Tag Archives: breath practice

Companion Guided Meditations from How to Be a Badass Lawyer

It’s World Meditation Day today, a day to raise awareness about the practice of meditation and its benefits. To honor the day, I’m sharing four new guided meditations with a variety of practices and a range of times. These meditations are the recorded companions to the practices offered in my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer.

As the book explains in more detail, these practices are offered to help you build a regular meditation practice. They offer a variety of practices so that, over time, you can better understand your body, mind, and emotions. With this foundation, you should have the basic skills needed to do the dynamic and transformational practice of loving-kindness. In addition, they range in time so that you can gradually build up your tolerance for meditation practice.

Keep reading to learn more about and try each practice.

Breath Focus Practice

Most meditation practitioners and teachers start with the breath and there’s good reason for that. It’s always with you and the breath is the link between body and mind that can reliably help you calm down. This means that getting comfortable with your breath and being able to use it as a tool is not just helpful as a resource for meditation practice but also a good tool for life. If you need help finding your breath, read more here.

But if you are ready to go, check out this 5-minute practice to get started.

Body Scan

One thing that can get overlooked when it comes to mindfulness is that the body is an essential part. Mindfulness of thoughts is only one aspect, but the body is a link that can help us cultivate awareness even of thoughts. Why? Because contemporary life invites us so frequently to reside in our heads and ignore our bodies.

Body scan is a practice that can help us get reacquainted with our bodies. It is a simple practice that many consider deeply relaxing. You systematically feel the sensations in the body. This is a practice that can help you understand how to take better care of your body (i.e. recognizing signs of stress or physical needs), relax and rest, and understand your emotions better.

To try this 10-minute practice, check it out here.

Joy Practice

Now, I bet you are wondering why I would tell you to practice joy. I have good reason. Did you know that, from a stress standpoint, the body doesn’t necessarily differentiate between what we consider positive emotions versus negative emotions? Thus, if we get more understanding and tolerance for positive emotions, we can understand all of our emotions better.

For many lawyers and professionals, though, positive emotions are the easiest ones to overlook. We are busy and expect good results so we may gloss over accomplishments and peaceful times because we are habituated to handle crisis situations. When we focus on joy, we heal and nourish ourselves and we cultivate emotional understanding at the same time.

Try this 15-minute practice, which incorporates breath and body work as well here.

Loving-Kindness

The final practice in the book is my favorite: loving-kindness. It is a practice where meditators focus on the body, usually the area around the heart, and wish others well. Though you may not think wishing will do a lot, research says otherwise. This practice is associated with reduced stress, improved relationships, and may even lead to more ethical conduct.

You can modify the practice to support your needs and goals and I have a guide here that can help you do that. This 20-minute practice, however, includes the traditional people, groups, and phrases. You can check it out here.

To learn more about the practices and how they fit together, check out my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer. Good luck with the practices and please reach out if you have any questions.

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Mindfulness Basics: How to Find Your Breath

Breath practice is what many people think of when they think of meditation. The instructions seem simple. You are supposed to focus on your breath and return–ideally without mentally flagellating yourself–to the feeling every time your mind wanders. But as soon as you sit down to get started, you may be greeted by the somewhat disturbing recognition that you have no idea how to find your breath.

This may be shocking since, presumably, you’ve been breathing your whole life. You may think, “how can I not find my breath? I just had it a minute ago.” You may feel as foolish as that time (or in my case all those times) you rushed into the grocery store for a quick purchase and realized you didn’t pay attention to where you parked your car. Sigh.

In truth, this may be a collective sigh. Many of us have trouble finding our breath, or at least settling on a focal point that works for us, at first. In my view, if you notice that you aren’t quite sure what it means to focus on your breath, that’s actually a good sign. It means you are starting to slow down and you’re noticing things you never noticed before. It means you are starting to ask questions about experiences you previously ignored or overlooked. That’s one of the critical benefits a meditation practice can offer, so you should be encouraged by it instead of discouraged.

Beyond this, the reason it might be hard to find your breath is that there isn’t any right answer. When you are told to focus on your breath, most teachers mean to focus your attention on the sensations of the breath coming in and going out. The sensations are the thing and not the thoughts or judgments about it. Different teachers, however, recommend different focal points. Some traditions instruct students to focus on the tip of one’s nose to feel the flow of air in and out. Others recommend focusing on the feeling of rising and falling in the chest or belly as the air fills your lungs. Which should you choose?

My recommendation is to start with the place that calls out to you the strongest and stick with it. When I started meditating, I focused on my nose because one of the first books I read about meditation recommended that. I struggled immensely with this. For me, the sensations of the breath just weren’t very strong at the tip of my nose. When I finally went to a Zen retreat, I asked the teacher and she said she focused on her belly because she wanted “to get as far away from her head as she could.” I liked that answer a lot and tried focusing on my belly. Voila! Problem solved. My practice got much easier and my mind started unconsciously settling on my breath as I went about my daily tasks.

Does this mean that the belly is a better focal point than the nose? Not in my opinion. What it means is that the belly is a better focal point than the nose for me. For anyone new to meditation, I recommend focusing on the area that is strongest so you can get your practice started without much struggle. In the early stages, the important thing is to establish a habit and do what helps you focus and doesn’t discourage you. Once your habit is established and you know your mind and body a little bit better, you can branch out and explore. In fact, if you use guided meditations, you will probably end up doing this automatically because some teachers will direct you to focus on different aspects of the breath.

Breath practice is an excellent place to start when you are first learning to meditate. It is infinitely scalable so you can start with sessions as short as 1 to 2 minutes and grow your practice to lengthier sessions over time. In addition, the breath is an ideal focal point for meditation because it is always “with” you. Lawyers today lead busy, active, and mobile lives, but no matter where you are or what you are doing, you can pause for a bit of mindfulness during your day to calm yourself and refocus on the most important issues in any given moment. Once you have developed a comfort level with breath practice, you can use it to begin exploring other types of mindfulness practices that can help you in your practice and in your life.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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