In this practice, we explore one way to bring mindfulness to movement with a Walking Meditation, where we rest our attention on the sensations of walking. To help us to do this, we slow the process of walking right down, so it’s no longer as automatic as it normally is, and the sensations are not evolving as rapidly. This practice came become just as significant a part of your personal practice as any sitting meditation.

Mindful Walking Meditation

A short meditation that is intended to help you to connect up with the wisdom contained in your whole body. We often use phrases such as ‘my mind is telling me one thing, but my heart is telling me something else’, or talk about having ‘gut feelings’. Now neuroscience has shown that neurons exist not only in the brain but also in the heart and gut, naming the latter two as the cardiac brain and the enteric brain. This practice can help you to connect up with the thoughts in your mind, your heartfelt values and your gut intuitions, to create an expanded awareness of the wisdom in your body, whatever situation you find yourself in. Follow this practice a few times and you will soon find that you can quickly guide yourself through it when faced with a rapid decision, or choose to spend more time with it, exploring the wisdom and intelligence of your whole body.

Thoughts-Values-Intuitions Meditation

This short meditation practice can be helpful at times when the mind is really active, agitated or restless. By engaging the mind in both following the breath in & out, and also counting each breath up to twenty-one, the mind is encouraged to become calmer and more focussed. However, our intention is merely to encourage the mind, not to force it, and so we are approaching the practice with a sense of non-striving, of allowing the mind to be as it is; if it is willing to settle, that’s fine, if not, that’s fine too – we simply notice it’s activity. If you become distracted and lose track of counting at any point, or if you reach twenty-one, simply begin again at one, and any time you wish to, simply let go of counting and observe the breath.

21-Breaths Meditation

In moments of difficulty, this brief practice can make a difference: We acknowledge the difficulty, we recognize how this connects us to others, and we turn towards our experience with kindness. As a result, we no longer feel alone and isolated and can begin to turn towards our experience with kindness and acceptance.

Self-Compassion Break

A recording intended to gently encourage the onset of sleep, allowing the mind and body to become in sync with one another, slowing down, relaxing, letting go, and drifting into sleep. Photo by Lux Graves on Unsplash

Encouraging Sleep

Intended to help us to embody mindfulness and deepen our practice, this Lake meditation differs from the majority of Mindfulness Meditations by using guided imagery: Rather than paying attention to our experience in the present moment, we imagine a scene that in some way expresses the nature of mindfulness, and then nurture these qualities within ourselves. Photo by Mark Harpur on Unsplash This meditation can be deeply calming and relaxing, so keep in mind the intention is to embody mindfulness and to deepen our meditation practice, and so if relaxation and calmness occur, let them be a pleasant bonus, rather than a state we’re striving to achieve.

The Lake Meditation

The 3-Stage Breathing Space meditation is ideal for bringing your meditation practice into your daily life, and this ‘responsive’ version is intended for those challenging moments. As this is a mindfulness practice, the intention is not to avoid the difficult thoughts, feelings or sensations, but to bring your mindfulness skills into this moment; shifting out of autopilot and really being present. Once you have become familiar with the structure of this meditation (and the standard 3-Stage breathing space, which has the same basic structure), try to practice it by guiding yourself through it several times a day. You can spend as long as you wish on each stage, from a few breaths to a few minutes or more. Then you’ll be able to use this mini meditation at anytime you find it helpful to bring a mindful moment into your day. This practice is taught on the Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy course, and I’ve found many participants find this version particularly helpful.

3-Stage Breathing Space - Responsive

A really valuable practice that can reveal a great deal about how our minds work: Labelling, making judgments, creating stories, clinging to pleasant things and turning away from whatever it judges to be unpleasant. This may be why, in some traditions, Mindfulness of Sound is given almost the same prominence as Mindfulness of Breath. Note that the intention here is to be open to whatever sounds are present in the moment, rather than choosing a sound we like, such as music. Sounds of nature, sounds of a busy city, industrial noise, children playing, or even an air conditioning unit, all are perfect backdrops for this practice, none better than the other. Once you have some experience with the practice, perhaps you might choose to deliberately bring it to more challenging sounds, such as a neighbour’s car alarm, this can often be when the greatest transformations occur.

Mindfulness of Sound

Mindfulness of Sound - 15mins

This practice is a truly a foundational mindfulness meditation, and a great way to get out of your head and into your body. It’s the first meditation participants on 8-week courses such as Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction encounter, with a 45 minute Body Scan in the first session, after which they are invited to practice this each day between sessions, so please don’t be put off by the length of this recording, which also includes plenty of guidance for beginners. The Body Scan has certain characteristics that set it slightly apart from many other mindfulness meditations; notably the way attention is repeatedly moved through the body, rather than remaining fixed or open, and it’s also typically practiced in a lying down posture (although, it can be done seated too). Ideally, make the Body Scan a central part of your regular practice routine, it’s likely to help you to develop greater regulation of your attention, and be more able to open up to body sensations with a compassionate, non-judging and accepting attitude. (Note the distinction between this mediation and practices such as ‘Breath & Body’ where there is no element of moving attention around the body, i.e. scanning).

Body Scan Meditation (Guided by the Breath)

These attitudes are the foundations of Mindfulness, they both reflect the way that practice is approached, and also what attitudes are cultivated by it. Qualified mindfulness teachers are assessed on their embodiment of the attitudinal foundations, and there’s a good reason for this; this quality of embodiment has been shown to make a significant difference to the success of courses such as Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. This important ingredient is difficult to incorporate into situations without any face-to-face interaction, so this recording is being offered as a way of helping Aura subscribers to consider the significance of attitudes such as acceptance, non-striving, non-judging, letting be, beginner’s mind, patience, trust, kindness and compassion, and how they relate to mindfulness.

The Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness [Info]

Breath, Body, Sounds, and Thoughts are the four stages of mindful attention within this meditation. This sitting practice is ideal for people who have already gained some practice with meditations on the breath and body; on a Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy course, this meditation is introduced in session four, halfway through the course. It’s a meditation ideally suited to deepening your practice at any time, or keeping you connected with your practice, for example, if you tend to sit for short periods during the week and do longer practices such as this one at the weekends.

Four-Stage Meditation

This exercise provides a way to experientially engage with mindfulness outside of formal meditation practices, and helps us to cultivate a new way of relating to our experience, by bringing ‘beginner’s mind’ to the way we’re paying attention: Seeing things as if for the first time. This is an alternative to the well-known ‘Raisin Exercise’, and shows how we can bring a mindful attitude towards any object or experience. At the end of the exercise there’s an invitation to bring mindfulness to a routine daily activity. This is a wonderful way to begin extending mindfulness right into your day-to-day life; switching off the autopilot and really being present, moment-by-moment, throughout the routine activity, whilst bringing that quality of ‘beginner’s mind’ to the way you’re paying attention.

Mindfulness of the Hand Exercise

The shorter length of this recording is intended to help you to fit this important practice into even the busiest days of your life. Making space for this practice may just help you to create more space in your whole day, and, importantly, create more space for you to be present in your life. Breath meditations can help to develop greater regulation of attention, and insight into the ways our minds work. Remember, the intention here is to pay attention to the breath (Although you may indeed find it relaxing), and expect your mind to wander away for the breath; all minds do this. It is the process of noticing this distraction, remembering your intention, and coming back to the breath that helps to develop the psychological skill of attention

10-Minute Breath Meditation

Starting with some gentle stretches, this meditation encourages us to open up to sensations in the body in a non-judgemental way, whilst also noticing any tendency of our mind to strive or push ourselves in ways that are unhelpful. The second part of the practice consists of a sitting meditation with attention on the breath and body. The recording closely follows the format for the practice as it’s taught on Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy courses, and it can be considered as a foundational mindfulness practice, suitable for beginners or experienced meditators alike.

Stretching and Breath Meditation

Intended for people who have already experienced the ‘Four-Stage’ Breath, Body, Sounds and Thoughts meditation, and would like to practice with a version that contains less guidance during the stages. (If you haven’t tried this yet, it’s listed on my channel as ‘Four Stage Meditation’). As your meditation experience begins to build, you will likely find that too much guidance can become distracting in itself, and so you’ll benefit from more ‘space’ in the recording. I will also be offering an unguided version, with bells marking the spaces for each stage, intended for people who already have plenty of meditation experience.

Four Stage [Less Guidance]

For experienced meditators: following a brief introduction, this recording has bells sounding at ten-minute intervals, creating for meditation spaces and ending with three bells in succession. You can use this to guide yourself through a four-stage meditation on the Breath, Whole Body, Sounds then Thoughts, or simply use it to time any self-guided meditation practices of 10, 20, 30, or 40 minutes. Photo by Rob King on Unsplash