These are some of the ways that I discovered over the years to help in the midst of a panic storm.
Let me know which helps.
Hands on body.
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A Quarter Nickel Dime and a Penny: Exploring Little Places
Meditation practice allows us to explore our mind and the sensations of our bodies. The goal is to become a better listener and to see things simply as they are. What is the sensation in our hand? What is the mind telling us about what we feel in our hand?
In this meditation, explore your hands and the sensations that come when you hold coins in your hand.
if you practice this over the next few days, you will have uncovered the magic of being with specific, simple sensations and open up a world of discovery that exists in the smallest of places. Our minds and our bodies are afterall, build on lots and lots of tiny places.
Enjoy.
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“It’s Ok” Meditation (Post NY Marathon)
Hello Search for Joy listeners: It has been a while since we’ve spoken due to my NY Marathon training. Thank you for your patience.
In this meditation, we will explore the body more specifically and our reaction to what we think and feel during our meditation. One of the common reactions our mind takes is to react what we think with a sudden reaction (ie negative) or assumption. We often think – “oh gosh what was that thought” ? Or we suddenly react with fear, panic or an emotion. But what if we were able to just see the thought or the feeling from the body and not add a narrative? What if we could just say
“It’s ok, I see you” ? Well, then we could pause things for a moment and instead of just reacting, we could maybe choose a response.
Would that be a good thing? I think it could be, yes.
Let me know your thoughts.
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Listen: A meditation by Gregory Rutchik
You are not your thoughts. You are not your thoughts.
We hear that often and yet, our minds are filled with thoughts and our bodies follow our minds. Until, of course, we stop that binary dynamic.
Can we do a better job of listening to ourselves? And how do we listen?
What do we listen for when we listen?
Can we be aware of everything at once? Like being the ocean, and not just being in the ocean?
Well, why not?
In this meditation, let’s start using the mechanism of listening to come back to our bodies and explore what we feel, what we actually feel by feeling with our mind and listening.
I welcome your feedback. Thank you
Gregory
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9 -11 Silent meditation
After a brief message about today’s experience, 10 minutes of silence.
Return to your body how ever works best for you.
I am happy to discuss these methods with you in our one on one, at your convenience.
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Ep 13: One Sound
In our previous sessions – meditating in a loud place – we discussed the importance of being able to take your meditation any where – even into a loud space.
Today, we explore going inside, into our bodies to listen for the sound that drives our lives – our heart beat.
Can you hear yours?
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Ep 12: Feel The Air
When in nature, it is an opportunity to listen with our bodies.
It – listening with our bodies – is a skill to develop.
It requires us to zero in on the wind as it travels over our hands – the air from the wind.
Or the feeling of our feet in our shoes.
Feeling only the air over our hands or arms, or the feel of our feet in our shoes, returns us to our bodies.
Returning to our bodies, and staying out of the mind’s many layers of narration, is an essential skill to returning to calm, and to returning to a state of awareness.
Try it.
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Ep 11: Meditating in a Loud Place
So many tell me they do not have time to meditate. Their lives are too busy, too noisy. They seem not to be able to find a quiet place to meditate or time away.
This meditation is a practice of being able to welcome in the background noise and to welcome it in a way that is not disturbing. Background noise can be grounding, for example.
So please enjoy this meditation and tell me what you think.
Namaste.
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EP 10: A Meditation With Our Bodies
Our minds often race. It is natural. When we sit for meditation they get filled with gotta do things, should do, other ideas and soon we are in a trance.
When we are in a trance, sometimes it is like a dream when we drift away and have no idea that we have left our here and now and have fallen into a series of thoughts along a line of thoughts.
We have talked about how to wake up from a trance. Often we just realize that we are off in this dream and say to our selves “oh, look at that, I was off in a dream.”
This meditation however, is an attempt to stay completely in our bodies and discover everything we feel in our body as we walk across Central Park. By staying in our body, we awaken this enormous resource – as a listening post – and shut off our frontal lobe from taking us away from here.
The goal is to stay here and experience everything that is happening HERE.
It can train us to have this resource of our body, as a tool to bring us back when our mind takes us away into a trance or is locked up in anxiety or panic.
Try it and let me know how it works for you.
I hope you enjoy this work.
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EP 8: Their Hands and Their Feet
Recently I visited my mom and dad. I am blessed that they still thrive and during my visit I took the time to massage their feet while they were relaxing.
I often talk too much – as you know – and I felt that this was a way just to be present with them and not talk. In fact, it came to me from a story about a man who was not feeling great and how his friend, an elder, would come every day and massage his feet and not exchange anything more than the tough. The man who was massaged said that of all the people that offered help, the friend who came and massaged him without words was the most helpful visitor of all.
Sometimes the person who needs visiting is us and sometimes the person who needs to be visited, or held or touched is another.
In this meditation, we explore a bit of both.
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