By Arline Rowden

Do you have a meditation practice? Have you found a type of meditation that works well for you? There are so many choices. I’ve found guided meditation to be so helpful in teaching my mind to focus where I want it to focus. I also run my Reiki energy each time that I meditate. Chanting can be another way to meditate. I’ve done mostly sitting meditation but there are other forms. Tai Chi can be a wonderful moving meditation. Many combine meditation and yoga. Just walking out in nature, in a mindful way, can be great, too. Some people like to read something that is inspiring and then contemplate and perhaps do some writing, too. If you haven’t started to meditate or you haven’t found a meditation type that you enjoy, then try many until you find one that you feel works well for you.

Meditating in a group can be a great experience and I encourage you to do that at times. Many love to meditate in a group near the time of the Full Moon and New Moon. Attending a meditation class can be a great way to get started or restart your meditation practice. It can help you to experience physical relaxation, emotional calmness and mental peacefulness. Once you have worked with your three part personality then you can focus on your spiritual connections such as reaching up to your Higher Self or Soul. I have found that my Soul has such a positive energy and it makes it easier for my personality to be positive more of the time. I ask my Soul to hold a space for me when I meditate and working on a healing issue, too.

Meditation can be so helpful in discovering what’s going on inside of yourself. I consider a meditation practice part of my healing path. As I relax and focus on my physical, emotional and mental selves, issues that are unresolved often come into my awareness. So writing, even a few notes, after meditation can help me on my healing path. Sometimes I draw an intuitive card after meditation and that helps me to be more aware of what’s going on inside of me.

What experiences, negative and positive, have brought you to this day? Did your negative childhood experiences shape how you approach and view life even now? Was your childhood okay but were there negative experiences as an adult that were impactful? Do you feel your past is following you around and you don’t know how to let it go? Taking some time to review your life can be so helpful. You don’t need to do it all in one day, take your time, but write it down. It’s important to write down the positive as well as the negative experiences. Often, we have a hard time remembering positive experiences when there has been a lot of negative ones.

When you are reviewing life experiences, notice if you have a lot of emotion surface with the memory. That often indicates that the experience needs to be processed. If you feel emotion, it is helpful to identify and name the emotions and accept them. It’s not necessary to really go into the emotions, just touch in enough to identify them. Next take some time to look for what you learned from the experience even though it was negative. You may have developed compassion, patience and/or understanding for others through your experiences. By identifying something positive it will allow the negative emotions to be released from the solar plexus chakra and the new found wisdom is moved into your heart center.

It takes time to develop a meditation practice. It takes time to identify life experiences that are not resolved. It takes time to heal from life experiences that were negative. I encourage you to give yourself the gift of time, compassion and support. You are so worth it. And you are opening yourself to a new way of being in the Aquarian Age.