Rachel Podger Therapy

This is meditation and a space to listen to the sounds around you. Listening to what is happening all around allows to to come back to what is. Notice the thoughts as they come and go, and just let them pass, coming back to all of the sounds that you hear in this present moment. 

This meditation is really useful to help ground you when life gets too stressful, or too overwhelming. Just listen, and keep coming back to the sounds and how you feel them in your body. 

Explore what it is like just to stop and allow yourself the time just to be with the sounds of nature. 

This is stage 4 in the loving-kindness meditation, where we send loving-kindness to ourselves, to others close to us and further away. We send loving-kindness to all beings on the earth. 

This guided meditation will help you learn the invaluable skill of being able to settle anywhere by grounding yourself through your body, down into your feet and then the earth. 

By grounding yourself with your feet you will be able to calm yourself when feelings of unease of anxiety try to take over. It is a simple yet extremely effective meditation. 

I hope you enjoy it. 

This loving-kindness meditation is the 3rd stage of loving-kindness. It covers the first two stages - sending loving-kindness to yourself and someone that you care about, and then asks you to think about someone you do not particularly like or dislike. Your feelings are ‘neutral’. This may be someone you do not know well but see around. You reflect on their humanity, and include them in your feelings of metta.

Today I have recorded a meditation for you, to help relieve pain and suffering.

Studies have shown that meditation, which is actually the formal practice of what you may know as mindfulness, can change the way the mind perceives pain. Meditation can actually make main more bearable naturally and without the use of painkillers. 

The idea of being mindful of pain may seem counter-intuitive. Normally you want to forget about your pain. You want to escape it, numb it, rid yourself from it. Unfortunately, when we fight against our pain, or even ignore it, we put our bodies under stress. 

It may sound unbelievable, but it is actually possible - with some practice - to be in physical pain but also be in a calm and content emotional state. 

This meditation builds upon the meditation I posted yesterday - sending Loving Kindness to ourselves. With this one you will send loving kindness to yourself and another. 

Practicing sending loving kindness both to ourselves and to others can help teach us compassion, love and empathy. It can also help us ground ourselves and reduce stress while also reducing judgement of ourselves and others. 

This is a meditation to bring loving kindness to yourself. Practicing loving kindness towards yourself in meditation, even if it's a short meditation like this one can help boost well-being and reduce stress. 

When I started going through the changes that the perimenopause, and then the menopause brought, I often felt anything but kindly towards myself. I hardly knew who I was anymore, and I certainly didn't want to be becoming what I thought I was becoming. 

However, fortunately on my own journey I discovered mindfulness and meditation practices which have guided me away from destructive thought patterns and taught me how to forgive, connect with myself and others and of course, one of the hardest things; accept and love myself. It's a work in progress, but using meditations like this one on loving kindness, ensures that I do continue to move forward. I very much hope you enjoy these five minutes to yourself.

This is a short meditation to help you use the breath as an anchor. 

This is a short meditation to learn how to be with something difficult. I should say that this meditation is just to learn how to navigate a small difficulty, not something overwhelmingly difficult. 

Spending a few minutes a day meditating can benefit you in a vast number of ways, not least grounding you in the present moment, and helping you to re-size problems. 

Allowing yourself to be with a difficulty, without judging it, or your reactions to it, can help you let go. 

This is a meditation to become aware of your sense of smell.