Meditation

Meditation

I try to meditate every day, even if it is just for a few minutes. It relaxes, de stresses and brings me back focused and centered.

Firstly make sure you are comfortable and won’t be disturbed. You can sit quietly or put on some peaceful music. Sometimes I just close my eyes, sometimes I sit in front of a lit candle and focus on the flame. Either way you need to start with your breathing, take several long deep breaths in and out. As you breathe in visualise you are breathing in a pure white cleansing light that fills your body, as you breathe out visualise all the stresses and worries leaving your body. Do this several times until you start to feel calm and at ease. An alternative is to visualise yourself walking down 4 or 5 steps, with each step you get deeper into the meditation, casting off worries as you take each step.

Then the choice is yours – you can either go to the sacred space in your mind if you already have one, or make a sacred space for yourself – visualise somewhere that you feel happy and restful in – a field, a forest, on the beach, at the ocean – some place that you will feel totally at ease in. Over time you can visit this sacred space often and add to the area, you may even find new things appear there on their own. It will be your own space, the place that is special to you, somewhere that you can visualise as your safe haven. This is the place I go to in my meditations last thing at night, this is the place that I sit and go over the days events with my animal spirit guides.

Or, you can use a guided meditation. Either read one over in your mind several times until you are familiar with it before you sit down to meditate and let your mind take you through it once in meditation or I also use my iPod and sit with the earphones in and let the voice on the recording guide me through the meditation. There are several meditations that you can download on this blog and on the Kitchen Witch website. I have also posted one below that you might like to try.

Once you come to the end of your meditation you need to make sure you bring yourself back to reality slowly, coming out of meditation abruptly can cause headaches. Focus on your breathing again, slowly flex your fingers and your toes or use the step method but in reverse, each step taken brings you closer to the real world again.

Meditation is a very useful tool to give you peace for a few moments each day, to release stress and worries and to give you clarity and focus. If you have a problem or an issue that needs some thought try meditating on it.

Crystals are also a useful aid to meditation – a clear quartz is a good choice to focus and channel your energies. Any crystals that have inclusions (imperfections) in them are also useful to use as a visual aid – something to focus on, you may see patterns or images appear that may help guide you to answers that you might seek during your meditation.

One of my favourite meditations is a short grounding and centering exercise that I use before ritual and also if I find myself stressed out during the day:

Tree Meditation

Make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Take several deep breaths in and out, on inhaling visualise a clear white cleansing light entering your body, on exhaling visualise all the stresses and worries leaving your body….

Feel your toes and your feet beginning to stretch, turning into small tree roots that start to bury themselves into warm, soft earth, stretching, reaching down far into the ground. They keep going far down into the soil, down, down far into the earth. Then begin to feel the energy of the earth coming up through those roots, through your feet, up through your legs and throughout your body, filling you with peace, calm and focus.

Then feel your arms stretch out, as if they are the branches of a huge oak tree, reaching out for the sunlight, forming buds and leaves, turning your face up to feel the warmth of the sun.

Once you feel calm and centered, slowly bring your roots back up and your branches back in.

Slowly come back to reality, flexing your fingers and your toes and opening your eyes.

Tansy
x