​How to Manage Your Monkey Mind and Meditate

Over the years I have been asked many times how one starts meditating.  After experiencing my very first session with a psychic in 2011 (click here to read the blog post), I dove into all sorts of alternative and esoteric topics, including the benefits of meditating.  I, like many others, experienced monkey mind, the constant mental chatter that never stopped, which was an impediment to meditating. I started out with guided meditations to decrease the responsibility on my shoulders of having to “clear my mind.” I had great success with these guided meditations, and I was able to see and hear everything that I was guided to, including meeting my spirit guide, who happened to be an archangel, to my shock and surprise. I was what you called naturally psychically gifted, and could hear, see, and communicate with spirit, although I know that I have worked on this for many lifetimes and that’s why I am adept at it now.

I graduated from guided meditations to meditating on my own after that, with a goal of sitting in silence for 15 minutes every day.  I found this incredibly challenging, especially after running around after small children all day.  My mentor advised me to focus on mindfulness instead.  Mindfulness is simple: just focus on your five senses in the present moment. What do you hear, see, feel, smell and touch?  Ideally one would go outside and spend a few minutes doing this.  I started to practice mindfulness instead of meditation because it was easier to snatch a couple of minutes several times a day instead a whole 15 minutes at the end of the day.

After much practice I was able to easily do this.  Now I find that I can naturally clear my mind if I want to.  I always imagined someone catching me in the act, asking, what are you thinking about, and I would answer triumphally, nothing, I am thinking about nothing, impressing whoever was asking. Alas no one has ever asked me that.

I find that the people who need to meditate the most or the ones that struggle with it the most. These are the people who think a lot and tend to use their mental capacity to guide them in their decision making. I am one of those people, and I also have a mean judgmental voice in my head that likes to tell me how inadequate I am. I have learned to silence this voice, but I am still working on overriding this critical part of me. If you spend most of your time thinking and rehashing, you will become either anxious or depressed or both.  If you think about the past, you will be depressed and if you think about the future you will be anxious.  Only the present moment is what really matters.

I find that meditation, or mindfulness, doesn’t have to be a practice where you sit alone in seated position.  As a Reiki master and practitioner, giving yourself or someone else Reiki is a meditative practice.  Intention is very important and if I am working on someone, I clear my mind and focus on them.  If I start getting distracted by my thoughts, I refocus onto the person I am working on. Since I have been practicing Reiki for over eight years now, I have had plenty of practice clearing my mind for my clients. When you quiet the mind, you became very focused, and you also may start to pick up on the emotions, thoughts, and psychic information about your client.  This is a natural occurrence and outcome of clearing your mind in a meditative state.

What happens to your brain when you meditate or practice Reiki? Your mind goes into a brainwave state called alpha.

Alpha brain waves coincide with the vibrational frequency of the earth’s electromagnetic field and scientific studies have shown that it is possible for the healer to tap into this source of energy and channel it back to the patient. The brain waves of both the healer and the patient become synchronized in the alpha state (characteristic of deep relaxation and meditation) and resonate at the same vibration as the earth’s electromagnetic field. Low frequency, bio-magnetic pulses emit from the hands of the healer affecting the body’s nervous system and cellular structure. During these moments, the bio-magnetic field of the practitioner’s hands is at least 1000 times greater than normal, and not as a result of internal body current (http://www.letyourbodytalkuk.com/reiki).

There’s so much more that we learn from meditation, mindfulness and Reiki.  If you haven’t already, start meditating and practicing mindfulness so you can experience the calm and healing energy of that space. If you would like to learn Reiki, I teach Reiki both in person in the Charleston SC metro area and on online.  To learn more, visit https://www.tinakinneyclarke.com/reiki-classes.html
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Namaste!
Tina