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When the world needed healing, the celestial bodies created the longing and pull to bring into existence a solution.

Welcome to the Meditation to the Higher Self.

The Meditation to Clear the Chakras is a nice cleanse that provides each of the major energetic metabolic centers with a healing and a clearing, restoring the Aura. This meditation is ideal to use in the morning to assist with mental clarity throughout your day, as well as at night to clear your energy field after a full day. Time: 21:23

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Welcome, and sign up for the 3rd Annual Womb Awakening Summit. An online, week-long retreat to awaken your divine feminine and connect with women world-wide. My friend and colleague, Kathy Forest, interviewed me to speak in this year's teaching series! This year we focus on how to access the feminine power housed within our female bodies in order to create global change and personal empowerment! I’m one of 24 Feminine Mystery experts, thought leaders, womb wisdom-keepers, scientists, and healers speaking in this global event. Why? Because we want to give you the practical tools we have learned so we can speed up the process of change and help you create sustainable systems that work! We want you to know that YOU have access to vastly greater opportunities, possibilities, healing, and transformation than you could possibly know or fully understand at this moment. So we’re coming together as a global community to guide you in creating huge change in all the right ways for your life … So you can truly see & access new perspectives and a bright new future, both personally and collectively. The series goes live on June 19, and will only be available for a short time. To join and catch my interview, just click the link below, fill out your info, and you’ll be set. This transformational event is FREE to all registered attendees! Join us here for FREE: https://www.the-great-womb-awakening.com

The Meditation Manual is a self-paced work book and online class for the mind who struggles with attention regulation. Taking meditation step by step and building upon your successes with thought provoking practices can help to train your brain to hold and control its focus. This workbook takes you through the minute steps of cognitive restructuring in order to carry out a more peaceful existence. It is a course which aids in slowing the racing mind, refocusing wandering thoughts, and replacing negative self-talk. With over 30 meditation techniques, the manual offers you a variety of different tools and options to use on the go and on the slow. The Meditation Manual covers techniques in focus meditation, active meditation, guided meditation, and transcending meditation to carry you from the beginning of your practice all the way to the end. The online course is self-paced, available to you for a year, and comes with guided meditation videos, each chapter, and does not require the purchase of the workbook to complete. The Meditation Manual can be purchased in the Bare Roots Energy Shop and can accompany the online course or stand on its own.

The Metacognitive Quiz Walk yourself through the following Metacognitive quiz. Answer the questions honestly for yourself. To get the most out of the quiz, journal about your answers, letting go of any concern for the time it takes to get through the quiz. Rember to work at your preferred pace. You may find yourself needing to process any emotions related to your thoughts as they come up. Don’t be discouraged by this. Holding onto thoughts and past events will only require you to then process them at a later date and time. The release of such thoughts is not only a piece of your meditative puzzle but an expectation of the healthy human body.

Thought Trains Thought trains are an important habit to notice when you are setting goals for bringing your thinking patterns under control. Thought trains are streams of thoughts that we get lost in without our conscious awareness. An example of a thought train would be playing out the scenario of how a visit with your sister would go after you just recently had a disagreement with her. Your thought train could take you down a specific road that describes specifically how the visit will go, how an argument will play out, what your reaction will be, what her reaction will be, and what the outcome would be. These types of thoughts are based on assumptions that often are, but are not always, filled with worry and negativity, and essentially set you to respond to the upcoming situation in a scripted way. This keeps you from entering the situation with clarity and openness, reducing your chances for positive interaction. Thought Trains are the types of thoughts we seek to replace through the use of this course. When we engage in exploring our metacognitive landscape, we uncover our tendency to engage in thought trains and begin to uncover how they produce our emotions, and how those emotions are impacting our nervous system. Step 1.2 asks that you take an examined look at your thoughts in real time. This step, once reviewed, may seem simple, however, it is powerful. Five minutes can actually seem like a long time to do a single task once you are engaged in it. Exercise Sit in a comfortable and uninterrupted way and close your eyes. Slow your breath and let your sink into relaxation. Think of something that makes you smile and feel at peace. This can be something from your waking life or something you have imagined. Give yourself enough time in this place to establish your peaceful thought. Analyze it and get to know all of its components that make you feel joy and calm. As your gentle thoughts wash over you, after a bit, take a moment to feel the sensations in your body. Once you have reflected on your physical consequence of this Thought Train, gently and slowly come out of it and refer to the following questions. ​What did your body feel like during this small Focused Attention Meditation? Did you feel your body adjusting and relaxing? What did your gut feel like? How did your heart feel? How did your body feel before this activity began? Did it differ from the sensations you had during?

High Vibrational Words For this Focus Activity you will sit for 5-10 minutes for this meditation following the steps provided here. You will be meditating with some of your preferred music and three high-vibrational words to focus on. If you find yourself easily getting through this type of meditation, move on to the next step. If not, continue to practice in this way for a couple of more days or weeks, 4-5 times per week. Exercise: Choose three high vibrational words from the list: joy happiness contentment peace calm appreciation love excitement enlightenment achievement confidence gratitude benefaction acceptance synchronicity passion Devotion Honor Innovation Coherence Clear Secure Accountable Homage Get comfortable, start your music and start your timer Sit in relaxation, calming your breath to a slowed pace. Begin to meditate, think, and imagine one of your chosen words, paying attention to the sensations of the body. Let the word repeat through your mind, and allow any thoughts that come up to gently fade back out. You may bring in an image to mind that is associated with the word, allow it in, and then pass it back out of your mind, refocusing on the singular word. Once you have spent a few minutes on one word, move onto the next. If you do not get through all three words during this meditation, that’s OK! If you do get through all three words and there is still time left in the meditation, begin again

Journal Prompts Thinking of the previous exercise, answer the following questions honestly for yourself. If you completed the previous Focus Activity from Step One already, on a previous day, you may want to practice it again to give yourself better and more accurate insight into your answers to the following questions. Exercise: Before beginning, ground and recite your affirmations.

Linking the Physical Body to the Emotional What physical ailments do you experience on a regular basis? When did it start?What events in your life were occurring when it started? What emotions did this event incite within you? What emotions were you frequently experiencing at the time the ailment began? Exercise: Fill out the chart to the best of your ability by reflecting on how your health has been and is impacted by your stressors and thoughts. Take your time with this activity. Do the research you need to do in order to remember your stressor events and to pinpoint when your physical ailments began. You may be surprised by the results if you can gather enough exact information for your chart.

Focused Attention Meditation 2: Analyzing Objects for Longer Periods of Time The beauty of beginning a meditation practice is that we can start anywhere and easily find out what we need to adjust for success. It’s also stunning to find out how long our actual attention span is. This practice helps us to monitor and refine our metacognition through repeated practice. To begin Phase 3, we will revisit our Guided Practice from Phase 1, refining how we focus the mind before incorporating practicing affirmation work. If it is difficult for you to settle down and focus, this step will serve you by quieting your mind, and the sensations within your body. The following exercise is the Focused Attention Meditation for objects. If you have found more success or if you like the Focused Attention Meditation 2 from Phase 2, use that activity instead. The goal for this step is to prepare the mind in the way that works best for you. Exercise: Find an object to focus your attention on. Any singular object will do, but it will be easier if it is one that can completely fit in your field of vision. Far away objects may make this task more difficult. If it helps you to focus, play meditation music in the background while completing this activity. Study only the object for two or more minutes, while only allowing yourself to think about the object. If your mind wanders to a different subject, gently return to the object you are studying. The goal is to focus the mind on the here and now, by focusing and holding the attention. You can begin your visual scan of the object at a specific spot on the object, and return to that spot each time you have to refocus your attention. Your first goal is for 120 seconds of uninterrupted concentration. If you have great concentration already, push for 5-10 minutes. To start, focus your eyes on the object, and think only about its attributes. What does it look like? What are its colors? What are its edges like? What are the surface traits? Can you detect a glow right at the edges of the object? Where do the vertices of the object meet up at? What materials do you think were used to make it? Is the object symmetrical in any way? Losing concentration before 120 seconds: try again, and practice at least once a day throughout the following weeks. We will revisit this activity in the following phases of this course. Losing concentration after 120 seconds, or not losing concentration at all: move on to the next step without daily practice or push yourself to increase your time in 60-second increments.

The Affirmative Me

Object Gazing Just as the end goal is a clear mind, we achieve that end goal through cognitive self regulation as a stepping stone to meditation. Phase 4’s stepping stone is thought replacement, choosing the thoughts we think. We begin phase Four with an alternate focused attention meditation that asks us to gaze at an object or image, at eye level, while repeating your affirmation to yourself aloud, under your breath, or in your mind. Gazing is a practice that settles and relaxes the body, allowing your nervous system and mind to release the stressors it is holding onto at its surface. During this practice, when a thought comes into your mind while you are reciting your affirmation, the goal is to release it, let it pass, and sweep it away by redirecting your attention to your affirmation. If a thought surfaces in your mind, you may get caught up in it. Don’t be discouraged by this, just intentionally redirect your attention back to your affirmation. Try to avoid analyzing any thoughts that do surface. See them as a piece of you that you are needing to shed, and just let it go, refocusing on the meditation. It is effective to meditate with this mindset so that your thoughts do not take the meditation over and rob you of your relaxation time. If the same thought continues to intrude and you feel that it is pestering your meditation practice, you have the following choices: Go with the thought and work it out in your mind, using your meditation time to process what needs to be processed. Gently come out of meditation, write the thought down, and then prepare yourself to begin the activity again. Continue on with your meditation, intentionally replacing any thought you have with your affirmation. While still in meditation, you can begin saying your affirmation out loud if you are not already doing so. If you are already saying it out loud, say it louder. There really is no way to incorrectly meditate and handle thoughts that come to you during the practice. Choose whichever technique works best for you at the moment, as all thoughts will give you a slightly different response when in meditation. When reciting your affirmation during this process, you may begin to fall into a deep relaxation that alters the way you say it. You may begin to drop words off at the end of your sentence or begin to recite them at a lower and lower volume with less pronunciation. This is only a signal that your body and mind are relaxing in meditation. Continue and go with it! If you have not yet memorized your affirmation, have it written down on a small piece of paper and use the paper as your object to stare at. Continue to practice and fit your affirmation into your daily routine as you will need it to complete several of the following activities throughout this course. Once you have gone through this particular Focus Activity, if you find yourself struggling to replace your wandering thoughts with your affirmation, simply continue to practice it until you are firm in reciting your affirmation without a visual aid. Exercise Locate an object or an image to gaze at, placing it at eye level. During this activity, rather than focusing on the attributes of the objects, we will simply be gazing at it, letting our eyes go soft. If your eyes close during the activity, that is fine too, just go where your body takes you, all while directing your mind with and to your affirmation. Recite your affirmation to yourself without letting your mind wander. If it does, gently bring your attention back to your affirmation by releasing the intruding thought. If you are struggling significantly to keep your mind focused on your affirmation, it may help for you to think about the details of your affirmation: what would the world be like, look like, and feel like if your affirmation were completely true already? Who would be in your daily life? What would your new routine look like? Can you practice this activity for five minutes?

Focusing With Music Through focused practice, we can hone our skills to use in real-time when the mind wanders throughout inconvenient times in our day. Using music as a tool to focus the mind can be an easy way to take control of your thoughts. Music calms the nervous system, allowing the mind to better focus on the task at hand and ward away the distractions of the day. Music that is soothing or instrumental is best for meditation tasks, however, when you are simply working to calm yourself, never underestimate the power of any type of music. While listening, ride the waves of each instrument, follow the tempo, and slide deeply into a slight musical trance. Use the link below or your own resources to find a variety of ambient music videos that will allow you to complete this step. You will be using these videos for both the auditory and the visual components. YouTube is a go-to for this type of resource. The Focus playlist link below provides a list of these resources for you through the Bare Roots Energy YouTube Playlist Library. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4S8fplEKDVYCEXahGgBtIg/playlists Exercise Play a meditation/ambient music video for this step. Sit in a comfortable way and for a period of time with your eyes closed, focusing your auditory senses only on the music. If your mind begins to wander, gently push the thought out and refocus on the music. How long can you sit only thinking of the music? If you find this activity difficult, begin by watching the video instead. If a thought comes in, gently push it back out and refocus your mind on the image and sound. How long can you focus on what you are watching without letting a separate thought intrude? Be cognizant of how often your mind wanders and monitor your progress during daily practice. Each day, try to add another 30 seconds to the amount of time you were successfully able to focus the day before. It is recommended to practice this step for at least two full weeks before moving to the next.

Energy Directed

The Meditative Breath Using your breath to refocus your attention away from wandering thoughts is a great way to enhance your practice. Breathing in deeply to the whole chest allows fresh air to reach the calming receptors that live at the bottom of the lugs, providing us with a sensation of instant, momentary serenity. Further, focusing on your breath when your mind wanders in meditation is an easy way to bring you back to your affirmation statement. It brings your attention easily to the here and now and helps you stay aware of how your meditation is regulating your body. During this course, you will not be practicing Holotropic breathwork (fast-paced breathing). Instead we will be using measured breathing to help our attention stay on point without entering an altered state of consciousness. Exercise: Using a timer, sit in a relaxed state and ready yourself for a short breathing practice. Before beginning, ground and recite your affirmation(s). Breathe in through your nose until the breath moves to the bottom of your lungs and fills your belly. Pause here for a moment. Exhale slowly, making the exhale nearly twice as long as your inhale. Once your exhale is complete, pause for two to three seconds before inhaling again. Repeat this breathing process for a full minute. Use the illustration below as a guide. If you begin to think about something other than your breath, gently redirect your mind.

Sustained Meditation Practice Step 2 challenges you to use what you have learned so far and work towards a silent meditation within a 20 minute window, without music or a visual aid. Some people may find that it takes years to reach the clear and empty mind which some traditional meditation seeks. If this is you, have no worry. You have not failed. Each person’s meditation practice is unique simply because our bodies and thus our nervous systems are all unique. Remember that your body always intuitively knows what it needs, and when engaging in meditative practice, your body will guide itself to its correct amount of healing in the right timing. A 20 minute meditation may seem like a long time to dedicate to a non-physical activity, however, it is an appropriate amount of time to provide the body with the intentional healing rest needed to become the clear vessel it seeks to be. Once you have worked this 20 minute routine into your daily life, you will understand its value and miss the down time if you skip a session. It is suggested to work your way up to a 20 minute, daily practice, however, add this in at your own pace. If getting a 20 minute meditation in during any given day is a stressor for you, take a break, analyze your priorities for meditation, and adjust your schedule to fit in the amount of meditation you feel that you need. Exercise: Before beginning, ground and recite your affirmations. Sit in a relaxed state ready to meditate in silence. Set a 20 minute timer and begin to focus on your breath. With a deep inhale, recite your affirmation statement. Gently let the words flow down you with your exhale, and then recite again. If a thought comes in, watch it gently move out and return your attention to your affirmation. Practice this meditation routine daily. Do you have time to fit in a morning and an evening meditation?

A Trip to the Park Step 3 is an exploration of Open Monitoring Meditation with a focus on the breath skills that you have practiced in this chapter. Following this activity, reflect on which type of Open Monitoring Meditation you have enjoyed the most so far. Which one has left you with the most clarity and calm? Exercise: After finding and being in a place that you want to observe, sit comfortably and relaxed. Begin your meditation with a grounding technique and stating an affirmation. With your eyes open, take in the scenery around you. As you notice things in your field of vision, look at them without judgment. Look at them without assessment. Upon your inhale, gaze in one direction, and upon your exhale, slowly and slightly shift your gaze. When a thought comes in, gently let it float away, listen to your relaxed breath, and continue to gaze at the scenery around you. After a bit, or if thoughts begin to surface more frequently, take in a large, deep inhale. Bring the breath all the way down to the bottom of your lungs, and hold it for a second or two. Make your exhale longer than the inhale, and return to your observations, accepting your environment without judgment, and without attachment. Use your steady and relaxed breath to interact with your scenery. Use your deep, fulfilling breaths to bring back to the present moment. When you are ready, bring your full attention back to your here and now and assess your mood, physical sensations, and outlook.

Sweeping the Body

Sustained Meditation: Notice, Accept, Release Sustained meditation can occur for us once we begin to see and feel our cycles of silence during the practice. We can enter into meditation in a number of ways: by reciting a mantra, word, or affirmation, by focusing on a specific sound, or by gazing at an object or image. We can also enter into meditation in a ‘cold-turkey’ sort of fashion, where we begin simply with a silent mind. However, you choose to begin your meditation sessions is the right way to begin them. Use what you prefer and what works best for you. Regardless of how we start our meditation, there is always one thing each meditation session requires of us, to release our thoughts. During this practice, stay conscious of this act. Notice a thought, yes. Accept it, yes, but only its presence. Just as mentioned before, do not attach emotion to the thought, just release it. Let it float out of your awareness just as gently as it came in. When beginning the exercise here, if you find that the act of noticing, accepting, and releasing is becoming more and more challenging, begin to repeat your mantra, or have a high-frequency word to repeat, in order to help the mind focus back to its goal of silence. Exercise: Set a timer for 20 minutes. Before beginning, ground yourself and relax into your body and your seat. Upon your inhale, close your eyes and exhale slowly. Sit with your silence and breathe. When a stimulus comes in, gently notice it without paying much attention to it. Accept the stimulus by not attaching a value, opinion, or emotion to it. Just as easily as a thought comes in, notice it, accept its existence, and then release it. At this point in your meditation, if you have a thought train intruding or a flood of thoughts bombarding you, begin to repeat your affirmation or a single high-frequency word to yourself, returning your mind back to the path of silence. With each thought, notice, accept, and release. When your timer sounds, give yourself ample time to come out of your meditation and return to your here and now.

Our Thoughts Build the Mental Body, Impacting Our Emotional and Physical Bodies Meditation is a form of self-practicing energy work, making it your first defense against blockages that are caused by repressed thoughts and that get piled up in your energy fields, eventually causing physical ailment. By incorporating high vibrational words into our day, we incite the emotions that are attached to them. Each high vibrating emotion is important to our well-being because they raise our body’s frequency to a rate that promotes physical wellness. For this reason, it is important for us to understand how our thoughts coincide with our emotions, and how our emotions in turn create our physical health. The short-term memory will hold for us an image that we’ve already seen and then move on to something new, assuming that we have learned all that we need from it, as quickly as possible. This is the brain’s response to the learning process- always moving forward for the sake of cognitive progress. This is also why we must consciously engage in the activity of repetition and review to memorize information and form new routines and habits. Our goal through meditation is to bypass this mental mechanism with a deliberate focus in order to train the brain and glean the health benefits that meditation has to offer. Memories are simply a type of thought; thoughts of the past, thoughts of things we long for, thoughts of things we don’t want to forget because they fill us with joy, or thoughts of things we regret. Hurtful memories, when held onto and replayed in our minds, not only impact us physically but also begin to drive our greater thought processes and eventually our actions in real time. Neglected memories and repressed thoughts can start to determine thought patterns in all areas of our lives. They can make us grumpy and impatient with our loved ones. They can make us forgetful, confused, or even nauseous. Eventually, repressed thought patterns begin to dictate the health and patterns of our Emotional Body, leading to physical ailments in the GI and nervous systems, heightening negative memory storage, creating disconnection in how we portray emotions, and giving us a tendency to project emotions inappropriately. We refuse to look at our memories because they are painful because they cause us emotional pain. Low vibrating emotions such as sorrow, self-loathing, hatred, and fear, become debilitating due to the impact they have on our bodies if experienced in overabundance. When emotions are held onto, we become out of balance. However, by recreating the sensations of high vibrational emotions we replenish our healing process, begin to repair our bodies and provide ourselves with resiliency for future adverse events. One of the goals of this program is to identify the impact our thoughts have on us so that we can begin to see the mental, emotional, and physical bodies as a whole.Phase two is a study of the interdependence between these bodies. Through understanding this interconnection and identifying when our thoughts are not under our control, or when they are harming us, we can begin to consciously make the real-world connection between our willpower and our decisions, allowing us to not only heal but also to move into our meditative practice with intent and motivation.

Dedicated, Sustained, Daily, Silent Meditation Silent meditation is an end goal to our meditation practice. Even if you have only found silence for a moment in your meditation practice so far, you are headed in the right direction and making wonderful progress. Finding the silence behind the thoughts during meditation is not a task that is meant to be challenging, rather an occurrence that happens naturally. When in meditation, if you are gently redirecting your thoughts back to your affirmation, pleasant scenery, image, or object, allowing your intruding thoughts to pass through without judging or assessment, and feeling your breath and body relax and adjust into your meditative state, you are meditating correctly, and these practices will lead you to a silent place within your mind where your nervous system is at a completely calmed state for healing. Silence is always at the end of the path as we sweep away the dust to see where the path leads. While working towards a silent meditation experience, do not be discouraged if old things come up in your mind. They are just coming up to be processed so that they can be released. Process them. Let the thoughts in, look upon them in neutrality, and then release them. It may be hard to look at yourself and your shadows in neutrality, but remember, they are ultimately lessons for you to look at and learn from once your meditation time is over. Memories are not there to harm you. They are not there to make you feel guilty, they are there to show you what you do not yet know about yourself. Once you have pinned those details down, you can let them go. This may occur during meditation, or you may be able to let the thought go while in meditation and come back to it later, which is the preferential method to get the most out of your meditation practice. If a memory moves out of your mind easily and does not come back up, you know that you have gotten from it what you were meant to have. If a memory keeps coming back, there are still things to learn from it. Some memories take an entire lifetime to learn from, especially the big ones that incite big emotions. This is true for us all. In this phase of the course we will extend our dedicated meditation time, continue our metacognitive practices, and learn some new meditation techniques. Consider the list below when thinking about reaching your place of silent meditation: Time yourself only if you want to, and meditate for your preferred time period. Be flexible with your process and your progress. Every day and even every moment is different, making every meditation different for us as well. Be gentle with what you need to process. Be gentle while redirecting your thoughts when your mind wanders. Reciting your affirmation during meditation is what will bring you back to the place where your mind can melt into the silence inside. Work towards holding no judgment on your thoughts. Work towards holding no attachments to your thoughts Continue to ground before meditation.

Journal Prompts The first step to learning anything new involves learning about those things inside of you that can block your success. The following questions are designed to help you uncover the thought patterns that occur in your daily life that could be keeping your mind racing or stuck in the negative. We take these first steps to help ourselves realize all of the room we have once our current is clear again; a stepping stone to meditation and manifestation. Exercise: Quickly respond to the following questions without dwelling on the answers. Once you have completed one round of these questions, go back and contemplate and add more to your answers if needed.

Analyzing Objects Beginning a meditation practice is much like practicing the skill of concentration. This can be done with several activities such as locating small objects in busy images (like Where’s Waldo activities), or staring at an image for 60 seconds and then seeing what you can remember when the image is removed. To strengthen your concentration, this activity will ask you to engage in a Focused Meditation. Exercise: Find an object to focus your attention on. Any singular object will do, but it will be easier if it is one that can completely fit in your field of vision. Far away objects may make this task more difficult. Your first goal is to stare at the object for 60 seconds of uninterrupted concentration. Set a stopwatch to help gauge your progress. Focus your eyes on the object, and think only about its attributes. Release all other thoughts and distractions as they come up, and return your attention to the attributes of the object. What does it look like? What are its colors? What are its edges like? What are the surface traits? Can you detect a glow right at the edges of the object? Where do the vertices of the object meet up at? What materials do you think were used to make it? Is the object symmetrical in any way? Losing concentration before 60 seconds: try again, and practice at least once a day throughout the following weeks. We will revisit this activity in the following phases of this course. Losing concentration after 60 seconds: move onto the next step with or without daily practice or push yourself to increase your time in 60 second increments.

Words of Vibration Words hold specific vibrations because they incite emotion. The measured vibration of any given word is partially dependent on how it makes the receiver feel, or emote. Consider the research completed by Dr. Masaru Emoto in Japan. He experimented with the impact words have on water. By exposing one group of water containers to positive, high vibration words, and another group of filled containers to negative, low vibrational words, Dr. Emoto was able to show, on a microscopic level, the effect words have on water molecules. The water exposed to the positive words and phrases, when examined under a microscope, were perfectly formed, crystal-like, symmetrical snowflakes, reflecting transparent and white. The water exposed to the negative words and phrases when placed under the lens was dark, brown, muddy, and asymmetrical, looking as if they were ill, which it was. It was contaminated from the vibration of the energy emitted by the negative words. To test this in real life, in 2009, as a teacher, I assigned my mixed grade of elementary students to replicate this project with plant sprouts. Our little group saw the same results. The sprouts that we talked to with loving words thrived, and the sprouts that we yelled at and talked to with hateful words barely grew, only a couple of them barely sprouting at all. The most important implication of Dr. Emoto’s research is that our body is composed of more than 75% water. What are your thoughts doing to your body? To begin the affirmation process, think of the guided meditation from phase 2, Inciting Emotion. Words have a lot of weight. They create vibrations, and vibrations build us in every way. The emotions that arise from hearing, speaking, or thinking certain words are important because they create a resonance in our bodies that can… Impact the energy fields around us Create or release blockages in our energy bodies Help to place the body back into a state of self-healing Impact our moods and decision making processes Exercise: Consider what state you want to be in during meditation. Choose a high vibration emotion from the following list or use one you’ve thought of on your own. This will be the word that you build your first affirmation around. joy happiness contentment peace calm appreciation love excitement enlightenment achievement confidence gratitude benefaction acceptance synchronicity passion Devotion Honor Innovation Coherence Clear Secure

Choose a Goal With your high vibration emotion in mind, now it’s time to choose a goal to work on. If this is your first time creating an affirmation, it may help to choose a simple goal to start with, such as one you are already working on, one that is generalized in nature, or one that focuses on the success of your meditation practice. Your goal can be focused on a feeling that you prefer to fill yourself with, it can be a tangible thing like a promotion, or it could be based on the idea of bringing change into your life. Keep your goal short and focused on one thing. If you’re not sure what to focus on yet, make a list of short and focused things that you want present in your life, prioritize them, choose the first one for this step, and then come back to the rest when you find yourself needing a new affirmation. When we begin affirmation and meditation work, each tool will only take us as far as our right action can begin. If you have a rather large end result in your goal, you may need to task analyze. Break your goal into the smaller steps of right action that are more readily available for short-term fulfillment. If we intend to bring about our goals only by repeating positive statements and calming ourselves through mindfulness alone, we will find our goals unrealized. We must also take action. Action that is well thought out and planned in smaller, obtainable steps makes it easier to reach our end goals by allowing us to more easily make adjustments along the way. It is not realistic to ask for the world and expect it to show up in your hands without the many steps of hard work it takes to obtain it. Exercise: For Step Three, generate a list of goals that you would like to include in your affirmation-building process.

Building the Affirmation For generations, people, congregations, and cultures have been using affirmation work to build their external worlds. Here, you will accomplish this same feat by telling yourself what to believe in, perceive, and think about. Once your emotional and mental bodies begin to vibrate with this belief, you begin to pull in from the Universe the opportunities that will, when paired with right action, propel the affirmation to fruition. This is manifestation at its finest. From the high vibration word and one of the goals you have chosen in the previous steps, you will create an affirmation. Create a declaration that will incite the emotion of inspiration. ‘I am’ statements are powerful affirmations. Wording is key. Avoid fear-based words such as “can’t, won’t, debt, alone, dislike, illness, etc.” Use positive wording such as “I will, I have, I can,” and statements that affirm your goal. When you are thinking about your goals, think in positive terms and build your goals from this perspective. If you want to be rich, your goal should be to attract sources of income rather than to drive away debt collectors. Focus on the positive aspects of getting what you want rather than getting rid of what you don’t want. We work in this way for two reasons. Firstly to avoid attracting the negative to us, and secondly to allow our lessons to work through so that we can move forward, rather than backward in life. Think of it as filling yourself with the positive in order to push out the negative. Your goal here is to train the brain to see the glory that you are working towards. This will allow you to begin to uncover the steps to get there. Ensure that the goal you are working towards, and thus your affirmation, is focused on you and what you can control. It may lead to disappointment if you have convinced yourself that your goal should focus on making someone love you. You cannot control others and you cannot convince any power of the Universe to control others for you. If your goal involves influencing another person at the cost of their own free will, you will find that goal unfulfilled. Focus your goals and your affirmation on the things that you have the power to change. Once you have completed one affirmation, you can make another. Make as many as you want! It is extremely useful to have a few affirmations that focus on the same goal. Use the following formula to guide you in your affirmation creation process. Affirmation Formula Components High Vibrational Word(s) + Specific, Self-focused Goal + Belief in Yourself + Positive Wording + Reasonable Steps + Obtainable Right Action Affirmation Examples ​ I am bountiful in my joy and success as I consistently build and strengthen my meditation practice. Grace flows through me as I calmly move through my day. Joy is the river of my soul that carries me through and to the perfect relationship for me. My resume is overflowing with leadership roles and I am respected and honored in my work. I humbly attract financial abundance into my life through service and practices of joyful gratitude. I am the very vibration of peace, joy, love, and grace, as I walk this Earth and spread this vibration to all I come in contact with. Thank you for the opportunity and means to pay my bills and keep a robust savings account. My life is full of healthy relationships that support, honor, and accept me for my truth. I am healthy, I vibrate with absolute wellness and my body is a clear vessel that vibrates with the frequencies of love, joy, honor, and grace. My mind is calm and ready to endure in clarity and harmony. On this day and every day I walk in personal strength, truth, and autonomy. I live in service of this community as I help others to get their needs met. Every moment I am empowered to fulfill my life’s purpose. I easily balance the needs of my family and career as I strengthen in me the right and perfect skills for my dream job. I bring myself to Stillpoint as I contemplate my growth in reverence and gratitude. My contribution to this company is seen, heard, and viewed in appreciation and enthusiasm. I live daily in serenity, integrity, and safety. I affirm my belonging in this community as patrons flock to my place of business. I strengthen my leadership skills and knowledge in this company, proving my readiness for the right and perfect position for my future here. I am open and willing to receive the income stream that will allow me to build my wealth. I hold responsibility for my thoughts and my actions. I am full of love. I vibrate with joy. I see the world in perfect harmony. I am a perfect expression of love in the way the Universe has made me. I trust in myself. I trust in my belief. I trust in my process of creation. I successfully step towards mastery in my meditation practice each day. Exercise: Using the Affirmation Formula, create an affirmation. You can use or change any of the affirmation examples to fit your needs as well. If you find yourself struggling to stick with one affirmation, give it a test drive for a day or two. The affirmations that don’t sit right will weed themselves out in the process.

Locating Your Affirmative/Down Times When are your cognitive down times? These are the times when your mind runs away from you and when you are not mentally or thoughtfully focused on anything specific. This includes times when you are busy, such as a time when you are doing an automatic task like brushing your teeth. Make a list of your down times to discover when you will have time to fit your affirmation statements into your schedule in a non-intrusive way. This can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to stick affirmation work into your life, use the recitation method, repeating the affirmations to yourself during your down times. Look to the list of automatic, habit-forming activities below for some ideas of when to include affirmation work into your schedule. Some of these times may work for you, others may not. For instance, if you are an individual who needs to pay close attention while cooking, then reciting your affirmations to yourself while making dinner may not be the best option for you. Personalize this step in your own best interest and in the best interest of those whom you are responsible for caring for. Exercise: Identify your down times of opportunity. Working out Shower time Doing dishes Doing laundry Driving home Standing in line Drop/off pick up line Waiting in the doctor’s office Cooking dinner Riding your bike Peeling potatoes Tilling the garden Raking leaves Waiting on your food Waiting for clothes to dry Brushing your teeth Scrubbing your floors Walking the dog Using the Restroom Washing your hands Putting on lotion Changing the diaper Feeding the baby Sweeping the floor Gassing up the car Mowing the lawn Walking to work Riding the bus While commuting Affirmation work is integral to engaging, calming, and training the mind, and can be done in a number of ways. If you would rather take time out of your schedule to do affirmation work, consider the following modalities: Creating art with a single high vibrational word or sentence Reciting an affirmative sentence to yourself Writing stories surrounding the concept of your goals and affirmations Telling others of your goals and affirmations in detail Finding or making images that depict your goals and affirmations Meditating through visualization about your goals and affirmations Planning and task analyzing the steps it will in order to reach your goals

Affirmation Cards Thought replacement requires repetition simply because the physical process of it is brain rewiring in real-time. To make our brain remember what we want it to think we need to tell it time and time again so that it does not resort back to old habits. For this reason, there are several different activities provided in the manual to help you generalize not only your affirmation(s), but also the daily practice of mindfulness and meditation in your life. It is helpful to write your affirmations on small pieces of paper and carry them with you, or to post them around your home. Bombard yourself with them so that you have no choice but to pay attention to them. Post them in places that you have determined, from Phase 3, where your cognitive downtimes occur the most. If you have a downtime while you are at a stop light, you will want a copy of it in your car. If your downtime is doing dishes, you will want one by the sink. If your downtime is in the shower, you could put a waterproof version on the shower wall. When you have a bad day, get mad and tear them down, that’s OK! Just write them out and post them up again. How can we possibly appreciate our progress if we don’t slide backward every once in a while to show us how far we’ve actually gone? It is also helpful, if you are an artistic type, to decorate the affirmation cards and create with them. The more time you invest in this small practice, the more seriously you will take it, thus getting more out of it all together. This type of activity will lead to a more controlled mind, that will in turn support your focus during the intentional, deliberate practice of meditation. Exercise Create affirmation cards to place in opportune locations for your cognitive down times in order to help you direct your thoughts and attention.

Mala Beads The practice of using Mala Beads is an ancient one and spans cultures all across the globe. For centuries people have made use of natural materials to create beaded necklaces in order to retreat into prayer. In the Catholic tradition, we see the use of the Rosary. In the Buddhist tradition, we see the use of 108 Mokugeki beads. Mala beads began as a way to incorporate prayer work into daily life when travel to the temples or monasteries was not a realistic daily practice. By using the beads, people were able to incite their worship in their homes. Even nomads made use of these beads on the road from one encampment to another. The folklore of the Mala bead tradition traces back over 3000 years ago and has been found present in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Legends tell of a King whose people suffered illness day in and day out and sought refuge in his prayer to Buddha. Buddha replied to him to string 108 bodhi seeds and, while holding them to himself and counting one bead for each recitation, recite ‘I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.’ Mala beads are an ideal way to go within and calm the mind and body in order to reconnect with the self and Earth. To use this method of active meditation, you will recite your affirmation, running one bead through your fingers with each repetition. Once you have reached the end of the string, you can stop for the day, or go back down the string the way you came. Traditionally, one does not continue in the bead circle but rather reverses the direction to repeat the whole string. It is ideal to have at least 108 beads on a string in order to incite the energies of creation and fix the affirmation into the hippocampus for long-term memory storage in the episodic memory centers of the brain. By including the physical sensation of touch with mindful reprogramming, the brain adjusts its associations more quickly. It is helpful, if you are a very active person, to engage in the Mala Bead practice while walking. Depending on the length of your affirmation, you could get through the string of beads in under 5 minutes. By doing this, you are repeating a positive vibration to yourself 108 or more times, changing the pathways in the brain, and leading to the positive energy you seek in your waking life. It is suggested to practice in this way daily. Exercise: Practice reciting your affirmation while using Mala Beads in a sitting or walking meditation each day. Start at one end, making your way to the other end of the string. If you choose to continue, begin with the bead you stopped with, and run them through your fingers, going the opposite way from which you started. Once you have affixed your affirmation into your life, begin the practice with a new affirmation.

Gratitude Work Forgetting what we are thankful for has detrimental effects on what we draw into our lives and the energy we hold onto. When we fail to see the little blessings, benefits, or coincidences in our lives, it is often because we have forgotten to look for them. When we consciously start to look for them, we are accessing the advantage of free and simple manifestation tools that are permanently at our fingertips: right timing and synchronicity. For this step, set a short time aside each day to review five to ten things you are thankful for. You can write a daily list, say them to yourself during your morning workout or drive to work, tell them to your family at the dinner table, add them to a daily journal, or celebrate them in any way you see fit. If you spend a lot of time on social media, this could even be your outlet for gratitude work. This is even a great activity for teachers to use in the classroom during their morning opener, providing a model of gratitude for their students! Doing gratitude work in this way daily or even several times each week changes your outlook subtly, and over time. Each day try to write something different than the day before. You may think that you will run out of things to list, but get creative. Don’t forget to be grateful for obvious things like indoor plumbing and the energy we get from the sun! Give your thanks for the little things, and most importantly, give thanks and gratitude for yourself, and your accomplishments, regardless of how small they may be. Give thanks to yourself for your motivation to keep putting one foot in front of the other each day. Daily Exercise: Practice gratitude work each day in a variety of ways to keep yourself motivated, grounded, and in perspective of the many blessings that life has to offer. Use the list below for inspiration, or incorporate your own ideal routine into your days. Make a list of 5-10 things you are grateful for each day. Write out what you are grateful for in a daily journal, in sentence or story form. Tell yourself what you're grateful for during your down times, such as when you are at a stop light, when you are walking to work, or when you are putting your clothes away once the laundry is done. Remind yourself to be grateful for every single thing you are able to afford and put into your grocery cart. You can even be grateful for your bill, considering the alternative to having a water bill is having no water, if you catch my drift. Find images of things that you are grateful for and post them on your social media account. Look around you and list five things that you are grateful for. What would your life be like without those things? Think of the people you are closest to and express your gratitude for them either to yourself or to them directly. What would your life be like without them in it? Do a drawing with the things you are grateful for. Include your gratitude points in your evening prayer or at dinner time.

Metacognitive Investigation At this point in your meditation journey you have examined your mind in and out and come to realize how it is shaping your day-to-day decisions and life patterns. Let’s take a deeper look into your thoughts after all of this work and see if things have changed for you. Exercise: Complete the following questions with honesty and depth. Give yourself time to answer each question completely. Write what comes to mind without holding back, and take as much time as you need, even if you have to complete the set of questions over a period of several days. What are you thinking about during your downtimes? Do you play through false scenarios in your mind? If yes, how often? What kinds of scenarios? Are you thinking of and using your affirmations to stop your negative thoughts and self-talk? If not, why? Are you committing to your daily practices of self reflection and affirmation work? If not, why? What are the things or thoughts stopping you? What is your intention for starting and wanting to complete this meditation course? How do you ideally see yourself after completing this course?

Affirmations Now that you have practiced your preferred grounding technique(s) and are familiar with how to accomplish the calming sensation that grounding provides, it is time to put it into practice in real-time. For the following activity, you will employ your grounding technique and the use of affirmation work to establish the amplifying effect it can have on your meditation. Reciting an affirmation that focuses on your meditative success each time before you begin a meditative practice will help you and your energy bodies prepare for the sacred, silent application of the tools taught in this course, specifically those taught in Phases Seven through Ten. It is time to sink your roots into your meditation goals now to see how far your practice will take you. Exercise: Sit in your relaxed way with or without music, and with your eyes gently closed. Engage in your grounding technique. Once done, take in a gentle deep breath and as you exhale, settle into your meditative state. Recite your affirmation to yourself, or use the following suggestions if you’d like to mix it up and have some affirmation variety. If a thought wanders in, gently push it out and refer back to your affirmation of choice. If you find yourself overly distracted during meditation, ground yourself again and see where your meditation takes you. I am present, I am peaceful, I am ready to absorb and be absorbed by the silence. I am calm, I feel calm, and I radiate a consciousness of calm in each moment. I am a perfect version of the light which this Universe holds so dear. I express peace, joy, and grace with each breath that I breathe. My mind is calm and focused. I am all that is. You are are all that is. We are all that are.

The Meditation of Moving Out

Present Moment Observation If you are someone who needs to pay full attention to the task at hand, then do just that, while monitoring your thought processes. In this activity you will focus in detail on the task you are doing with all of your attention. During this activity, you are truly entering the Here and Now. This is not the time to sit down at the computer and practice a meditative state while you type out your emails. Although mundane, such activities are not automatic and stored in subconscious memory, therefore, the act in itself will keep you from entering as sub-meditative state. Once you have practiced meditation in this way, apply the same practice to other activities in your day and reflect on how you feel afterwards. Does the open monitoring of the activity make the experience more calm for you? Exercise: Your goal here is to solely focus on your task at hand while engaged in a mundane activity, aka, one of your meditative down times. Give all of your focus on your task. If you are washing the dishes, think of each aspect of what you are doing. What are the details of the plate you are washing? How heavy is each dish? Are there patterns on the dishes you can focus on? If your mind starts to wander, inhale deeply, and bring it back to task with your breath. Can you keep your mind focused the entire time you are engaged in the task? Can you practice in this way each time you complete this same task going forward?

Sustained Meditation: Notice, Accept, Release To begin Phase 10 we return to our Sustained Meditation for a 30 minute practice. If you are already practicing this meditation daily, keep it up! The Sustained Meditation is the most beneficial daily routine you can implement as it gives the body ample time to enter its healing phase and rejuvenate your energy stores. After practicing in this way daily, you may find yourself forgoing the timer all together and staying in meditation for upwards of 40-60 minutes at a time. Exercise: Set a timer for 30 minutes. Before beginning, ground yourself and relax into your body and your seat. Upon your inhale, close your eyes and exhale slowly. Sit with your silence and breathe. When a stimulus comes in, gently notice it without paying much attention to it. Accept the stimulus by not attaching a value, opinion, or emotion to it. Just as easily as a thought comes in, notice it, accept its existence, and then release it. At this point in your meditation, if you have a thought train intruding or a flood of thoughts bombarding you, begin to repeat your affirmation or a single high-frequency word to yourself, returning your mind back to the path of silence. With each thought, notice, accept, and release. When your timer sounds, give yourself ample time to come out of your meditation and return to your here and now.

The Meditation of Sending Kindness You will be meditating now in your most preferential way, while sending thoughts of love, kindness, appreciation, and care out into the world. To do this, during your meditation you will think a high vibrational thought, feeling the emotions that it incites fully, visualize who you are sending it to, see them receiving this loving energy with appreciation and joy, and feel the sensation of that appreciation being returned to you, accepting it back with gratitude and joy. Send loving thoughts to a special person and visualize them with open arms receiving your loving energy into their heart center. Send loving thoughts to a city and see all of its citizens embracing your gift of love and kindness with their open hearts. This may sound silly or superficial, but once you have endorsed this act, you will feel the energetic rush through your body and know the difference it can make in your own physiology as the subtle energies of connection spark your sensations. This meditation is extremely powerful to do following the sustained meditation from step 1 of this phase. The sustained meditation will clear your vessel by clearing your mind and your nervous system. With this effect, your meditation of sending kindness to others will be amplified and more clarified. Once you have completed this meditation by focusing on one individual, reach out to them and see if they noticed any sensations in their physiology during your meditation. Exercise: Before beginning, ground and recite your affirmations. First consider a memory or an idea that makes you feel whole and complete. What would it take for you to feel a wholeness of gratitude and joy? Who would it come from? What emotions would be involved? What words would be said? What body actions and facial expressions would occur? Visualize it in detail. Have this thought, memory, or idea ready in your mind before beginning this practice. Feel the energy from this visualization and hold that sensation as long as you can, until the image fades. Once it has faded, imagine it again. Once the emotion is easy for you to create within your physical senses, visualize the person, place, group, or situation in which you would like to send the intention of love and kindness. Conjure a thought of love, being a statement, an emotion, a single word or two, or a loving image. Send that thought or image to a specific person, a specific place, or the whole world in general by then visualizing where you are sending it. See them receiving this loving energy with appreciation and joy. What are their words, their actions, the emotions they are now feeling after receiving your gift? Now see the warmth being returned to you, accepting it back in gratitude and joy. Once you have completed your meditation in this way, reflect on the change in your body and mind.

Record Keeping Below you will find a daily checklist and a weekly checklist as a guide for your continued meditation practice. These checklists are recommended for you to get the most benefit out of this journey that you have embarked on. With daily practice, we not only tune up our health but also begin to realize our ability to manifest in real-time. It is easy to fall behind in our self-help work as we take care of everything around us. Keeping a checklist can help us engrain this type of work into our schedules so that it becomes second nature to engage in it on a daily and/or weekly basis. If the checklists below are not tailored to your preferences, you are encouraged to make your own as a motivator to keep up with your meditative routines. Meditation is not an assignment, it is a choice. Choose the methods that work best for you. Daily Checklist Gratitude Work, either to yourself or verbally to someone else Affirmation Work, recite your affirmations to yourself throughout your day Daily Meditation, 5-20 minutes in the morning/daytime Daily Meditation, 5-20 minutes in the evening/nighttime Grounding through visualization or stating it out loud or inside to yourself Weekly Checklist Gratitude Work through journaling, art, or conversation Affirmation Work through art or conversation Affirmation Journaling, journal about your life as if your affirmation were your reality in real time Weekly Meditations of 10-20 minutes, 3-7 times per week Grounding yourself outdoors through visualization, without shoes (if the weather permits) Complete a walking meditation Affirmation work with your Mala Beads

Introduction In the beginning we are born of a clean current that runs without the debris. Our intentions are pure, and our goals are simple: to both survive and experience contentment and joy. We play to create that joy and cry to help others know that we need their help to feel it again. It is through our ordinary, daily adverse experiences that our waters are muddied from the differing perspectives that relativity presents to us. As we grow, we interact and rely on the goodness of humanity to keep us emotionally and physically safe in the greater scope of society. As a child, we must live with these reliances. They are inevitabilities and our pathways to rights of passage. As we learn to interact and become independent in our communication styles and decision-making, there is no getting around taking on stress from relationships, responsibilities, and the trauma presented in the world. However, stress sticks, creating energetic blockages within our mental, emotional, and physical bodies, dirtying the waters of the clear current that would otherwise keep us thinking and acting with ease and calm. Clearing our current is why we are here: to take on the mud and learn how to wash it all off again, to get back to our the crystal clear vessel that we began as. As attention deficit disorders and anxiety become widely commonplace in adults and children, we are beginning to seek treatment and remedies for the stress that comes with it. Meditation, exposure to nature, and energy healing work are some of the most accessible ways to achieve this remedy without pharmaceuticals. This course is designed to do just that. The following phases of study include focused attention, open monitoring, and sustained meditation techniques written to help you analyze your mind and thinking habits and learn how to hone in on your ability to stay in control of both. Once you begin phase one, pace yourself according to your intuition and preference. At each step, only move on if you feel that you have mastered it and are ready for a new activity. Each phase is equipped with a guided meditation for you to listen to at any time during your meditation practice. The transcripts of these mediations are located at the end of each chapter in this book. Enjoy your journey. Reach out for questions, instruction, and discussion. All the best, Jamelle, Bare Roots Energy

Sacred Timings As Daily Routines Setting aside a Sacred time for yourself becomes one of those things to relish once it is set up because it not only gives you the needed rest your mind and body crave, but provides you with structured variation in your day, aids in your mental health, and helps you organize your goals, ideas, and insights into what your whole being is in need of. When is your best time of day? The time of day that you are most structured, most creative, or most calm? Can you maneuver your tasks around to fit in a protected 20-30 minutes of time when you focus on your meditation and self-preservation goals and only that? Some people experience this early in the morning when they wake up, some experience their most productive time in the middle of the day, and others have their best times at night after everyone else has gone to bed and the chatter starts to calm down. Keep in mind, that you’re not necessarily looking for the time of day that you have the most energy, but rather are the most focused. This is your Sacred Timing aligned with your resonance upon this planet. Finding out when your best time of day can amplify your meditation practice along with practicing your meditation routines in Sacred Timings with the Earth. Sacred Timing with the Earth is a traditional concept that our ancestors, regardless of our heritage, used to conduct ceremonies, plant crops, harvest, store for seasonal changes, and give thanks to their deities for what the Earth had given them. The alignment of intentions and patterns with those of the timings of the planets and moon is a concept found throughout antiquity because it is a practice that helps to bring us back through our false selves and into our true natures where we are working with the natural world around us rather than against it. You can practice your meditation routine in Sacred Timing by practicing daily at your personal right timing. Once you begin to practice in this daily way, you will begin to notice the subtle difference in your energy shift during these times not only because you are raising your own vibration, but also because you are aligning your practices to your body's natural rhythms. To amplify your practice, you could enter into a longer meditation or journaling routine in timing with a specific moon or seasonal cycle Making it to phase Five means that you’ve proven your self-dedication and should celebrate your progress and success. When you give your thanks, give some to yourself. When you catch others up on the going-ons of your life, toot your own horn. Smile at yourself and show pride! Now that you know you are in it for the long haul, it is time to begin to make life-changing routines permanent. Your mindfulness routines are now ready to grow as you grow, and become life-long patterns. By now you should have your practices from the previous phases ingrained into your routine to the point that if you forget them for a day, you notice it and miss them. You should be: Making a point if not daily, at least weekly, to practice one of the Focus Activities or Guided Practices in order to keep your mind sharp and ready for not only longer meditation sessions, but also whatever life has to throw at you. Reciting your affirmations during your mental down times throughout the day. Once you've gotten somewhat efficient at replacing your low vibrational thoughts with affirmations, your goal is to incorporate into your daily routine a sacred time to spend, practicing and integrating it into your long-term regime. In this phase, we will continue to add meditation tools to our toolbox, create a daily structure for mindset change, and review the integral steps of metacognition. Tips for consistency and success: Go back and practice more before moving on. Don’t rush yourself at the expense of long term benefit. No one is timing you and you do not need to be timed here. Be sure to give weight to the affirmation journal activity. This is an activity that has endless benefits, and that can be different each day and reap wonderful benefits during your planning phases. It may not be for you, but if you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go and then reflect. Don’t give up. Some days are substandard. Sometimes things aren’t aligned to give us an easy path. If you feel like giving up, try to take emotion out of your decision and move forward anyway. We won’t always be positively emotioned during all of our endeavors, but that doesn’t mean we should give up. Give yourself some tough love much as you would do with any other task. Don’t beat yourself up for skipping a day. With that said, don’t skip so much that you let the goal trail off into the distance and eventually disappear. The longer your mindfulness vacation is, the harder it becomes to jump back on the bandwagon. Keep a success chart or checklist to motivate yourself to keep going. Make a list of techniques taught in this program up to this point (there is a full one in phase 10). Practice them each for at least a week to see which ones work best for you. You may have to restructure a part of your schedule or give something up, or simply use your time more wisely in order to stay dedicated to your practice. Your progress from here on out will be determined by your personal dedication to self improvement and wellness for your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies. The benefits are not only life changing in subtle ways that will be unique to you, but they will also prepare you and your senses for the rest of your daily routines. A daily dedicated meditation routine can change your outlook on life as well as build for you a high vibrational energy that in turn protects you from energetic bombardment or surprises that pop up in life.

Sinking Your Meditative Core into your Daily Practice Once your thought trains are under your conscious control, it’s time to keep moving forward with a more dedicated meditation practice. To accomplish this, you will use your preferred grounding technique and your five (or more) affirmations in a preparatory step before sitting in silence each time you sit to practice the meditation technique you have integrated into your routine. Grounding yourself is a mental activity that is enhanced by visualization and imagination. It is the act of consciously connecting the energy that runs through your body to the Earth below you. We are always connected to the planet by the very nature of our energetic being, however, that connection can dim to our senses if we do not consciously pay attention to and honor it. Grounding is best done with bare feet on the Earth, but can be done anywhere at any time regardless of being in direct contact with the dirt or not. Preparing yourself for meditation is a beneficial practice that can take anywhere from seconds to minutes, depending on your own preference and routine. Grounding yourself before meditation will bring you into alignment with your surrounding elements. Reciting your affirmations before meditation will raise your vibration before committing to a period of time in silence.

Building Your Meditative Endurance Through Active Meditation The practice of meditation on a regular basis will begin to relieve symptoms of chronic fatigue, and also inspire your physiology to seek out habits that are good for you such as getting enough rest and eating in a healthy way. Regular meditation practice also provides the body with rejuvenation that lasts throughout the day. Some people find it very easy to fall asleep during meditation, which is one of the biggest reasons why many feel that they are unsuccessful with the practice all together. It is easy to fall asleep when laying down and meditating, which is why it is recommended to meditate in a sitting position, however using meditation to help you fall asleep can also be an effective way to replace your body’s tendencies of insomnia. If you are practicing meditation when you have time to fall asleep, and then do actually fall asleep when you are meditating, you have given your body the rest it obviously needs, and that is never a bad thing. Does meditation with music help or hinder your sleepiness during meditation? Consider this component if you find yourself fighting fatigue, and remember, fatigue is not a symptom of meditation, it is a symptom of needing more deep sleep. If you are constantly falling asleep during meditation, it is a signal from your body that you need to make adjustments to add more sleep into your life. Sleep is one of our basic needs as a human and our body’s need for enough rest is equivalent to receiving adequate shelter and nutrition. If you are a person who does get enough sleep yet still gets fatigued during meditation, consider the time of day you are meditating. Are you meditating on a full stomach? After eating, it is the body’s natural tendency to take a short rest before expending the energy it just took in. Meditation, therefore, is more successful when practiced on an empty stomach. Do you need to meditate at a different time of the day? Many people find great success when meditating in the early morning after they have just had a good night’s sleep. Some have found it beneficial to meditate during their lunch time before they eat their lunch, finding themselves more awake after they eat, and more alert once they return to work. In this chapter, you will find a variation of a Moving Meditations that will keep your mind more engaged and out of the false fatigue zone, where our bodies like to convince themselves that it is nap time. Practice each one to see which works best for you, and assess your progress as you implement one of the following meditation techniques, or one covered previously in the course, three to five times per week. To stay in control of your mind while in action is a game changer in the way that we communicate with others throughout our day. It keeps our minds out of negative thought trains and vibrating at a healing frequency, giving us a smoother experience throughout our day. When you add this step to your daily grounding, affirmation, and gratitude work, you up your game to mindset change and physiological healing!