Health coach and meditation guide Becs Erickson practises meditation as the sun rises over Wainui Beach, Gisborne.
Health coach and meditation guide Becs Erickson practises meditation as the sun rises over Wainui Beach, Gisborne.
Kim Parkinson signs up to a six-week meditation course to learn more about a practice that has long been considered beneficial for health and wellbeing.
Meditation has been shown to offer many benefits, from reducing stress to slowing the ageing process - so after years of sporadic practice, I decided to sign up for a six-week meditation course with Gisborne health coach and meditation guide Becs Erickson.
Research has shown that as well as reducing stress and anxiety, meditation may also help enhance your mood, promote healthy sleep patterns and boost cognitive skills. It is something that is available to anyone – the only thing required is time (as little as five minutes) and the discipline to make it a daily habit.
I thought if I knew the correct way to meditate, it would be easier to adopt as a regular practice in my life.
After my first lesson I felt so blissful and relaxed, I was nervous about driving home safely.
Becs has been teaching the meditation course for eight years and is expert at guiding participants into a mindful, meditative state.
Health coach and meditation guide Becs Erickson teaches six-week meditation courses in Gisborne.
Each session begins with finding a comfortable seat – using any of the available props, like bolsters and cushions.
Meditation is the habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. To do this, Becs uses pranayama – or breath control - to help the body get into the zone to meditate.
She teaches various techniques that are often part of yoga, so you may be familiar with them. Full yogic breath is where you breathe deeply into the diaphragm and then continue the breath up into the chest, and release slowly through the nose. Over the meditation course you will be introduced to Nadi Shodhana, or alternate nostril breathing; nine-count breathing; kapalbhati/skull shining breath, and ujjayi - breath with sound.
The next part of the guided mediation class is the Dharana or concentration phase.
Over the six-week course we learned three techniques to help concentrate or focus the mind - the first being triangular breath, where you imagine the breath moving in an inverted V shape to meet in the centre of the forehead. This can be accompanied by a mantra, for example “so hum”, which you say to yourself on the in and out breath.
In week three we learned front passage breathing, where you imagine the breath moving up the front of the body and steadily back down again.
And finally spinal passage breathing, where you visualise a small light travelling up from the base of your spine to the back of your head, behind the eyes, and back down.
The final phase is the meditation. Here we are told to visualise a zone behind the eyes and the forehead called the mind space. Becs gives helpful visual cues like imagining the night sky, of putting yourself at the back of an imaginary theatre and looking out into infinity.
While in the mind space we are told to let thoughts come, but to remain detached from them.
Sometimes the body or mind will put up resistance and we are told to simply go with this and try again.
When you successfully get into a meditative state, it is a very peaceful place to be.
Something that resonated with me was the idea of being able to sit and soak in the beauty of the here and now.
We are told to measure the success of our meditation by how we feel afterwards, not during the meditation.
Meditation guide Becs Erickson does a morning home practice every day. She runs a health and wellness business called Heart Space and is passionate about making meditation, yoga and Ayurveda accessible to all.
There are apps like Insight Timer that can help you meditate. They allow you to choose a guided meditation practice and duration - Becs suggests that if you do use an app, to stick with one guided meditation for a length of time.
We are told the body will get into the habit of meditating if we choose to do it at the same time each day. Most importantly, Becs says you need to be clear on your “why”.
“Feelings of restlessness, impatience, irritability and frustration are all good (and normal) experiences to have when meditating,” Becs says.
It means your meditation practice is working. The key is to allow these experiences to be what they are, without the desire to try to change anything.
How you feel after your meditation practice is your measuring stick.
“This is all part of the linked process of meditation: ‘the more we meditate, the more we purify; the more we purify, the more we meditate ... ’ This can be a good time to remind ourselves that meditation is not always about being in a blissful state, it’s also about clearing unhelpful thoughts and memories. Think of it like you’re taking a shower on the inside, washing away all the gunk/build-up that accumulates throughout your day and your life.”
To find out more go to www.heartspace.co.nz
Kim Parkinson did the six-week meditation course courtesy of heartspace.co.nz
