Meditation and
Stress Management

Meditation has been an important part of my personal stress management for most of my 55 years. It’s provided me an outlet for peace and introspection, and helped me to slow down and relax.

I’ve enjoyed using it to walk my clients through guided adventures, opening up insights for them, and teaching them a variety of tools for inner growth.

It’s only been in recent years that I learned of the existence of Mindfulness Meditation, which can specifically make an enormous difference in a person’s quality of life. I've since adapted this type of meditation into my life and integrated it with my own methods.

The result is part of the system that I teach my clients, but there is very little actual sitting meditation required. Instead, I teach my clients to use it during daily life with eyes open while doing other things, and it's even more effective.

Having spent several decades immersed in new age spiritual venues, it really surprised me to look back and see that no one had ever made me aware this amazing technique before. Or perhaps they had, and somehow I didn’t hear it. What I didn't realize is that the practice changes and slows down frantic thought patterns.

The method called Mindfulness is also called Vipassana, or Insight, and it is of Buddhist origin. Perhaps that’s why I overlooked it. I thought I would have to embrace Buddhism to do it, but I was wrong.

Though I’ve learned that there is much wisdom is Buddhism, principles like the "8-fold path" and "4 noble truths" just don't interest me. It’s secular mindfulness I’ve embraced and made my own.

I find that once a client is practicing my strategies and techniques that are derived from these origins, their minds naturally become inclined toward health, wholeness and positive feelings and behavior.

So the imposition of "rules" on their lives is meaningless and unnecessary when they are on the path to emotional peace and joy. You will find an extended discussion Mindfulness Meditation and other types and benefits here.

For those of you who do not want to change their thinking as a way of life, I offer other techniques which I believe you will find helpful.

These include those on the link above as well as added principles like gratitude, forgiveness, acceptance, compassion, and unconditional love.

For those of you who do want to dedicate yourself to transforming your life, I want you to know that all the above principles will also enrich your life, because the mind naturally desires wholeness.

When you begin to clear out the debris in your mind as I will teach you to do, you are more directly plugged into Wisdom Mind, the mind of God and Spirit and the Universe, and all those other principles are naturally added to your consciousness.

It sounds magical, and perhaps it is. But it’s true. As the mind begins to move toward wholeness, acceptance is taken to a higher level than that which we are capable of through brute willpower.

That acceptance manifests itself in the form of reducing reactionary behavior and impulses. And acceptance also opens the way naturally for gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, and unconditional love. Return to Stress Management Techniques