Meditation Workshops In Bundaberg 20th May 2012

The Essence of Meditation - Workshop

Joanne Wright of Mediation As Medication brings you this workshop to give you:

Ø  A true understanding of Meditation 

o   it’s benefits and applications

o   How Meditation and the Subconscious mind works

o   How Meditation is the key to Spiritual Growth

Ø  The Techniques and ground breaking Technology to Meditate deeply and easily

Ø  Hands on practise to allow you to feel confident with meditation

This Workshop will include the opportunity to meditate with specialised Meditation Music which includes Binaural Beats, sound effects and atmosphere to engage your subconscious mind for a truly amazing Meditation Experience.

I have been teaching meditation for over 20years in Adelaide, Queensland and the UK and have therefore encountered many difficulties people have had with meditation.  This program has been created to solve these difficulties, teach people how to meditate deeply and to integrate it into their daily lives. 

This course will be of great benefit for my future workshops that will include Meditation as a stepping stone to Intuitive & Spiritual Development

Every attendee will receive a complimentary Learn to Meditate CD valued at $25

This workshop will be held on Sunday 20^th May 2012 from 10am to 1pm at a cost of $65 per person

Minimum of 10 bookings required to run the workshop so bring some friends

For enquiries or bookings please phone Joanne on 4156 3682 or book and pay online at www.meditationasmedication.com

Bookings essential

Understanding Meditation - Your questions answered

Understanding Meditation – Your questions answered!

I’m here to answer some questions about meditation.  I’ve had so many people say things to me like “I don’t have time to meditate, I can’t see anything and everyone else can, I just can’t relax, I don’t get any peace from the kids partner etc, don’t you have to sit on the floor in the lotus position chanting, it doesn’t work for me, what can meditation do for me etc, etc”.  Well I’d like to help you understand meditation, what it’s about and how it works.

I’ve been meditating for 24years and even though it was a long time ago I still remember the first few times I meditated and it was just the same.  I was in a big room full of strangers with no music in the background just a man up the front talking.  It was difficult to say the least and there were always the few who talked freely about all the wonderful things they saw during the meditation.  I thought it was just me who couldn’t see anything and just me who didn’t feel like it was working.  After talking to a few people on the break I found out that most of us felt the same and we wanted to make it happen.

A few of us got together for a meditation session each week because we all wanted to be able to do it.  Someone found a couple of meditation tapes we put them on and did them at each session.  Then we got copies and did them at home and each time we got together after that we had improved but it was a slow process.  It’s just like everything else that you do, you need to practise it to get better at it, to perfect it.  No one can just do a meditation and instantly get to a really deep level and see everything really clearly just like watching a movie or not be distracted by noises, all that takes practise.

Anyway let me answer some questions.

“I don’t have time for meditation”.   Meditation is a way of life not a chore that you must do.  The science surrounding meditation tells us that 30minutes of meditation is equivalent to 2hours of sleep.  So in fact if you meditate every day you will gain time in your busy schedule because you won’t need as much sleep.  And if it just isn’t possible to get the time or the space during the day then do it when you’re going to sleep because your subconscious mind never shuts down so it will be taking in every word and you will find that you will sleep much better.  Especially if you do one that is specifically for night time because at the end instead of bringing you back to the conscious level it will talk you down into a deep sleep level of consciousness.  Then if you do find that you wake up during the night put it on again, it can only help you.  It’s always difficult getting into a new routine so set a specific time of day aside to do your meditation and do it at that time every day.  Before you know it you’ll be wondering why you didn’t do it before.  I wake up earlier in the morning to do my meditation; I just lie in bed and reach for my IPod.  The morning can be good because you can start your day with a positive message and visualise your day going to plan.

“I can’t see anything when I meditate” Which immediately makes you think you can’t do it.  Well I’ll let you in on a little secret; most people don’t actually see anything, it’s more like an impression or a thought.  It’s like daydreaming most of the time you just think about the scene or the situation but if you meditate regularly some people develop the ability to see all the pictures in full colour.  It took me years to actually be able to see the scenes while meditating but I did find it easier to recall a scene from somewhere I had actually been or a photo.  So if you get some photos of places and look at those during the day or before you meditation that will help you to visualise.  I have made short movies for clients with pictures and some relaxing music behind them so that they have some images to recall.  It is enough for you to just think about what is being said in the meditation because the subconscious mind will still take it all in and process it.  So don’t worry about not being able to see anything and those who can see everything in great detail usually, from my experience, are in the minority.

Another thing that’s helpful to know is that you don’t look at the inside of your eyelids.  The technique is to look to the distance or look at a screen on a far wall.  And just let yourself go don’t worry or think about doing it right or wrong just do it, with practise and time it will become easy.

“I can’t relax”.  The natural way to relax is with deep breathing, slow deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth.  From there a good way to learn to meditate is to relax the body by thinking about the parts of the body and either relaxing them or first tense that section and then release.  This is how I start my meditations, this way people can get to the meditative level without worrying about seeing colours or scenes.  The next step is a deepening exercise which is to count down from 10 to 1, 20 to 1 or 50 to 1 whatever gets you to relax more.  Know that as you count down you are going deeper and deeper into relaxation.  If you get distracted or feel yourself starting to come back up then just count down again, it doesn’t matter how many times you do this.  After this comes the visualisation but you start with a scene that you are familiar with, somewhere you can feel relaxed.  Be in that place for a while continue to breathe deeply and look at the scene, think about it or get an impression of it.  However you do it doesn’t matter, because your subconscious mind will pick up on it and relax your mind and body. 

The more you worry about not being able to do it or see it the less you will relax.  However it works for you is right, whatever way you do it is ok the main thing is the end result, relaxation and meditation.  As long as you think you are at a meditative state you will be there because your thoughts create your reality.

“Don’t you have to sit on the floor in the lotus position chanting”?  Well that might be the way the Buddhist Monks do it but no you don’t have to do it that way.  I mean would you really be comfortable in that position?  The whole idea of meditation is to be comfortable and relaxed.  You can sit or lie down but if you can work towards meditating in the sitting position you will find that you can do it anytime and anywhere which is extremely handy.  You can then do short meditations during lunch or during a stressful situation.

“What can meditation do for me”?  Meditation is a technique to make you feel relaxed and more energised because it slows down the brainwaves and heart rate allowing your body to relax and recuperate.   The other reason for meditation is to connect you with your subconscious mind to change your beliefs so you can change your life and to create new beliefs to heal yourself.  You will feel better within yourself because a guided meditation will give you positive input and affirmations. 

So if you are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired you have a choice, a way to change that, a way to feel better.

Here’s where I give you the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.  Think about it, if your life is not working for you the way you’ve been doing things then how about changing the things you do.

The choice is yours, is your life working for you the way it is or is there something you want to change or improve? 

For more information, Meditations and Meditation Music go to Meditation As Medication

Why Can't I Lose Weight? Barriers to Weight Loss 4

Weight Loss Article 4

Inner Programming – what we say and think

One important thing we need to do is to monitor what we think and talk about the most on a daily basis.  You see the things we think about and talk about the most is what we bring into our lives whether this is good or bad, positive or negative. 

What do you think about the most?  Do you dwell over how much weight you have on or how you try everything and do everything right but you still can’t lose the weight?  Or how you don’t like yourself, you look terrible and you feel awful all the time?  Or do you just think about everything in a negative context like seeing the glass as half empty instead of half full. 

For instance: oh it’s raining today it’s going to be horrible all day or what a miserable start to the day.  Or It’s raining today I best take my raincoat or umbrella or that’s good the garden needs some water. 

You look at everything in either positive or negative and this is where we need to look.  Even if you are saying your positive affirmations for weight loss and liking yourself, if everything else you think about is negative it will cancel out the positive.  Believe it or not Negative is more powerful than positive when you’re trying to change your thought patterns.  It’s a bit like trying to grow plants in bad soil they may grow eventually but it will take a lot longer and they probably won’t be as vibrant or flower as much as a plant grown in good nutritious soil.

This is an important part of changing our lives; we need to be aware of our thoughts and speech.  So what do you think about on a daily basis, be aware it’s a good start.

Your subconscious mind works on giving you what you ask for and this is where your speech and thoughts come in.  When you think or say something your subconscious mind takes for granted that this is what you want.  It doesn’t analyse anything and think well she’s saying this but what she really means is that.  The subconscious mind is literal just like a small child.  A good example of this is one I heard years ago; when you ask a small child on the phone “Is mummy home” and they say “Yes”.  You’re expecting them to say “yes I’ll go get her” but you asked a question and they answered it, this is literal. So you must be specific when you ask for something and keep it positive.  You must be specific when you think and speak so that you get exactly what you want.

The most important thing that goes with this is that you must think about what you want, not what you don’t want because you’ll get what you think about.  So now comes the part where you sit down with pen and paper and write down all the things you don’t want and change it to what you do want.  In other words change the negative into positive.

For example:

I don’t want to be fat becomes; I want to be thin, trim taught and terrific, slim and fit, etc

But just something to add to this is that the subconscious mind works in the present tense only so really you need to avoid the term ‘want’.  To want something means you wish for it in other words you want it sometime in the future.  So it won’t happen because you will always be wanting.

Your affirmation now becomes:

“I am slim and fit. I weigh blah…..”

You might feel like you’re lying to yourself but that will change especially when your weight starts to plummet.

Now I’m not saying that your thoughts will change overnight it can be quite difficult to change old habits just be aware and do your best.  You’ll find that you start to hear exactly what the people around you are saying and how they are programming their lives.  This will make you more aware of your own thoughts.  If you can share this with others at work, friends or family and everyone is aware of their thoughts you can help each other to stay positive.  It’s always easier to pick up someone else than yourself.

A good way to start the day is to meditate, it doesn’t have to be long just 15mins will get you in the right frame of mind for a positive day.  You can plan your day and see everything going to plan, see yourself being positive and see the people around you being positive.  Visualisation is a great tool when working with the subconscious mind.

I have planned to write some short positive meditations so that you can do this first thing in the morning and give yourself a great start to your day.

I will be writing about meditation and visualisation in another article so you have more of an idea about how they each work and why they work so well together. For more information and guided meditations go to:

MEDITATION AS MEDICATION

Why Can't I Lose Weight? Barriers to Weight Loss 3

Weight Loss

Article 3

Why do we put on weight?

This is a great question that definitely needs answering.  Well we need to look honestly and openly at ourselves.  It usually starts with us wanting to fade into the background a bit; you know not wanting to be noticed quite so much so we put on a layer of fat to cover us up just a bit.  Then we don’t like how we look with the extra weight on so we want to hide just a little bit more and guess what we put on just a little more weight.  Well now we don’t like that extra weight either, so we want to hide more and by this stage we don’t like ourselves very much so we get into the vicious cycle of putting on weight and not liking ourselves more and more.

The more we dislike ourselves the more weight we put on or the weight we have on we can’t get rid of because subconsciously we still want to hide behind something.

One of the important things we need to do is to like ourselves.   If we don’t like ourselves how can we expect someone else to like us.  If we don’t like ourselves how can we get to a stage where we feel comfortable in the company of others, where we feel that we matter, where we feel that we have something worthwhile to contribute to a conversation.  Honestly just think about it for a moment.

So how do we get to like ourselves again, because we did when we were born before all the programming from our surroundings? 

·         You can do some mirror work

o   That is you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you like who you are, you like yourself.

o   You look in the mirror and say affirmations like “I love and accept you just the way you are”.  (By the way for those of you, who don’t already know, an affirmation is a statement you make to yourself which can be positive or negative but we actually want to keep them positive.)

·         You can say affirmations constantly and write them down on paper and place them strategically around the house or work area so that you will look at them constantly during the day.

·         You can meditate and work directly with the subconscious mind to change the old patterns and programs that you have in place, to change the way you feel about yourself.  This I find to be the most effective way.  I will go into the hows of meditation in more detail later.

o   You can also meditate to find out the underlying reason for not liking yourself.  This is getting right to the core of your problem (why am I over weight and why can’t I lose weight?).

We actually loved ourselves and every part of our body when we were babies and meditation is the way home, the way to remove all of the baggage and the negativity that we’ve learned over the years.  It’s the way to get us back to loving and accepting ourselves and freeing ourselves from a life that we don’t want.

I’m working on a great meditation for learning to love yourself so you don’t have to worry about looking for one elsewhere or trying to do it on your own. For more information and guided meditations go to: MEDITATION AS MEDICATION

Why Can't I Lose Weight? Barriers to Weight Loss 2

Weight Loss Article 2

Let’s get to the core of our weight problems.

There are metaphysical reasons for physical problems, i.e. reasons in our subconscious for putting on weight in the first place, keeping it on and not being able to shed it.  There are also reasons for weight gain in certain areas of the body which goes back to our past programming or beliefs.

For instance:

If you have a weight problem around the Hip area that could mean that you are holding onto anger or resentment toward your parents.

If this is so then you need to be forgiving of the past and live your own life not be a prisoner to your parents limitations.

A problem in the thigh area usually means bottled up anger from childhood towards, often, the father.

In this case you need to realise that the person you are angry at was just doing their best at the time, they didn’t know any better.  Forgiveness is called for here; forgiveness will free both of you.  (To forgive someone does not mean to condone what they have done it is just a way to free you both. I’ll go into this in more detail later).

The feeling that you have been deprived of nourishment and the anger that goes with it will cause you to put on weight around the belly.

The realisation that you are responsible for nourishing yourself.  You need to learn to rely only upon yourself for the nourishment you need and want in all areas of your life.  This will keep you satisfied and free.

Resentment at being starved of love can cause weight problems in the arms.

Learning to love yourself will create all the love you need and this in turn will allow others to love you.  You will attract loving, caring people into your life.

Being overweight is a symbol of wanting protection, wanting to hide away from the attention of others and a feeling of not being good enough.  Worrying about what other people think and want.  Not wanting to be hurt by others and being scared of your own feelings.  It can also be a struggle to forgive.

Learning to love yourself will give you the confidence to believe in yourself and not to need the approval of others.  Your feelings are what make you alive you will have good and bad feelings but knowing you can work through them is the way to live.  Now is the time to take responsibility for your own life and create it the way you want.  Give yourself the gift of security within yourself.  Forgiving is the greatest gift you can give yourself because it will free you from your past and your blocks.

There can be other things specific to you, personal experiences that can also be holding you back.  For instance the feeling that “if I lose weight and look good my family, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend won’t approve or they’ll get jealous”, “What if I don’t like being thin”, What if I get thin and gorgeous and people still don’t like me” and another really big one is “I just need to do this, get this, have this, stop this first before I can lose weight”.  These are all reasons to hang onto weight and you really don’t need them.  You need to remove them and the only way to do this is at the subconscious level.

If you are scared, which is perfectly normal, all you have to do is sit down with pen and paper and draw up two columns.  On one side write the good things about losing weight and on the other the bad things.  This can be done for any situation and works a treat because if you can write down what the worst thing that could happen is, you’ll probably find out that it’s not actually that bad after all.  And if it is really bad like a health issue then you can research your problem and find out how to deal with it before you start the weight loss program.  There are always positive things you can do, and ask for help no one can do this on their own. 

So now you have a better idea of the sort of things that can hold you back it’s time to start looking at yourself honestly and see why you put on the weight in the first place, what your blocks are, why are you hanging on to the weight and last but certainly not least Who do you need to forgive.

You can meditate on these questions to find the answers because all the answers are within, no one else can tell you your intimate feelings.  Think about all the issues and ask if there are any other issues holding you back.  The answers will come maybe not straight away but they will come.  Someone may be talking about a situation that makes you realise one of your issues or you may read something somewhere that will trigger it.  Don’t be impatient go easy on yourself as things always come to us in the right time space sequence.  You can’t work on everything all at once anyway so work on each issue as they arise. 

By the way if you’re worried about the meditation side of things don’t because I am in the process of putting together a series of meditations to help you on your path to success.  They will cover things like finding your blocks, how to remove them and more.  Stay tuned for the next article in this series or go to: MEDITATION AS MEDICATION for guided meditations and meditation music.

Why Can't I Lose Weight? Barriers to Weight Loss

Weight Loss

Ok so you’re here, you know you want to do something about your weight whether it be a little or a lot.  You may have tried things like diets and exercise to no avail or you may have had some success just to put it all back on again and sometimes you end up bigger than you started.  The main problem is that you are not getting to the core of why you put the weight on in the first place and why you keep it on.

It may be the paradigm (belief system or programming) that you have grown up with.  You may have had someone telling you “you’re big boned like your Mother / Father, it’s in your genes, you eat too much, your metabolism will change then you’ll be the size of a house” or other such things.  These then become your beliefs, your programming; your paradigm.

There are other causes and these are the way you feel and think about yourself.  The emotional baggage you are hanging onto from childhood, adolescence or even your adult life.  The let downs, the put downs, the loss of trust because of a certain situation, a trauma and you might not even know that it exists.  It is usually trapped in your subconscious somewhere and you need to find out what they are and remove these blocks.   Once you do you will be on your way to freedom in more ways than one.

I have been on the weight loss roller coaster not that I have had a huge problem but once I found out what subconscious belief was holding me back the weight just fell off me without changing my diet and doing a huge amount of exercise.  Then I had a couple of stubborn spots that just needed to go and once I discovered what I was holding onto from my childhood those spots dissolved too.  I feel free, free of the baggage, and much lighter from the baggage too.

Meditation was the way I found out what my blocks were and also the way I cleared them.  I changed my paradigm right at the core at the subconscious level of my mind.  The mind is very powerful and gives you exactly what you ask for whether that be positive or negative.

This is the first in a series of articles taking an in-depth look at how the mind can create your state of being.  This also means if your mind can create something it can change it.  

In this series on Weight Loss I will show you how your mind can create weight gain and how it can also create weight loss. For more information and guided meditations: MEDITATION AS MEDICATION

FREE Guided Meditations & Music !!

FREE Guided Meditations and Meditation Music go to Meditation As Medication for FREE downloads of high quality, well produced Guided Meditations and Meditation Music. Meditations deal with a variety of physical and emotional problems and offer in-depth help and relief.