It was a real epiphany to me the day I realized meditation wasn\’t about stopping my thoughts or \”watching them float across my mind like clouds across a sky,\” as some suggest.

Not helpful! It was like a mental hurricane up there in my brain, the barrage of thoughts zipping and swirling, and the more I focused on quieting them, the more my body convinced me that my pursuit of mental silence was doomed. With my efforts an inevitable failure, I gave up, dissatisfied and frustrated.

Then one day out of the blue, it occurred to me that meditation is about focusing on something that\’s not thought.

To me, this awareness makes meditation wildly easier than I ever imagined. It makes meditation something I look forward to every day. I daresay (insert huge gasp here!) I PLAY meditation like a kid plays outside in the sandbox.

Could it be possible that for you too meditation could be come something so fantastic that you\’d look forward to doing it every day? That it could be no struggle? That it could change how you feel about your body and humanity in general? That it could improve your everyday state-of-being, your emotional regulation and your life? Effortlessly?

Dare to imagine that this could be true. And the only thing you need is your body, a curious mindset and some time!

Remember when you were a kid setting off to play you didn\’t really have a goal? You just set off with the intention to have fun, and it didn\’t really matter if you ended up lobbing a ball around in the yard, clashing sticks for hours with the neighbor kids in the woods out back, or horsing around in muddle puddles in the driveway in your new muck boots.

As kids we didn\’t consciously have an objective or something to achieve–we found pleasure in non-doing. We just held onto this loose idea that we\’d find something to occupy us, that it would be fulfilling on some level and that we would just loose ourselves in some mindless self-soothing that brought us joy for this now moment.

As adults now, we find ways to engineer these moments.

In fact, meditation is a practice of becoming familiar with your unknown self. I say its the practice of getting to know our as-of-yet-not-fully-rediscovered Divine Self.

Yep, that\’s a mouthful, but I don\’t know how to say it more consisely.

For me, meditation is a practice that helps us peel back the layers of the Divine Self we forgot when we were born here on Earth. Some of us had contact with this Divinity within and around us as children, and we lost touch with it as we grew up, experienced life events and were taught to be limited, to be small and to conform to norms.

Some of us have no memory of our Divine Self, and through meditation, we discover the joy of remembering and bringing this new awareness into every aspect of our life.

I practice, teach and guide Yoga Nidra meditation. Yoga Nidra is state of consciousness, a state of relaxed awareness that opens a doorway between the conscious and subconscious mind. This is a mystical state-of-being in which we can interact with energy within and around us and have experiences that range from pleasant insights to massive spiritual epiphanies to radical spontaneous healings.

A hallmark of this practice–the healing and transformative power of it–is that where our attention goes, our energy flows. Its not novel, necessarily, because it\’s how our whole life works: where our attention goes our energy follows. For example, you think about brushing your teeth in the morning and your body will follow that thought effortlessly to the bathroom sink.

What makes this phenomenon novel in the context of meditation is that our attention is CREATIVE POWER for healing, change and self-determination. Meditation practice supports us in every aspect of our life in moving from victim to creator.

If we want to transform your relationship with meditation and with the energy we embody, it\’s super helpful to know about types of focus:

• Convergent Focus–one center of focus; we flow all our attention to this one point and our awareness converges on the object of our notice.
• Divergent Focus–open focus or awareness on space rather than an object; focus on more than one point or object of notice simultaneously.
• Internal/Inner Focus–Focus on your body as space, as a container that energy and information move through, including the bio-field of electro-magnetic energy around your body in the space of your room.
• External Focus–Focus on the non-physical and physical energy of things that are not your body and not your bio-field.

In meditation we are focusing on something other than thought. We might sit by the ocean and converge our focus on the waves lapping the shore or we may divergently gaze across the harbor and notice all the happenings within our direct and peripheral vision simultaneously. We might lay on the deck in the sun and focus our awareness on sensing and perceiving down into the space of our body so deeply that we simply forget to think.

These focus types are rich. There is no right or wrong here, and its not as if we are focusing correctly or incorrectly. It\’s just valuable to know that you can choose. You can choose to shift your focus and your attention. And when we do this, when we step-by-step master this, we master our creative energy and greatly influence the direction of our life.

Could it be possible that through the practice of meditation you could fall madly in love with your very being? The unique expression of life that we call you? Maybe, even, is it possible you could discover that you\’re a pretty magnificent?

This is the work I practice and teach, and if learning more interests you, it\’s so valuable to set aside some one-on-one time to talk about what this can mean for you life and to develop skills in regulating your mental-emotional energy.

The retreats I lead are designed to help you build these skills quickly and to feel inspired by what\’s within you and the greater reality that you are connected to. The modalities of energy healing are forms of drugless wellness–no matter what you\’re currently experiencing or what treatments you are receiving, they can do no harm. You can visit my upcoming classes and retreats page here.

Email dianamariachapin@gmail.com, or Call Diana at 207-249-2261. Subscribe to my blog at the bottom of this page.  Healing, learning and sharing is my passion…please share this blog with those you think it can help.  We are changing the world, one heart at a time. Thank you!

Learn more about Yoga Nidra in my January 24th blog here