I made this track specifically for a couple of my patients who are struggling with neck pain and headaches, to remind them of what we did in the office.
It teaches a somewhat unusual technique for engaging the abdominal muscles while breathing so that the neck and shoulder muscles can relax. That often helps the head and neck feel more comfortable.
If you are not one of my patients you are welcome to listen, but please do not use it if it causes discomfort.
I have had a number of people tell me recently that they can’t meditate because they can’t empty their mind. Fortunately you can meditate and benefit from meditating without emptying your mind. (Personally I think that emptying the mind is useless or worse.)
Our mind does a lot of wonderful things for us, and it also does things that are not so helpful. Instead of emptying the mind, meditation allows us to explore our mind and cultivate helpful processes so our mind does more helpful things and fewer unhelpful things.
The following meditation is a brief introduction to this idea of exploring the mind.
Think of a garden. If the garden is full of weeds, then it is not very helpful. However, emptying the garden is not helpful either. We need to cultivate the garden, making the environment more conducive to growing flowers, fruits and vegetables and caring for those plants. Continue reading We Meditate to Explore the Mind, NOT Empty It
I have had a couple of patients in 12-step recovery working on a closer relationship with their Higher Power. They were having trouble with the sense of distance that the words “Higher Power” created in that relationship. Their Higher Power was up there and didn’t really want to be bothered.
Another way of looking at this is that this presence wants a close and intimate relationship with you. We can instead call it a Holy Presence or HP for short. This relationship is supposed to be close, friendly, casual and loving. You might think of your HP as someone who enjoys communicating with you, in ways like the texts and photos that you might send to close friends or family.
When we cultivate this kind of relationship we are much less likely to feel alone. We also get used to listening to that presence and allowing it to have a healthy influence on what we are attracted to, how we treat ourselves and others and our choices.
This relationship, an intimate and ongoing relationship with a sacred presence, can benefit us even if we do not have an addiction.
This is not a guided meditation but rather a soothing background that can be used while meditating, for relaxation, or for going to sleep.
I have had people tell me that natural ocean sounds sometimes have the waves crashing too fast or too loudly for them to relax to. This is a synthesized sound with the waves breaking about three times per minute.
I can make some changes if you have requests.
For high quality recordings of nature sounds I like Karl Hamilton’s work.
This audio track is a guided meditation to help you disengage from repetitive thoughts, especially those about comfort food.
This audio track is a guided meditation to help you feel a sense of comfort and a sense of being with a nurturing presence.
