Danielle walks us through the basics of meditation, what to expect when you're a beginner, and how to navigate the process. A quick user-guide for quieting your mind and body.
Danielle Jokonen: Meditation helps you respond to your life versus react. She says it helps you tune in and drop into your heart space to hear the inner truth. The goal, yes, is to get started still and go longer times of silence. Questions about meditation?
Hello, my name is Danielle Jokonen and I am a yoga teacher, yoga teacher, trainer, creator of yoga, yoga and a shaman and life coach. Today I'm talking about meditation, how it helps your mental health, your life, and really like little tips on how to. Now, meditation helps you respond to your life versus react. It helps you see things differently than you otherwise may not see before. And it helps you tune in and drop into your heart space to really hear the inner truth the inner heart desires, the inner wisdom that is already ready available for you when you get still.
Now, meditation can seem super difficult. It can be like, I don't know how to sit still. My mind is racing, my body hurts. All that? Yes. When I started meditating, I was like, how on earth do you sit? My back hurts, my leg fell asleep. I just keep thinking about all the things. That's how it typically starts. So trust the process on your journey for meditation. Stay with it. And even if you just start for a minute to two minutes a day, close your eyes, notice your breath, notice your thoughts. It's not about totally stopping them because that's really impossible in the beginning is just observing your thoughts like clouds passing in the sky.
You notice a cloud, you let it pass. You notice a thought, you let it pass. The difference is we don't want to get stuck in the thought. So if you think about, oh crap, I forgot to get this for dinner tonight. Oh no, I forgot to get that for dinner tonight. Someone is going to be upset and if somebody gets upset, it's going to be an awful night and then everyone's going to be sad. So it's like you're already stewing in a thought that actually didn't even happen. Like life didn't play out that way.
So the point of meditation is to notice, oh, I forgot to buy something from the grocery store. Okay, I'll go get it later. The end. Like stop. Like not letting ourselves get stewed up in a thought about it. So meditation is really about creating the space in between our thoughts to so say something happens, you can become the observer and you can respond in a way that you want to respond versus automatically react. And later be sure. I wish I didn't react that way. So it creates more space and time almost in between experiences, in between thoughts, in between ways you interact with yourself and people around you.
It almost is like, almost like a superpower. It really is because it allows you to be still and be calm and cypher through things and not let stories come up anymore in our mind that you don't want to be there anymore to almost like rule your life to create it. Because if we're allowing those thoughts to create our life, we're living from unconscious thoughts versus conscious or present moment thoughts, and then creating in that moment. That's what meditation allows you to do, is create in the moment versus just live on unconscious automatic already tapes that may not actually be serving us anymore.
And then meditation also helps you get tuned into insights and wisdoms that he may otherwise not get access to. And a lot of times he's like, what do I do with that insight? Just be with that. So meditation is a gift you give yourself, really, to help you live from a place of choice, consciousness and response versus automatic reaction. So start maybe 1 minute a day, maybe have some music in the background if needed. The goal, yes, is to get started still and go longer times of silence. But start where you are with what you can do, and then continue to be consistent and expand from that.
Questions about meditation? Maybe just set a timer on your phone today for 1 minute and see what happens and reach out to me and let me know. Have a blessed rest of your day.
