Five Minutes in the John. A Simple Meditation Guide

“Nothing goes right on the outside when nothing is going right on the inside.”    --Matthieu Ricard

                                                                                                 Introduction

I have almost thirty years of experience as an energy medicine practitioner and I have seen how meditation supports deepening self-awareness, transformation and healing. I suggest meditation to every new client because it is one simple practice that requires no equipment, can be done anywhere for any length of time and offers enormous support for all manner of creativity or crisis. There is so much confusing information out there about how to meditate, from TM to Zen, that I wanted to offer really simple instructions so anyone would be able to pick it up easily.

The title “Five Minutes In The John”, came about a number of years ago when a client found that the only time she had for meditation was five minutes in the restroom at work on her lunch hour. At first she did it to be a “good client”, but after awhile she discovered she felt better when she took time to practice. She is an inspiration to all of us who think we don’t have time.

Chapter 1: Get Your Tush on the Cush

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering
into the quiet that’s already there – buried under the 50,000
thoughts the average person thinks every day.
                                                                                     - Deepak Chopra


Meditation is a sometimes blissful, sometimes frustrating, practice. Expectations of how it should be, and rarely is, can be the biggest obstacle to a practice. When I Googled “what is meditation” over 160 MILLION links came up. Amazon lists over 70 THOUSAND books on the subject. When I searched for “kinds of meditation” there were more than 8 million links. There is no shortage of information if you want to access it, and information is helpful, but there is no substitute for just sitting down and doing it.

I had a friend who practiced meditation for over 25 years and you could tell instantly something was different about her. Even in the midst of a stress filled day she had an air of calm presence. She said there is really only one meditation rule: put your tush on the cush. She admitted there were times when she hated it but she kept going no matter what. That is the discipline part of the practice. There are many methods and types of meditation but they are basically all designed to help you do just one thing: get your tush on the cush.

I am going to show you how to meditate in 3 Simple Steps.

MEDITATION IS:
Simple, quiet, blissful, uncomfortable, inspiring, frustrating, soothing, transformative, and not what you think it is.

MEDITATION IS NOT: Expensive, fattening, ever done, or a means to an end.

© 2022 Hillary Gauvreau Oat

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