Ensology Course Enrollment
Welcome!
You’re now enrolled in ‘Making Meditation a Habit’
You’ll receive your login details and purchase receipt shortly,
along with your first email from the course.
Thank you for your purchase.
You’ll receive your login details and purchase receipt shortly,
along with your first email from the course.
Thank you for your purchase.
Welcome back for the final lesson in your 3 keys to Meditation Mini Course!
How did you find the breathing relaxation exercise from the 2nd Key?
Did you get a chance to try the abdominal breathing exercise from your bonus lesson?
You’ll get such great benefits from both exercises, and they don’t take long.
Hit reply on the email you just got from me and let me know how you found the practices.
So this lesson is easy to describe, but difficult to do.
It applies to almost any skill that’s worth learning… And we all have trouble with it.
To really ‘get’ meditation, to get the benefits from a meditation practice that I’ve talked about, you need to do one thing.
Meditate regularly.
The real benefits of meditation are only revealed through consistent practice.
And for virtually everyone reading this, the only way you’re going to regularly meditate is if you form a meditation habit.
If you’re expecting to rely on willpower alone to stick to your meditation practice I’ve got some bad news for you.
It’s not going to work.
Your willpower is a finite resource, something that most of us quickly exhaust throughout our regular day.
Your willpower is constantly tested, all the time.
Your willpower is challenged when you feel tired after you wake up 10 minutes early to meditate, and it’s just so much easier to hit snooze.
Your willpower is challenged when you have the choice between meditating and falling onto your sofa and switching off in front of your TV.
And just before you go to bed, your willpower is challenged when you look at your meditation cushion but all you can think about is how much you want to go to sleep.
So, without a plan, your willpower isn’t going to be enough to make sure you meditate regularly.
Having some command you tell yourself, like – “I have to meditate everyday” – won’t help either.
It’ll just make your meditation feel like a chore, not the sacred, nourishing practice that can change your life.
If meditation is something you have to do, it’ll always be an effort. It’ll always be a drain on your already drained willpower.
And eventually it’ll be something that you stop doing altogether.
However, if your meditation is a habit, something you just ‘do’ everyday, you will do it.
You won’t exhaust your willpower.
You will see huge benefits from your meditation practice.
So the problem is, getting from a place where meditation isn’t a habit, like now, to where meditation is a habit.
A huge frustration with forming any positive habit is that you don’t get to see the positive effects of your ‘new’ habit right away.
You only get the rewards after you’ve put in the time, and not a moment before.
Say you join a gym because you want to get stronger.
When you walk in for the first time, you don’t expect to to lift a lot of weight.
When you first start, you experience pain and frustration, without much gain.
But if you can just hang in there, you’ll see results.
You’ll get stronger.
Guaranteed.
That’s the thing about something like strength training, you get tangible results in not much time at all.
Once you experience these results, it makes it so much easier to stick to your training, and, eventually make it a habit.
Unfortunately with meditation, the results don’t seem to arrive as quickly.
When you start out, the results seem intangible.
You might ask yourself, ‘I think I feel different, but do I?’
You may meditate every day for a week and not feel that different, not feel that your mind is any quieter during your practice, or in your normal life.
You may even find that your mind becomes more restless during your meditations, with your inner chatter growing into a roar as you try to sit quietly.
So many people claim – “I tried to meditate but I couldn’t do it!”
But the reality is, if they really did sit down and focus their attention, they actually ‘did’ meditate.
They just didn’t manage to calm their mind very much.
And the reason their mind hasn’t calmed down is they haven’t consistently practiced meditation!
Out of all the fascinating things scientists are finding out about the effects of meditation, these studies are the ones that amaze me the most.
Did you know that your meditation practice can have a positive effect on your genes?
Researchers have found that mindfulness based meditation can cause quick changes in the expression of genes associated with inflammation.
They found that meditating turns down the expression of so called pro-inflammatory genes that modern pharmaceutical drugs target in an effort to reduce inflammation.
This is pretty amazing in itself, but meditation’s effects on our genes goes further.
Current research suggests that meditation seems to combat cellular aging!
First, a quick biology lesson.
DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) is the large molecule that carries the biological instructions for every living thing on Earth.
DNA is made up of lots of shorter sections called genes.
Inside the nucleus of each of our cells, we have chromosomes. Chromosomes are long, tightly packed DNA molecules.
At the end of each of our chromosomes, there’s a kind of biological ‘cap’ called a telomere.
Telomeres protect the ends of our chromosomes from wear and tear, helping prevent them from becoming frayed and damaged at their ends.
This protects the vital information contained within our DNA.
Telomeres have been of great interests to geneticists for some time as it seems that telomere length has a direct relationship with how we age. Basically, they’ve found a direct correlation between having shorter telomeres and having a shorter lifespan.
Amazingly, scientists have found that practicing meditation seems to cause telomeres to lengthen!
This research is still in it’s early stages, but it suggests that practicing meditation can help lengthen your lifespan by directly affecting the health of your DNA.
A pretty amazing reason why we all should be meditating regularly!
I can tell you about all the positive effects of meditation.
I can list the scientific studies, I can give you my personal positive experiences, but at the end of the day, it’s in your hands and yours alone if you actually go through with your practice.
The only way you’ll get all these marvelous benefits is by having a daily meditation schedule, your own daily meditation habit.
But please, don’t be discouraged!
There are things you can do to make it easier to create this habit, and I am excited to share some with you here.
I am a big believer in using the minimum effort for maximum results.
As humans we’re actually hard wired to function like this. So when we make things unnecessarily hard for ourselves, it’s no wonder we struggle to make significant, meaningful changes in our lives.
To make meditation into a habit, to make it a part of your regular life, there are many things that you can do to help yourself.
But the best advice I can give you is to get out of your own way. Make it as easy as possible for you to meditate and you’ll be much more likely to do it.
More specifically, here’s a few examples of what you can do:
– Set a regular meditation time – scheduling meditation to a specific time of the day will help you come back on a daily basis.
– Create a meditation space – having a regular meditation place will help you form your meditation habit.
– Choosing a time and a place to meditate where you’re not likely to be disturbed will also reinforce your meditation habit. Your meditation sessions will be more successful without distractions, so you’ll be more likely to keep meditating.
Like I said, get out of your own way, make it as easy as possible for you to meditate, and you will succeed.
Today we’re going to apply all we’ve learned in this course and do a 5 minute meditation.
To start, I want you to put aside some time today for yourself when you’re not going to be disturbed.
Find a nice quiet place to do your meditation.
Then, remember the 1st Key – You don’t have to try and stop your thoughts!
Remember to remain detached from any thoughts that come up while you meditate.
When you realize you’ve become distracted by your thoughts, gently bring your attention back to the focus of your meditation.
Before you start your meditation, practice the breathing exercise from the 2nd Key’s lesson to help you calm down and relax.
Now, time to start the meditation itself.
The focus of your meditation will be your breath.
So, when you’re ready, gently shift your attention to focus on your breath.
You can focus on the physical sensations you experience as you breathe, or you can focus on the gentle rhythm of your breathing.
Just remember to keep your focus on your breath for the entire meditation session.
As we’re just starting out on creating a long term meditation practice, keep your meditation sessions to a period of 5 minutes for now.
5 minutes may not seem very long, but if you’re dealing with a really distracted mind it can feel like forever!
It’s best to start slowly, focusing on building a solid foundation so you’re more likely to continue into the future.
To make it easier for you, I’ve put together a guided 5 minute breath meditation for you to use. You can stream the meditation directly below or click the download link and save it onto whatever device you like.
To get the most benefit, try and get in at least 1 meditation session per day, every day.
Time to start meditating. Take a deep breath and dive in!
Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of my ‘3 Keys to Meditation’ mini course!
I hope you’ve found the course helpful and you’re feeling like you can start your meditation practice with confidence.
You deserve all the benefits you can experience from meditating and I hope that I’ve helped you on the path to get there.
I’ll be in touch in a few days with some suggestions on the next steps you can take on your meditation journey.
But, until then, it’s been a real pleasure to have had your attention throughout this course.
Good luck with your practice and I’ll speak with you soon.
Your inner world waits patiently to be explored, and your breath holds the key…
– Simon Boylan
I first read about abdominal breathing from a second hand book I bought at university 20 years ago.
It was this little purple book on esoteric yoga called ‘Raja Yoga’.
I loved it, all the talk of secret mystical abilities available to someone when they train in yoga had me hooked.
However, the thing that really changed my life from that book was how it coached me on shifting the position of my breath.
Naturally as we age, our breath becomes more shallow. This means we don’t take in as much oxygen.
We slowly stop breathing deeply, not using our lungs to their full capacity.
Let’s do a quick test.
Put one hand on your chest.
Then put your other hand on your belly.
Now, breathe normally.
Don’t try to control your breath, just breathe as you usually do.
Now, which hand moves more?
For most of us, unless we’ve been trained, the hand on your chest will move more.
The difference is often so much, that for many of us, the hand on our belly doesn’t move at all!
If you have a chance, watch a baby breathe.
Their whole belly puffs out like a balloon, naturally breathing deeply.
Babies naturally breathe with their belly, as a natural extension of getting their nutrition from the umbilical cord when they were in the womb.
If you look at the anatomy of our lungs, when we only breathe with our chest we’re not using the full capacity of our lungs.
The way to fully, deeply breathe, is to do what’s called diaphragmatic breathing or abdominal breathing.
This is the breathing that is taught to singers, martial artists, qigong and yoga practitioners to fully utilize their lung capacity.
When you expand your belly out when you breathe in, you use your diagphraghm to draw air deep down into the bottom of your lungs, invigorating your blood with oxygen.
Abdominal breathing is powerful. It will bring you both energy and relaxation.
Make sure you try it today.
The best way to practice abdominal breathing is by doing the exercise I asked you to do before.
With one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly, breathe slowly and deeply, but try to move the hand on your belly through your breathing.
Don’t force this process.
It’ll feel strange at first.
Just try and remain relaxed and use your attention to guide your breath.
You can combine this with the breathing relaxation exercise you learnt in the 2nd key to Meditation lesson.
Practice abdominal breathing a little each and you’ll be amazed by how quickly you’ll start to naturally just do it!
Your body will quickly remember to breathe like this.
Good luck with this and I’ll see you with the 3rd Key to Meditation soon!
For breath is life, so if you breathe well, you will live long on earth.
– Sanskrit Proverb
Welcome back to my mini course on the 3 keys to a successful meditation practice!
How did you go with the exercise of checking in and noticing your thoughts?
Did you find it hard to stop for a moment and observe what was happening inside you?
When you were observing, how easy was it to be the observer, and not get caught up in your thoughts?
Hit reply on the email you just got from me and let me know how you found the practice.
So, in the last lesson we learnt the first key to meditation – meditation is not about stopping your thoughts.
Meditation is about becoming a peaceful observer of your inner world.
To to do this, you’re going to need to focus your attention – the second key to meditation.
In virtually all meditation practice, you pick something to focus your attention on.
You sit down, relax your body and mind, and shift your focus onto the thing you have chosen to use in your meditation.
Holding your attention on your chosen object is the goal of your meditation.
But what about when your attention gets distracted by random thoughts from your mind?
Don’t worry when it does. It does for us all, even the most experienced meditators!
This is the other reason your attention is so important.
It’s only through your attention that you notice you’ve drifted away from the focus of your meditation.
And when you notice this, you can then refocus your attention on the object of your meditation.
Your attention is the thing you have most control over in your life, even though I know it doesn’t always feel like it!
And using your attention wisely is the thing that’s most important in transforming your life for the better.
Your ‘mind’, your ‘ego’ or whatever name you want to call it – the thing that actually produces your thoughts – has convinced most of us that it ‘IS’ us!
Yes, your mind is a powerful tool you can use to positively shape your life.
But, your mind can also hurt you when it’s allowed to direct your life by default.
When your mind’s in charge, your entire life is driven by unconscious habits and beliefs. These are beliefs you’ve picked up from your childhood, your parents, your friends, beliefs you may not even consciously believe in!
When your attention is consumed by your mind’s constant stream of thoughts, you’re just a witness to your life, with your mind reacting to the world.
This is one of the most powerful benefits of meditation.
By meditating, by training your attention, you find that you have more control over your life, more control over your decisions and their outcomes.
This puts you in the best position possible to start creating that life you’ve always dreamed of.
Did you know that meditation can help with the symptoms of heart and cardiovascular disease?
Researchers have found that meditation positively affects hormone levels in the body, helps regulate blood pressure, protects against vascular damage, enhances insulin resistance and promotes other positive changes on a cellular level that are associated with the health of the body’s cardiovascular system.
Helping people that already suffer from problems with their heart and also helping prevent problems happening in people that have healthy cardiovascular systems, these studies give even more reasons how meditation can have a positive effect on our health and well-being.
One thing that can make it really difficult to focus your attention during meditation, or really focus on anything, is when you feel agitated and stressed.
It’s much easier to focus your attention and not get caught up in random thoughts when you’re relaxed and calm.
The funny thing is, training your attention through meditation will help you relax your body and mind, making it easier to focus your attention, which then makes it easier to meditate!
It’s what you call a virtuous cycle (as opposed to a vicious cycle).
In today’s exercise that I’ll get to in a minute, we’ll be doing some focused breathing to help train your attention and create a sense of peace and relaxation.
This focused breathing will help you relax, help focus your attention, which then helps with your meditation practice.
Slow, deliberate breathing has been used as a method for calming the mind for centuries.
Many different spiritual and religious practices use this important power that we carry with our breath.
Sayings like “Take a deep breath” and “slow down, take a breath” reference this wisdom we all have, but don’t act on often enough.
Now, modern science has caught up with this traditional wisdom, giving us scientific explanations on exactly why focused breathing helps our body and mind become relaxed.
Slow, focused breathing stimulates the body’s parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).
The PNS is responsible for your body’s relaxation, rest and healing systems.
At the same time, slow, focused breathing actually ‘turns down’ your body’s sympathetic nervous system (SNS).
The SNS is associated with your body’s fight or flight response. This is the process that activates when we have to suddenly run or fight for our lives. This increases our heart rate, breathing rate and floods our body with adrenaline.
What we call the feeling of ‘stress’ in our modern world is when our fight or flight response is incorrectly stuck in the ‘on’ position, without a break or release.
Say we come across an angry grizzly bear in the wild and our fight or flight system is activated.
When we either fight or run from the bear (I’d recommend running!), the vigorous activity uses up the stress hormones released during the confrontation.
Then, after the danger has passed, we return to our normal, relaxed state.
But for most of us now, ‘fight or flight’ comes on because of pressure we feel from work, or from our home, or because of thoughts or expectations we put on ourselves.
We never escape our stress, because we carry the main source of our stress around with us, inside our own heads.
Lucky for us, we each have powerful tools we can use, whenever we want, to turn this off and relax our body and mind.
These tools are our attention and our breath – both trained and developed in meditation.
Today you’re going to learn a powerful breathing exercise that will bring you into a state of deep relaxation, helping you focus your attention when you sit down to meditate.
And it’s as simple as breathing out longer than you breathe in.
To start, take a moment and close your eyes.
Breathe in through your nose while counting to 6.
Pause briefly.
Then, breathe out through your mouth, this time counting to 8.
Repeat this exercise at least 4 times.
Make sure the pace of your counting is consistent, so breathing out is taking longer than breathing in.
If this is too long, breathe in to a count of 4 and breathe out to a count of 6.
It’s OK to adjust the count if you need to, just keep the out breath 25-35% longer than the in breath.
Notice how you’re feeling before the exercise and notice how you feel after doing your breaths.
Notice anything that’s changed with your thoughts and how you’re feeling.
Do this at least twice a day over the next few days.
Good luck with your practice over the next few days and I’ll be in contact soon with the final lesson!
I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.
– Mahatma Gandhi