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Welcome to the Umatter Meditation Series

By Ned Burwell

What is meditation

• The practice of meditation is resting your attention inward toward to the most silent part of yourself.
• Meditation helps you transcend your mind, by doing so you can achieve a heighten awareness of yourself and your surroundings.
• Meditation is a simple practice of watching your mind. You let go of the urge to talk back to the thoughts dropping into you.
• It makes you a witness or an observer.

Meditation is Not

• Meditation is not for controlling the mind, rather it’s the practice of surrendering and letting go of your mind.
• Often people drift into thinking and daydreaming while meditating, when this happens you are no longer meditating.

The Benefits of Meditation

• On the surface, meditation can help you relax but as we go deeper into your practice, it becomes a tool to discover consciousness itself.
• The benefits of meditation can very depending on the depth in which one can go into the silence and hold their focus.
• It develops greater mental alertness/focus. 
• This enhances your ability to process your environment.
• Meditation changes your relationship to your mind. It can stop the mind from interrupting the moment with its commentaries and opinions.
• A regular twenty-minute practice of meditation a day can not only reduce your stress, it can help clear your nervous system.
• It can also help us regulate of emotions as well.
• Promotes Emotional intelligence.

There are some Common Misconceptions about Meditation

• One is that you must stop your thoughts.
• That is takes years to be able to practice it properly get any benefit from it.
• Meditation is a spiritual/religious practice.
• You need to be in a temple, or a quiet space.
• You must close your eyes to meditate.
• If you have ADHD/ADD… there is no way you can meditate.

Some Common Obstacles with Meditation

• One of the biggest obstacles in meditation is committing to your practice.
  • When you first start you don’t always reap immediate rewards.
  • Starting a new routine can be hard to do if you already have a busy life.
• Feeling guilt when you miss a meditation.
  • If you miss a session, don’t beat yourself up.
• Comparing your meditation to another’s experience or to a past experience.
  • Meditations are like snowflakes, each one is unique.
• The mind will try to talk you out of doing your practice. It will say things like:
  • You need to know more about meditation.
  • Your time is better spent doing something else.
• You don’t need a special room.
• You don’t need everyone to be quiet for you to get into meditation.
• No special equipment is required (Candles, incense, yoga mat.)
• Practice anywhere.
• Create a habit of no habits.

Meditation is a valuable tool to:

• Help destress yourself
• To change your relationship with your mind.
• To put yourself in touch with our heart and soul.
• It can help bring clarity and direction in your life.
• And lastly, it can connect you to the peace that lives within.

Closing Thought by Thomas Troward

 “If we approach the ocean with a small cup, and only leave with a small cup of water, we cannot then say that the ocean was not bountiful, that the ocean held back from giving to us.”