Liz Nierzw
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Ease Yourself Into a
Meditation
Practice
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o you want to begin a meditation
practice—or maybe you don’t want to start
meditating for 15 minutes a day, but you
still want the benefits of this peace-giving
practice. Well, I might just be able to show
you a way that could give you exactly what
you’re looking for.
In my day-to-day life, I run a busy yoga studio with
11 teachers, a full seven-day schedule and workshops,
doing all the social media and marketing—and the list
goes on. In addition to that, I run an online business
called figureFIT! that takes up pretty much all of my time
lately. With this company, I’m writing, creating online
videos and podcasts, and talking to my members every
day, helping each one of them get unstuck and create
their best life. Outside of both of those pursuits, I’m a
single mom, I work out and take the time to take care of
myself, I write, I have a home to take care of, and I travel
nationally doing seminars, speaking engagements, and
yoga and fitness workshops.
With this crazy schedule, it’s important that I have
something to help me balance my mind and keep my
stress levels in check—otherwise, I’ll go crazy. I’m sure
that many of you reading this can relate to my schedule,
and wonder how you can keep it all together.
So how do we escape, or better yet, deal with this
hectic life in a sane, productive, focused way?
Meditation. That’s right, meditation. Meditation
has become my BFF, my assistant and my personal
companion. Let me explain a little more…
I talk to people all the time who say, “There’s no way
I can meditate. My mind is simply all over the place and
I can’t slow it down. Plus, I’m too busy.” I hate to burst
your ego bubble, but so is everybody else’s. Most of
the human population is dealing with the exact same
struggles: crazy schedule, children, multiple jobs, bills,
10 July 2014 eNewsletter
running all over town to get groceries, running Vincent
to soccer practice or Suzy to ballet. The fact is, we’re all
busy, and we all have simply too much on our to-do lists.
Add to those lists the blessing and curse of technology,
of always being connected.
We are all over the place physically and mentally, and
we need a practice that will “reel it in” for us.
In yoga land we call the racing of the mind “monkeymind” because like a monkey, it’s all over the place,
jumping from tree to tree, thought to thought. How do we
get this incredibly powerful and rambunctious mind to
slow down long enough to focus and meditate?
I like to teach two approaches to
meditation:
Meditation as a daily practice. Setting a time and
place every day to meditate
Meditative awareness. And/or, for the super busy,
developing the ability to drop into meditative awareness
at any moment without making it another to-do item on
your schedule.
Let me break down these two
approaches for you.
Meditation as a daily practice. Sure, you can
(and I would recommend you do) set a time and place
every day to meditate, but many people simply will
never bring meditation into their lives if this is what it
takes—because, remember, they’re ‘too busy.” But let
me encourage you to think about adding this as another
to-do item for yourself, and here’s why: When we set
a time aside each day to meditate, we begin to create
a powerful practice in our life, mind and body. When
we meditate at the same time each day, we begin to
hardwire the serenity and peace of mind that the practice