrical system. Grounding has been shown to fight off disease and even improve cardiovascular health.

It’s important to get out into nature or go outside every day we can. Finding outdoor activities you enjoy is a great way to keep yourself motivated. Walking, running, hiking, reading, camping, picnics, sports, swimming, bicycling, arts and crafts, photography, earthing, and yoga. are all examples of things you can enjoy outside, but the possibilities are endless. Getting outside causes us to tune in and see the very beauty of life that each of us belong to in order to appreciate it more fully.

Challenge #6:
Get outdoors and connect with nature everyday, preferably barefoot, to help recharge and re-energize. Optional tree planting.

Chapter 6: Our Water

Water is the most plentiful resource on the planet. 72% of it is covered in water while 60% of our body is made from water, including over 70% in our heart, brain, and lungs. Our body needs water to reproduce new cells, produce neurotransmitters in our brain, and get rid of unhealthy waste. We can only survive without water for about three days. You may be thinking that you’ve gone more than three days without water before, but even if you don’t always drink water directly, it is found in all sorts of food and nearly every liquid we drink, so you may be getting enough water to survive, but not enough water to fully thrive. By ensuring you are drinking enough water every day, you will feel healthier, look younger, and have more energy to enjoy life.

It is recommended by health experts that humans on average get about 2 liters of water per day. I would doubt if half of the people on the planet are getting that every single day. In some regions of the world, water can be extremely difficult to attain, and some people may have to rely on rainfall or walk to a nearby source that can be more than a few miles away. In the U.S. and many other developed nations, most people are blessed to have water as a plentiful, on demand resource, but even that can have its setbacks.

It is a huge blessing to have clean drinking water readily available if you are lucky to live in one of those developed nations; however, if you are not on a well system, and rely on city water supply for your main drinking water source, it goes through a rough filtration process that requires chemicals like chlorine that can end up in your drinking glass if you’re not careful. Not only that, certain elements are sometimes added that can actually be harmful for your health such as fluoride, a common ingredient in toothpaste.

The consumption of fluoride is linked to lower IQ and cognitive function in individuals exposed to higher amounts, especially in early years of development and during pregnancy. In studies done with rats, scientists have found that increased amounts of fluoride did cause behavioral changes. It was also found that the fluoride was actually able to cross the blood-brain barrier, meaning it was actually being stored in the brains of the lab rats, causing it to calcify and lose some of its proper function. If you rely on a city source for drinking water in a country that uses fluoride, it is recommended that you use a filter specifically graded for fluoride or source your water a different way.

After you locate a safe drinking water source, drink plenty of it. Try to drink at least 2 liters of water per day. You can also drink water in the form of tea, coffee, juice, and other liquid. Just try to mix it with other good things, and not just a ton of sugar like in soda. If you can tolerate drinking it straight, that is the best way to ensure you are getting all of the water and the vital nutrients you need. Unlike food, water was made tasteless so everyone would like it, so get a glass and enjoy.

In Dr. In Masaru Emoto’s water experiments, he used the crystalline structure of water to demonstrate the effects of human thoughts, words, and intentions on the physical world. Each water sample was exposed to a different word or phrase such as “love” or “hate” over and over again, frozen, and then looked at under a microscope. The results were astounding. Every water sample that was sent love and positivity, formed a beautiful crystal structure, and each water sample that was exposed to feelings of hate or negativity became rather horrid in shape with no obvious symmetry.

You can recreate this experiment if you wish at home using cooked rice. Place a cup of the cooked rice in two separate containers with lids, and pour just enough water to cover the samples. On one container write the word “love,” and on the other, write the word, “hate.” Place them at least several feet apart. For the next three weeks, go to each jar of rice and say the word you’ve written down to it. You can also say, “I love you” or “I hate you” or other kind phrases to the love jar and other mean phrases to the hate jar. The important thing is that you are consistent with how you treat each jar. After three weeks, open the lids, and see what each rice sample looks like. If you do not have the patience for such an experiment, you can always look at other people’s recreated experiments online. Just search “Dr. Masaru Emoto’s water experiment.”

Dr. Emoto’s experiment reminds us of the power we have with our own thoughts and intentions. If we can have this kind of effect on our water, imagine the kinds of effects this could have on other people, ourselves, and the rest of the planet. This is why it is so important to change our bad attitudes to loving ones that nurture our environment and the people around us. As water is what helps us to purify the toxins in our bodies, the purer the water, the purer are our hearts and minds. We are quite literally made of water, so the way we treat our water on the planet is the way we ultimately treat ourselves. Try sending loving intentions into the next glass of water you drink, and see how this feels.

Challenge #7:
Drink at least 2 liters of water every day. Thank your water for giving you life, health, and energy as you drink it. You can use a water bottle to track your intake.

Chapter 7: Meditation

Meditation is a great way to cultivate mindfulness. It has been used as an ancient practice all over the world, primarily in China and India, as a way to go within and work out our own internal processes. The point of meditation is to sit with all of the things we carry around with us every day as a way to observe them and then release them. Once we become aware of ourselves and our internal struggles, we can face them head on, and heal and grow in the process. As you do this, you get closer and closer to your truest self which often lies underneath many layers of mental debris. The process can take a long time, even many years, depending on what it is that you are dealing with in your own mind and body, but you will start to notice the benefits of meditation right away in terms of focus, mood, clarity, and calmness. Meditation is a good way to perform self care maintenance so that we can navigate life with an uncluttered mind and check in with the ways we are feeling and our thoughts as they happen.

There are many forms of meditation that you can try. One of the more common ways is to simply focus on your breath. Any time you notice that you have begun thinking about something else other than your breath, simply take note of what it is you were thinking about, and return back to your breath. Some meditations performed around the world involve staring into a flame like a candle or repeating a word, phrase, or syllable known as a mantra over and over to yourself. You can try meditating lying down or in some other comfortable position that works for you, but many monks will tell you to keep your spine in alignment by straightening your back and sitting up straight if you can tolerate it. Use a back rest if this is hard for you or lay on your back on a yoga mat or blanket.

In yoga, shavasana or co**se pose is done by lying on the back with the arms and legs at a little more than hip distance apart. While lying in this way, you take your attention to each part of your body and slowly relax any tension until you feel totally relaxed. Some meditations are done by walking, sitting, or standing. The point is to take the attention inward and observe where your thoughts go when you let them flow naturally within your mind while trying to stay focused on something else or nothing at all. You may notice a feeling of overall pleasantness or clarity just after meditation that will get easier to carry into the rest of the day the more you practice it.

Here is an easy meditation you can try with some imagination:

Find a calm, quiet place somewhere and sit yourself comfortably, perhaps with a warm cup of tea to help wake yourself up if you choose to do this early in the morning or a decaffeinated cup of herbal tea if you’re winding down closer to bed. Find a comfortable pillow, cushion, or blanket to sit on and place the cup next to you. You can also choose to come to the cushion with empty hands. Sit either cross-legged on the ground, cushion, or blanket or in a chair with both legs forward and resting gently in front of you with your feet on the floor. Place your hands either on your lap with your fingers interlaced and your thumbs touching or on each knee with your thumb and index fingers together or simply resting with palms down on each leg. Whatever feels most comfortable for you. Sit on your cushion or chair with an erect spine if you can.

Sit up tall with the top of your head reaching towards the sky and imagine a bright light coming down and washing over you. The light can be any color you wish. Imagine this light filling you up and helping you to radiate this light around you, cleansing any negative feelings of frustration, anger, or sadness and replacing them with love, calmness, and joy. Then, picture a long root coming out of the bottom of your spine reaching down into the center of the earth. Imagine any of those negative feelings following the root down into the earth to be purified. You are now fully connected to the sky above and the earth below. Drop your shoulders, and take a deep breath in. Breathe out.

Here is more traditional form of meditation that you can try on its own or just after the one outlined above:

Begin sitting upright on a cushion or chair with your hands in your lap and thumbs touching together. Take a second to just notice how you feel. Close your eyes or gaze softly at the ground just a couple feet in front of you. Begin to count your breaths starting with your next exhalation. Breathe normally, but really pay attention to your breaths in and out, counting up by 1 with every exhalation until you get to 10 and then, begin back at 1. If you lose count, just start over. You may notice that you start to get sidetracked by your own thoughts. Just observe what it was you were thinking about when this happens, and then return gently back to the breath. This is a normal part of the process, especially starting out. Keep doing this for about 10-30 minutes, but up to one hour.

The more you do this, the more you will start to notice a difference in your life, and the sharper your mind will become.

Challenge #8:
Meditate everyday for at least 10-15 minutes. Pick a time each day that works for you, like early in the morning when you wake up or right before bed. Be flexible with yourself.