Let me tell you about my guided meditation for daily life. I’ve been using this meditation for a few years and it’s honestly my favorite way to meditate. It works on one simple premise: Whatever emotion we’ve been struggling with the most for the past 24 hours, we meditate on the opposite of that emotion.
Essentially, this meditation heals our emotions after a long day. And it makes us feel better no matter what type of day we’ve had.
Try the meditation by listening to the audio or following the script. And after that, I’ll explain why this meditation is so very powerful.
Let me show you how to get the most out of meditation.
Come meditate with me today!
Guided Meditation For Daily Life
You can watch the video here or just listen to the audio above.
Script
Welcome to our guided meditation for daily life. This is a wonderful soothing and healing meditation that you can use each day. And I’m also going to share one of my favorite tips for making your daily meditation practice more effective.
When you are ready, sit or lie down comfortably with good posture. And close your eyes.
Perhaps you have had a busy day and your mind is full of noise. Take this moment to set your intention and remind yourself that the only thing that you are doing right now is focusing on the present moment, you’re giving yourself a few precious moments just to exist in the here and now.
And now let us become aware of the breath. Breathing in through the nose. And out through the mouth. Simply observing the breath moving through the body. Not controlling the breath, just allowing the breath to flow as it will. Noticing that gentle arises and fall of the abdomen. You can use any of the types of meditative breathing.
And again, this is just the beginning. Just starting with a little mindful breathing to clear the mind. Continuing to observe the breath moving through the body.
From time to time your mind will of course wander, such is the way of the mind, we will experience thoughts and feelings, and that is completely fine and completely normal. Just remember when you need to to gently guide your mind back to your breath.
And now let us take a moment to be aware of the body. Simply being aware of your physical form as you sit or lie down. Tuning into the body. Enhancing that mind body connection, which is important that we do each day, because throughout the day sometimes the mind and the body slip away from each other. And so let us now, during our meditation, bring the mind back into harmony with the body. Simply observing our physical form. Being aware of the sensations and of the energy flowing through the body.
And now I’m going to move into the heart of this daily meditation practice. And I’m going to share my favorite tip. Cast your mind back across the previous 24 hours. And ask yourself. Which thought or which emotion has most troubled my mind over this past 24 hours? This could be any emotion. It could be a feeling of sadness, anger, grief. Then again, it could be an overabundance of excitement. Name the one emotion that you have been most challenged by over the past 24 hours. Simply name that emotion to yourself.
Now what we want to do and how we want to use meditation for daily life is to rebalance the mind. And to do that, we meditate on the opposite of our most challenging emotion. This is simpler than it might sound, and so I will give you several examples. Let us say that over the past 24 hours you’ve been feeling angry, in which case, for the remainder of this meditation, you will be focusing on the opposite of anger, which is calmness and inner peace. Or perhaps you’ve had an accumulation of sadness, in which case you will continue to meditate on the opposite of sadness, that being joy and gladness. Or perhaps you’re simply feeling bored and under stimulated, in which case again you will meditate on the opposite of that which would be feeling stimulated and full of zest.
Name the emotion that you have been most challenged by over the past 24 hours. Now decide what the opposite of that emotion is.
For the next few minutes, I want you to meditate on times in your life when you have most felt the opposite of your challenging emotion. And again, a few examples. If you’ve been feeling sad for 24 hours, you’re meditating on gladness and joy, in which case you are bringing to mind times when you felt gladness and joy. If you were feeling angry for the past 24 hours you’re meditating on peacefulness and calmness, and you’re bringing to mind times in your life when you have felt peaceful and calm. And so on. So choose your positive emotion.
Now bring to mind one time in your life when you have felt very much that one positive emotion, whether it be that joy or that inner peace. Bring to mind one time in your life when you really felt that emotion. Now imagine that that moment were happening now. So you’re vividly recalling this memory, seeing yourself in that moment, remembering where you were, what you did when you felt that positive emotion. And you can spend as long as you want meditating on one memory.
When you are ready, move on to the next. Bring to mind another time in your life when you felt that one positive emotion and vividly recall that. And you can continue to do that for as long as you like, but I would recommend a minimum of five to 10 minutes.
When you are ready slowly open your eyes.
Summary
This has been a slightly more complicated meditation than what I usually do. However, I do believe that it is a fabulous strategy to use for your daily meditation practice. It is what I myself do. My 20 years of meditation and of teaching meditation has taught me that this is possibly the best way to use a daily meditation practice. So again, it’s about just observing where your minds at being aware of which emotion you’ve been most challenged by recently, deciding on the opposite of that emotion. So again, if you are feeling anger, then you’re meditating on the calmness and inner peace, because that is the opposite. And then recalling times in your life when you felt this way.
What this will do is each day it will balance your mind based on wherever your mind is currently at. And that is my daily meditation practice. I hope you have enjoyed this session.
Paul Harrison is a passionate meditation teacher who believes in genuine, authentic meditation. He has more than 15 years experience in meditation and mindfulness. He studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK, and Hamilton Ontario Canada, and earned his degree at Staffordshire University.
“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your own mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison