Meditation Monday: Moving Meditations

Hello and Happy Monday! This week I'd like to talk about moving meditations. I've written before about the fact that I have trouble with traditional still meditations as I am a mover. I find it easier to go to that quiet place of contemplation in my mind when I'm doing repetitive movements of some kind: swimming laps, jogging, walking, or even doing dishes. That's why I thought I would concentrate on various kinds of moving meditations today and give you links to videos of those meditations also. Below I've given you a brief overview of three different kinds of moving meditations. I hope that if you're like me and you prefer to move while meditating, you find one that works for you. Remember though that if you try these meditations and they don't feel right to you, simply take the movement of your choice and if you're consciously aware the entire time you're doing it, it becomes a meditation in itself.

Lightwork: Moving Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptsq5Ur5yQ0 Almost 7 minutes long, filmed on a beautiful beach. Easy, standing postures.

Mahasati Meditation: Moving With Awareness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow4ffdfw0BI
Tibetan monk sitting by the side of a lake, walking and sitting postures, concentrating on moving only one body part at a time.

Qigong Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUtRnDdDsPc  Qigong is a practice with roots in Chinese medicine, martial arts, and philosophy which allows access to higher realms of awareness and develops human potential. It aligns body, breath, and mind and is viewed as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (chi) or life energy. It is now practiced worldwide and throughout China for recreation, exercise and relaxation. Qigong involves slow flowing movements, deep rhythmic breathing, and a calm meditative state of mind.

How Do You Doodle?

If it's on FastCo, it must be true. Right up there with daydreaming, doodling is now being touted for it's mind-freeing attributes. According to FastCo, recent scientific research indicates that seemingly absent-minded tracings can help the brain process and retain information and solve problems. While doodling can improve retention for information that you're hearing, it doesn't always work when trying to remember visual images while doodling.

(Source:http://www.fastcodesign.com/3033893/asides/why-you-should-doodle-more?partner=newsletter)

Personally I'm a fast, manic, somewhat messy doodler. My doodles combine my lists for the day, product ideas, show booth ideas, and usually architecture or faces. Often when I look back at them it takes me awhile to even figure out what they ARE, which is fine as the very nature of doodling is that they don't have to be ABOUT anything. (The Virgo in me always feels like I have to be accomplishing something, so I look back at the doodles in hopes that some stray hair of genius somehow escaped and landed on the page as a really fantastic concept.)
Here's some of my doodles--although showing them to you feels a bit like going to the grocery store in a swimsuit. What do your doodles look like? Are you more of a Zentangular person or a structured sketcher?

Meditation Monday-Comparing Guided Meditation Apps

I know I haven't done the Meditation Monday post for quite awhile but I'm attempting to make it my Monday "thing" again now that I'm past the Stationery Show and have some of my orders filled for the moment.
I thought I'd re enter the meditation discussion by comparing a couple of guided meditation apps: the two I'm comparing this week are Simply Being and Headspace. I tried the free (or almost free) versions of each of these so that's what I'll be reviewing here.

First: Simply Being
Cost: $ 0.99

Nice calming graphic interface with simple button choices for options to meditate with music, with music and voice, with nature sounds and voice or just with voice. For time options, you can choose from 5, 10, 15, or 20 minute sessions. There are slider bars to regulate the volume of each sound individually. The guide's voice is a female one and it's mild and soothing in my opinion. After using this app for several weeks, I didn't feel the need to have the voice on anymore as the different programs weren't that varied plus I realized how much I missed just meditating in silence and hearing whatever sounds were around me instead. It seemed a bit silly to me to listen to pre-recorded nature sounds and drown out the actual nature sounds that were right outside my window!

Secondly: Headspace
Cost: Free for 10 day intro

I've heard this app described as "Type A Meditation" and I have to say I agree with that description. With fun, graphic illustrations on the interface I really was drawn in to the Headspace Take10 program-this is the introductory program that lasts 10 days and is meant to encourage you to purchase the full year of the program for $6.28 a month. The guide's voice is male and he speaks in an easy-to-understand Australian accent. I really like a lot of his techniques in this program--he uses some visual cues that really did help me to get in the meditation mode--the only problem was, every time I felt that I was really relaxed and into it, he would speak again and it would distract me. Some people may really like this approach and if so, you should definitely try it out as his program is varied each day plus he has different programs that I haven't tried like Headspace Motivate and Headspace Active. I felt that I didn't really want to pay $6.28 a month for this type of guided meditation but if you like lots of verbal cues while you meditate, this may be the program for you. Also there is an entire website/blog devoted to this app so you can read a lot about the various meditation options before you sign up for the paid version.

That's all for this Meditation Monday. Next week I will compare two other guided meditation apps.
Happy Monday!