A simple and ancient technique that you can practice and then build into your own meditation practice. Taken from the ideas behind 'The Secrets of the Golden Flower. Learning to breathe in a backward flowing movement can help your focus and attention, whilst keeping awareness of softening parts of the body.

Backward Flowing Breath

Even the military needs to sleep, and this can be hard when surrounded by noise and stress. With regular practice, you can teach the mind to know that it is time to sleep with this short guided example of how to start your sleeping routine once you are in bed.

US Military Breathing

Making small changes in our diet can have a big impact on our sleep. Taking the time to plan ahead, shop, and cook for sleep can support your wellbeing and contribute to a healthier lifestyle. No need to be thinking that you have to cut out your favorite things, just consuming at different times in the day can help.

Choosing Food and Drink for Sleep

Well-being is not just one thing, it is many small positive steps with different components. We can all make the effort towards a better life, we just need to keep things simple and become more self-compassionate and curious about how to improve our overall state of mind.

Wellbeing Routines

We all have the self-critical voice that gets in the way of progress. We can choose to listen to it in more open-minded ways, even communicate with it in order to help understand its thinking. We can even discover what it is it really needs and help to make that happen. Learn how to befriend it so that it can integrate back into yourself and act in more positive ways.

Dealing With The Self Critic

Resilience starts with self-awareness and taking a look at how we are right now and how we are spending our time. With a little reflection, we can start to make small changes in our routines and lifestyle.

Resilience and self awareness

So often when we are having a tough time emotionally, our minds tend to close down on the problem making it feel so much worse. We need to allow some space for the mind to see some possibility and another way to digest or process the current situation. A wider view.

Managing Difficult Emotions

What can you do when you have a rainy day or an old memory that you would like to resolve. Learn how self-compassion and the RAIN exercise can help you to loosen the grip of negative emotions.

We All Have Rainy Days!

We can drift through life in autopilot mode and never be aware of how our own actions can affect others. Ignorance sneaks in through the back door when we are not paying attention. Some say it is a mental poison. At the end of this short recording, there are three questions to help you notice this negative force that can get in the way.

What Is Ignorance

Nobody can escape negative thinking and it can really have an impact on our mental health and wellbeing when it starts to spiral out of control. understanding that it is not our fault and product of our evolution may help to rationalize them and help us find a little space or balance in our thinking.

How Negative Thought Effect Us

If you think happiness is something to find, consume or possess then you will find it will only bring you the opposite. Happiness is not a thing, it is an experience. An experience that happens when certain factors come together at the moment to give you that feeling. When we are happy we may find that it has involved helping people in some way.

What is happiness?

If you can create an image of a safe place in your mind, you can progress to developing doorways or pathways that you can enter when you meditate or relax. Follow these into news spaces where you can absorb the mind and relax and let go of the body.

Creating Secret Spaces In Your Mind

This is another major skill in the world of mindfulness. The problem is how do we learn how to do it when our minds are so distracted. The solution is to realize you will be distracted and to take a step back and just notice without judging.

How To Be Observant?

We all encounter stress and pressure at some point in our life. Depending on our resilience we can cope or push our bodies too far. We are not computers or machines. We are not designed to constantly deal with pressure. We must give ourselves a chance to rest and recover.

Resilience: 6. Stress And Pressure

Learning to visualize can enhance your meditation practice, and your relaxation time or even support your insomnia when you are restless. Take your time to actively plan out what and where you would like to go and create spaces in your mind that are safe and welcoming. Use imagination to solve problems and gain insight into your own mind and thinking.

Learn To Visualize

There is no rush when it comes to mindfulness meditation. it is not a race and there is no endpoint. We have to learn to slow things down and be curious about what is happening. Avoid the temptation to rush ahead.

Take It Slow And Steady

It is too easy to allow your thoughts to spiral out of control when you cannot sleep. Our minds do take control when we are tired. We can learn ways to calm our thinking down. Taking the time to be mindful or to create suggestions for ourselves.

Thinking About Sleep

Listen to some statistics and information that relates to sleep and how we fall prey to bad sleep and how we can turn things around, making small changes for a better night's sleep. Good solid advice to help you choose what to change.

Lack Of Sleep Will Effect Your Life

We all have to begin somewhere when we set out to visualize within our meditations or relaxation. It does not need to be perfect and there is no need to feel you have to create a clear picture. Even getting a sense of the image is a good enough start. Pick a place you feel safe in and visit in your mind on a regular basis. Repetition brings clarity and safety.

Beginning to Visualize

This can be a revolutionary moment in someone's mindfulness practice. To be able to come to the stage of being able to wish others and yourself well can really support your well-being and release old negative thinking patterns about others and yourself.

Why Loving kindness?

Most mindfulness meditations involve the phrases of intention and motivation at the beginning of the practice. If you are not sure what this is all about then this short talk should explain. it is all about letting the mind know what you are about to do and why you are doing it.

Expectations, Intention And Motivation

Sleep is not a one-off activity that is separate from the rest of life. A good night's sleep involves your active participation with healthy routines throughout the day. keep it simple and get interested in yourself and what you can do to enhance your ability to enjoy better nights of sleep.

Sleep Routines

Listen to Jon explain the reason why you might want to try the mindful compassionate break exercise. Self-compassion is the key to well-being and understanding why we do it can deepen our understanding and practice.

Compassionate Break Conversation

Using our imagination to create a golden light through visualization can bring many benefits to our health and sense of well-being. It is easy to do and develops with practice. Some simple advice on how to do it and also make you won links on how it would benefit you. For some, it may be spiritual and for others, it is a simple tool for relaxation improving our sense of well-being.

The Benefits Of The Golden Light

Why do we need people to tell us that we need to take a break? Are you able to plan some regular short breaks in the working day? It can just be a minute or 30 seconds, can you learn to give yourself permission to stop and rest.

Taking short breaks

When we sit in meditation in the beginning it can be a little frustrating and we can give up too early. Learning to be in the body and move with the body can be a great alternative to just sitting. In fact, we should incorporate it into our routines alongside formal sitting practice.

Informal Movement And Kindness

Establishing your own routines when you work from home can help with stress, efficiency, and productivity. Keep things simple when you try new things to add to your flow of work. Make things accessible and easy to get to whilst making an effort to create a better way for yourself.

Working From Home Routines

Listen to Jon as he discusses the reasons why we might want to practice the body scan. If you are new to meditation then they hear about the benefits might just convince you to have a go.

Body Scan Conversation

Mediation is a life skill and we can fall into the trap of being too passive or too active when we sit. It is finding the middle ground with your breathing, awareness, and attitude. We all have busy minds and we will all fall into the trap of thinking we are failing and not trying hard enough. In the mindfulness world, we learn to drop all of this and be with whatever is going on at the time with kindness and acceptance.

How To Meditate?

So often in life, we encounter daily stress and pressure which build in our minds and bodies. We can be so overstimulated our mind never rests and we can struggle to fall asleep or just relax. In this meditation, we take time to let things be as they are. Not trying to change anything just allowing and learning to let be and let go.

Letting Things Be

Approaching mindfulness meditation with the correct mindset can make all the difference in your ability to learn and also to commit to practicing. This advice is for those that may struggle to settle before playing a meditation track on Aura and also for those who enjoy listening to meditations and would like to deepen and enjoy the practice more. We can be more active before we start to listen to the recording by letting our minds know why and what we intend to do. Motivation and intention are essential components of meditating but also in life too.

How To Approach Mindfulness Meditation

Learning to feel how the body is can be a valuable lesson in developing mindfulness-awareness of the self. If we can start to notice sensations in the body earlier then we can do something about it earlier. For example, addressing pain before it develops into something more. learning to be with our bodies too involves acceptance and letting go. We can develop a better understanding of what is going on in our bodies.

Body Scan

Being able to be at peace in the environment we find ourselves can be difficult. Practicing your meditation where we focus on the people we love and the safety we feel while knowing that we have enough and we can settle down to doing nothing. Opening to what is around us and feeling safe is an essential part of soothing the parasympathetic nervous system.

Opening The Here And Now

When emotions are riding high we can find it hard to regain our composure and be more in the present. Taking a few minutes out to recognize how we are and the realization that other people just like us are also having a tough time can help to give us a little more space from our emotions and difficulties.

Compassionate Break

A simple meditation to use as part of your sleep routine, either in bed or sitting just before you go to bed. Our minds are so busy at the end of the day that we need to learn how to exercise the mind in readiness to sleep. In this simple practice, it is enough just to notice how your mind is and bring the focus back to your breath and body.

Settling The Mind For Sleep

We bring loving-kindness to another first so that we can feel comfortable and create a space to then wish ourselves well. This can be hard as we tend to be more critical towards ourselves rather than be kind. Kindness is key if we want to be more self-aware and allow ourselves to open up to the sensations of loving-kindness. it can be very healing for some or just relaxing when we realize we can talk to ourselves in a kind way.

Loving Kindness For Other And Self

You are taking the time to feel your way in the body and visualize 5 different colors at five different points in the body. This will help you be curious about the effects of color and help you develop visualization and rest in the space around you.

5 Colours

When we direct our attention towards others we shift our focus from ourselves and our own suffering, toward others and actively be with them well and develop feelings of joy towards them. A short exercise when you are feeling a little fragile and self-orientated.

Developing joy in our thinking

Imagine going back in time and taking all the positive qualities of our ancestors and imagined heroes. Taking these images and soaking them up into the body. allowing yourself the chance to experience the ability to let go and to learn to take lessons from our history. Learn this simple method and you can make it longer on your own and in time you may find it easier to meditate for longer sessions in your own practice.

Looking Back At Our Ancestors

Using mindfulness meditation to help us take a short break in the day. Bringing attention to different things and then bringing them all together and resting in that space. Learn to relax and not take it all so seriously, we just do our best to show up and allow the words to guide us.

7 Minute Mindful Break

A gentle introduction to mindfully creating your own inner worlds that you can develop over time and return to over and over again. Learn the process so that you can do these exercises without the need for the support of recordings and then just let your mind go and be creative. Help to answer questions, get advice and insight into situations, and communicate with yourself in new ways.

Visualization for Wellbeing

The mind and body love routines and teaching the mind that preparing ourselves for sleep is a good thing to do for those of us that have trouble getting to sleep or getting back to sleep. Learn to be a little calmer and more caring with ourselves whilst we re-focus our mind on the body, breath, and then sounds and thoughts. Teach to mind not to get involved and to relax.

Sleep Preparation, A Mindful Approach

Take time to sit in your own presence and allow yourself to feel that you are in fact enough in this moment. Get comfortable with your body and learn to be less critical.

I Am Enough

In this short version of loving-kindness, you can explore how it is to send loving phrases to people that you care for. Maybe they are having a difficult time and you are not sure how to help. This is a simple way to allow your mind to be active in positive ways. We can generate positive feelings and hormones which support wellbeing.

Loving Kindness for Others

This is a beginning meditation for anyone starting out and wanting to develop a regular mindfulness meditation practice. Do this every day for a week to teach your mind that you can sit and focus on breathing. It might take longer, but do not rush, there is no race to get anywhere with this. This will form the beginning of any of the meditations as we move forward.

Settling The Mind

We can find ourselves tossing and turning in bed with an active mind that agitates the body. With progressive relaxation, we take control of the body sensations and focus our attention on those sensations and away from the mind.

Progressive Relaxation For Sleeping

We can learn to listen to sounds when we are distracted in our meditation and in daily life. Instead of returning to the breath which is common in a lot of mindfulness practices, here we focus lightly on the sounds around. It can help us learn how to let go and it can help those who struggle with focusing on breathing too much.

Breathing With Sound Support

We all have people in our lives which we dislike for whatever reason. They make us angry or perhaps a little jealous. How can we creatively deal with these people so that we are not trapped by our own emotions and thoughts? Teaching the mind to understand that these people are just like me in that they want to be happy and free from suffering too. Just like me, they want to find ease in their lives. Practice these thoughts through meditation to help free the mind.

Just Like Me

When we start our mindfulness journey we can be overcome with negative thinking. We can counteract this by practicing remembering kind memories. Kindness prompts oxytocin to be produced in the body. This is the natural antidote to stress hormones and adrenaline. We ask the questions of what kindness feels like to give to others, to be received from others, and to give kindness to ourselves. For many, there is a realization that we need to offer more kindness for ourselves.

Memories of Kindness

This is a meditation for bedtime, teach your mind to focus on breathing and body sensation, and spaciousness as a way to help you to develop a more positive sleep routine. Learn to allow distractions to be there as well as to let go into the space around. You will not be trying to get to sleep you are just opening up to lying there in your bed, with no expectation or striving to get off to sleep. Learn how to be softer in your approach with yourself when it is time for bed.

Mindful Sleep Preparation

Visualize the qualities of a mountain, ocean, wind, and the sky. Learning to locate those qualities in different parts of the body can enable us to go deeper into relaxation or meditation. The mind like things to play with, so we give it visuals it can relate to and we can breathe without too much distraction.

Body Like A Mountain

In this 15-minute progressive mindfulness body scan, we imagine filling the room with golden light and then slowly bringing it into our bodies from the feet and towards the head. We learn to let go and to follow the light inside our bodies, relaxing and noticing how it feels. We are not forcing ourselves to get to sleep or giving ourselves any expectations. Just permission to lie here, breathe, and be embraced by the calm loving golden light, falling deeper and deeper and opening our bodies to relaxation.

Following The Golden Light For Sleep

Getting distracted in our meditation is part of the whole experience. Learning to focus on our breathing can support us in keeping a little more focused and also teach the mind how and what to focus on when we do get a little lost in our head. Regular gentle practice.

Breath As A Mindfulness Support

We get lost in our thoughts and can get distracted by them and other people. We can live for years and not realize that we are just reacting to the things around us and never really stopping to take in the present moment and to think for ourselves. This short story will help to refocus and to learn how to avoid too much distraction. Take the time to just sit and observe what is going on.

The Hungry Seagull

Sometimes our mind needs to understand that it can learn from just listening to stories. Milton Erikson was an expert at telling stories and in this short story, we hear how he learned to sleep in a busy factory full of noise. Sometimes it is best not to put ourselves under pressure and so this recording might be best listened to in different environments and times of the day. It is not about falling to sleep it is about learning to fall asleep.

The Famous Milton Erikson

Listen to how a young disruptive clown gets into trouble at the circus and how he turns this all around when he is befriended by the lion tamer. He learns to get in touch with his feelings and how to deal with them, he learns about kindness and being with people.

Clowning Around

You can build resilience by creating the right conditions for it to strengthen and grow. It is not about making grand gestures and big plans, it is about small meaningful actions on a daily basis.