TR Meditation Club. You’re invited!

Welcome to the Club! What club, you ask? The TR Meditation Club. Coolest club out there. I have found myself falling in love with teaching meditation; the more I practice teaching, the deeper my own understanding becomes. I am a student of meditation, which I believe simply means that I am a student of self-awareness and contemplation. The purpose of the TR Meditation Club is to develop and provide free, guided meditations to anyone interested. 

You will find a meditation dropdown menu and a continuously evolving list of guided, simple meditation practices. You do not need any experience and each is developed from my own personal practices. Please join the mailing list so you receive an email when I publish a new meditation. 

I began exploring meditation through a meditation school many years ago. I spent about a decade studying the program(s) developed through the Monroe Research Facility, such as the Gateway Voyage Program and the LifeLine Meditation Program. I studied other forms of meditation, completing my mindfulness based stress reduction teacher training course, many meditation retreats and workshops, as well as modules of yoga teacher training. I have taught meditation and yoga programs to adults and children, and continue to reestablish my own practice as it ebbs and flows with my life. 

Your Invitation

In my last article, I discussed a few of the limitations I had experienced both in my own life and throughout my journey as a meditation teacher. Today, I will delve a bit deeper into how meditation has benefited my life in very specific ways. Meditation is a practice that I truly believe anyone and everyone can engage in, as it opens the door to so many wonderful experiences. In the classes and courses I teach, I have noticed that students already know how to meditate. It is natural. Often it is simply a guide that is needed to facilitate the practice however, the practice itself already exists inside each of us. With the intention to offer guidance in a gentle, invitational manner, I’m taking my teaching to the online portal so I can extend my classes to each of you.

Empower Yourself

The purpose of the TR Meditation Club is to provide you with a series of meditations, and eventually full programs, that you can listen to anytime, anywhere. Perhaps at home, in a chair, on the bus, in your bed, at a cabin, with coffee or tea, etc. Wherever and whatever serves you best! Empower yourself by meditating in a setting, and at a time, that works for you. The Meditation Club is intended to provide you with real tools for your life. Soon you will see a playlist of choices, programs and discussions; use them to enhance your life, share with anyone you want and feel free to email me suggestions on practices you’d like to explore. Please share, use and enjoy. TR is here to make you smile and to help your life. Your well-being matters!

Why I created the Club

The reason I wanted to start a TR Club filled with resources is that these same resources have deeply impacted my own life. I will provide a few specific examples, including my own obstacles, ideas and experiences. As I mentioned previously, meditation is a vessel. Your vessel to fill with whatever tool will help you the most. No tool will help forever. Today’s tool is not necessarily tomorrow’s tool; there is no fixed self therefore there is no fixed tool. That’s why I will create a wide variety of meditative tools that I have personally practiced, utilized and benefited from.

Anxiety

Anxiety. I had significant anxiety and I still grapple with it. The Awareness of Breath practice has been a great tool for working through and with it. Anxiety is the reason I initially registered at a meditation school. I basically wanted to be calm af and I was uptight af. That expanded into trouble sleeping, fear about why I was anxious and restrictions on my life that were motivated by anxiety. I began meditating and continued to work with my anxiety for many years, noticing the ebb and flow of it within my life. Learning to meditate didn’t ‘cure’ me of anything; I still have the same personality, susceptibility to be anxious and I have many tools (not solely meditation). What it did offer is a way of approaching my thoughts differently. A practice that gave me a break from my thinking mind. It became freedom. The freedom from me.

In those moments of freedom, I came to learn of other layers and aspects of myself and eventually understood that my thoughts, anxiety and any other issue were not my identity. They were an experience. Meditation is similar to a life simulation. When I experienced distressing thoughts in meditation, I practiced noticing them and being with them just as they were. It became easier in my day to day life to detach from anxiety and I noticed it arise faster. In that way, I was able to make strategic self-care decisions quickly and proactively to ensure I safely navigated through anxiety. This helped me sleep better, feel less fear about anxiety and ruminate about ‘why’ it was there less often. Rumination is a dead end. I’ve hit it more than once!

Healing

Meditation helped me heal many layers of myself. As I alluded to previously, meditation doesn’t necessarily fix anything directly. It might; it might not. It’s not magic. Meditation helps you see yourself and by seeing yourself truly, fully and courageously, you can choose actions that guide you towards better well-being. During many of my healing meditations, I perceived emotional injury however I didn’t feel any true emotional turmoil during my daily life. I did, however, feel significant stomach pain that had plagued me for years. I had strategies in place to control and treat my stomach issues however the root of the issue was not clear to me, nor did I search for it initially.

After experiencing persistent emotional meditations and noticing things arise that had rarely, or never, arisen before, I began to contemplate a deeper look at my emotions. This led to a long journey into my past, my actions, my hobbies, my relationships and most importantly, my knowledge of myself. After much work, my stomach pain stopped. When I feel it begin now, instead of finding ways to stop the stomach pain, I find ways to help my body feel calm and safe. Then the pain leaves by itself. Magic! Meditation opened my eyes to the root of the pain and that information allowed me to change my approach to healing and helping myself.

Community

Community is very important; in all of human history, we have been driven to create communities, clusters, tribes, cities, colonies, whatever name you choose. We like to be together. I have found meditation to be a way of connecting to other people on a deep, soulful level that I have never felt in any other practice. There is something indescribable about getting to know someone else on an energetic level. In my meditation classes, I studied with many of the same individuals for years. Some I was close to outside of practice and some I only saw for practice. I felt a very real and authentic connection that is somehow held in a vessel of love, simply because our relationship has been cultivated and supported using a tool for well-being. We connect through love, like a grid that all practitioners tune into.

Login to the Conscious Network

There is vulnerability and a strength that come together when you ‘login’ to a meditation community. The togetherness is unique. It has made me a more compassionate person and more understanding of the human condition. To this day, I have my home practice to keep myself in check and healthy but truly look forward to my group practices. It is similar to an OM chant in Yoga. If you have ever done a yoga class with dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, a chant is something that is felt inside you. It vibrates out of you and into you, almost like a tuning fork. Community is wonderful and meditation communities connect people on a global level. Because consciousness has no boundaries!

Patience is a virtue

A final thought that may resonate with others; meditation has given me significantly more patience. I would say I am the least patient person you will ever meet. I am truly, TRULY furious if I don’t master something on the very first try. My patience is worse than my daughter and she’s one. I used to become so impatient so quickly that I think it caused a neck injury. Learning to be more patient, I believe, came from engaging in a meditation practice. It didn’t matter what the content was. I was so impatient, I couldn’t even sit still for twenty minutes, let alone listen to something AND implement some type of lesson into my life.

We live in a world that has become faster. Incredibly fast. We don’t go on casual Sunday drives or peruse the newspaper. We check online, see forty-seven news stories at once, check our social media accounts on the toilet, do our online banking and get angry if we send a text, see ‘read’ underneath it and don’t get a response immediately or at the VERY least, the three dots indicating someone is writing. Otherwise, WTF. How did we end up like this? Back in the day, I used to go knock on peoples’ doors to see if they were around. If they weren’t, I had to walk all the way back home. Torture. So archaic.

Practice makes Patience

The practice of practicing meditation was hard. It is hard. Patience was a natural byproduct of committing to meditation. I knew it would benefit my life or at the very least, I knew it wouldn’t hurt. Commitment is the hardest part and that in itself is practicing self-control, self-care, patience, discipline and personal well-being. You have to make time to do it. You have to make time to get through it. Just the act of listening to an entire guided meditation can be hard; patience is developed from that type of hard. I continue to feel impatience however I cannot believe the restraint and self-control I have now compared to my younger years.

Respond instead of React

I used to feel that I needed to react and express my anger about feeling impatient. I am better now (not perfect, but better) at taking a deep breath and not reacting to that feeling. I still acknowledge it inside and at times, need space to release frustration or anxiety over what I’m impatient with however, I have space in between impatience and action. That space was once filled with reactivity; it is now filled with choice. I can make an intelligent choice about whether to respond or not.

Much of the ability to feel and not act immediately has come learning distress tolerance. Simply put, I used to feel boredom during meditation. That boredom was difficult to sit with. I then felt impatient and irritated. Often that escalated to anger. Keep in mind, nothing had happened to me. I was likely sitting on a mat, in a peaceful room, escalating from mild boredom to rage with no trigger other than my brain. That is how you train the mind. By noticing when you’ve made it from boredom to homicidal thoughts; noticing and not reacting. The Watchers Mind. It has made many situations much easier to manage. So many less homicidal thoughts…

You’re Free to Create!

Remember that there are many variations, beliefs and traditions associated to meditation practice. Take or leave them. No one is going to hop in your head and correct your practice. Your self-correction comes from what you notice.

I hope that the TR Meditation Club provides you with helpful tools that you may utilize if it serves you. Simply exercising the mind, using these meditations as a starting point or returning to a specific one for a period of time will benefit your life. It won’t happen overnight. Or it might