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The goal of this meditation is to train your mind to sustain focus on a particular thing that enables you to disconnect from the normal 'merry-go-round' of thought streams. The focus can be the breath, a mantra such as 'I am love, I am divine' or maybe an image that is comfortable and calming to you such as a rose or candle flame etc..

• For the purpose of this meditation I will use the breath as my focus.
  
• Find a comfortable space either sitting on a chair, both feet flat on the floor legs not crossed.
  
• Take 3 to 5 deep breaths centering the body and keeping the spine straight.
• As you start to relax, close your eyes and bring your awareness to the feel of your breath as it comes into your chest.
• Feel it expand your chest and focus on it, and feel it release again as you breath out and focus on it.
• Dont worry if you lose your focus, because you will!
• Allow your thoughts to come but gently take your focus back to the sensation of the breath, not judging or getting attached to any thoughts.
• DONT at this point become frustrated with yourself for thinking!! Just let go of any thoughts and regain your focus.
• Keep breathing in a natural way and each time your mind trails off to thoughts, let them go and bring your focus calmly back to the breath.
• When your ready before opening your eyes, bring your focus back to the body and the awareness of the room you are in.
  
• Do this for 15 to 20 minutes a day building up to 45 minutes if you can.

Mindfulness is not about not thinking, it is about training yourself to become detached from thought streams. Your brain doesnt know if you are meditating or going shopping, it just knows you are thinking 24/7 !! So when you meditate and learn to detach, you no longer give energy to the thoughts that arise. When this happens the neural networks that your thoughts travel through become weaker without constant thought rehersal and therefore start to break down. This means you will be reacting less to your thoughts, and becoming calmer = changing your state of being. 

Once you are practicing mindfulness meditation you can also start to practice a waking meditation in your daily life, as thoughts arise become aware of them and try to change them to a positive thought. Through doing this again you weaken the neural networks that support your negative thinking, stressful behaviour and other such unsupportive acts.

To work on expanding the feeling of love in yourself and towards others you can practice the following meditation:

• Find a comfortable space either sitting or laying down (if you won't fall asleep!! ) and take 3 to 5 deep breaths to relax the body and mind.
• Allow a feeling of love to appear in the centre of your chest and see it as white pink or pale green light, the latter two colours are the vibration of the heart chakra.  This feeling will be a subtle energy feeling, more of warmth & radiance, rather than the intense 'relationship love' that is felt towards a partner or children.
• Allow this feeling to slowly spread outwards through your body until every part is full and radiant with this energy/feeling.
• As you are aware of this feeling in your whole body, focus in closer and allow this energy/feeling to permeate every cell in your body, until you are a beacon of love and light, pulsating from within.
• Now start to expand this energy/feeling outwards until it fills the area or room you are in.
• Continue to expand this enegry/feeling until it fills the town that you are in.
• Imagine that this energy/feeling has no limitations and expand it out over the country and then the planet.
• As you expand outwards to all places, imagine the centre of your heart connecting with all beings, humans, animals, plants and the planet.
• Stay in this state for around 15 minutes and enjoy your expanded heart.
• Now begin to draw your energy back in towards you, keeping your heart expanded and love-filled.
• Once you are back to focus on your body and heart, allow your energy to settle within you as you feel comfortable.
  
• Take a couple more deep breaths and open your eyes.

You can also use this technique to send loving radiant energy to others from a distance

This version of Loving Heart Meditation is tailored for use with children..

• Laying down together with your childs right palm on your left palm, take 3 to 5 deep breaths to relax the body and mind.

All instructions from here you will be saying out loud, at each stage you need to go fairly slow and just check the child is keeping up and can 'see/feel' what your talking about...

• In the middle of your chest see a lovely pinky white light, a very warm and fuzzy feeling, becoming a nice ball that surrounds your heart.
  
• Ok, make this ball start to grow, getting bigger and bigger slowly spreading outwards covering all of your body like a blanket, really warm and safe and loving.
• Now before we go further, imagine a circle of people you would like to send love to, friends, family, pets etc. You are standing in the middle of this circle, sending love to them, and also letting them send it to you.
• Ok say thankyou to the circle of people and then continue making your ball bigger.
  
• Your making the ball bigger and bigger until it fills your bedroom (or wherever you are laying down) then your whole house until the light moves outside.
• Keep on stretching the ball until it fills your area then the town that you are in.
• (Check your child is still with the process) Ok imagine that the ball is still getting biggger and bigger out over the country and then the planet.
• Now our pink warm energy ball is covering all places, imagine that all beings, humans, animals, plants are happy and safe.
• Also see that you are happy and safe and full of love.
• Ok we are going to come back now. Start pulling your pink energy ball back into the planet, now just covering the country, then just covering the town. (let your child tell you about the ball shrinking if they want to)
  
• Now your ball is back in the room. Pull your pink ball back into your heart and just feel the ball there for a moment. Just feeling happy, warm and settled.
• Take a couple more deep breaths then open your eyes.
  

Many times in our hectic lives it is easy to become 'ungrounded'. The tendancy to function mostly in our heads is a common problem with so many pressures and may result in over stretched energy resources, spending lots of time getting not much done!  A feeling of 'spaciness' or of not having feet firmly on the ground can easily manifest so a simple grounding meditation daily can be of great help.

As you learn to strengthen your connection to the earth, you will find that things become more easy to manifest, you will feel like you have more energy to complete tasks and more supported in your body. Once you are familiar with this meditation you will easily feel when you have become ungrounded again and can do a shorter visualisation as an 'upkeep' measure.

• Find a comfortable position with feet firmly on the floor and spine straight allowing the freeflow of energy.

• Close your eyes and take in a couple of deep breaths pulling the breath down as far towards the stomach as possible

• As you relax just let go of any thoughts or body stress that you notice.

• Visualise a ball of light energy above your head and draw a shower of photons (light) down from that ball into the top of your head through the crown chakra.(See chakra page for more info on chakras)
  

• Pull this energy down through the centre of your body, allowing it to expand so that you feel a strong column of light moving down through your spine encompassing your whole body.

• As you pull this energy down through your body, see it move down through your legs and through the bottoms of your feet sending it into the earth like roots of a tree.

• At this point imagine a tree behind you, with its solid supportive trunk against your spine. (A really old lovely tree sending its energy of strength to you )

• Focusing back on the energy from your feet, send this down as far as you can visualise through the layers of the planet until you reach the iron core. Imagine your energy is attaching to this core like a magnet.

• Again visualise more energy now running through your central column.
  

• Now pull energy up from the earth and into your root chakra, as you do this you should visualise a deep rich red colour, the colour of the base/root chakra.

• Continue to do this until you have a real sense of connection through your feet to the earth and the earth to your root chakra.

• Now allow the column of light to retract back up through the body and back into the ball of energy, leaving your energy strong and vital.

• Before you open your eyes just become aware of your feet on the flor, your arms legs fingers etc and move them around and get a sense of the room around you.

• Do this slowly, and when you are ready open your eyes

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." - Schweitzer