Welcome back meditators!
Last week we introduced you to the fresh new voice in the meditation world - Holiday Phillips - and gave you your first 10 days of FREE 5 min Guided Meditation Videos to help you learn the basics of mindfulness and meditation for self acceptance.
Each day for 30 days, she will guide you through one meditation a day - from getting into a relaxed state, meditating for a specific purpose like body scanning, soothing touch, compassionate thoughts etc, giving you time for silent reflection and closing the practice.
How are you getting on with meditating?
Not yet checked out the first post in this series?
Need some Q&A before you get going like 'Is meditation supposed to be boring?' 'Should I force myself to meditate even if I don't want to?'.
These questions and more are answered here.
Self Acceptance Guided Meditation Videos
Day 11 - Soothing Touch Part 2
This time, if you want, feel free to experiment with a different soothing touch. It could be a hug, holding your own hand or you can stay with my hand on heart guidance. I'm a hand on heart kinda girl, but feel free to try different things and see what works best for you!
Day 12 - Compassionate Body Scan
We can be so hard on our bodies. But they do so much for us. Today's meditation is (just over!) 5 minutes of taking time to be kind, grateful and respectful to our bodies.
Day 13 - Compassionate Body Scan Part 2
As best you can let this meditation be gentle and peaceful. So if you get stuck on a particular body part, you notice judgement or associations to a particular body part flood in, you can just move on to another body part for now.
Day 14 - Be Here Now
A chance just to be here, now with whatever arises. 5 minutes for yourself, to be still, silent and most importantly kind to yourself.
Day 15 - Affirmation for Acceptance
The first of 3 days of affirmation meditations! If you haven't done affirmations before they can feel very weird.
When I started, it felt super artificial & cheesy. But they seemed to be working for so many people. Eventually I said to myself "well I've been criticising myself my whole life and that hasn't worked, so I may as well try something new". So I did - and it did!
So, even if it feels weird, do give them a chance - I hope they work for you too.
Day 16 - Affirmation for Forgiveness
Often when we start to look inwards we can start to notice that we're holding some anger, disappointment or resentment towards ourselves. Perhaps for a mistake, a weakness or a flaw.
Forgiving ourselves is one of the deepest acts of self acceptance. In forgiveness we honour our human-ness. We accept that we're not perfect beings, but flawed, complicated, mistake-makers - just like every other human on this planet. And that's ok.
Day 17 - Affirmation for Self Worth
Sometimes it's easy to feel that you're somehow unworthy. We may look around and see others achieving more and in turn feel less. The problem is when we connect our self worth to external factors, we will always feel less than at some point.
This meditation is to remind you of your own innate worthiness. To remind you that you worthy of love, joy & happiness - no matter what :)
Day 18 - Loving Kindness for Yourself
Today is the first of 3 loving kindness meditations. Loving-kindness is unconditional love, it has no conditions; does not depend on whether one “deserves” it or not, has no expectations of anything in return. It's a pure love and a practise that reminds us how good it ultimately feels to be generous with love towards ourselves and others.
Day 19 - Loving Kindness for Someone Part 1
Today we focus on directing feelings of love & kindness to someone in our life who we love, someone who makes you smile :)
Day 20 - Loving Kindness for Someone Part 2
Today we focus on sending feelings of love & kindness to someone or something in our life that is causing us some difficulty.
This one can be tough - but remember when we release feelings of anger, frustration or disappointment we are giving ourselves the gift of freedom from all those things. And what greater gift is there?
Look out for the final 10 videos in this series.
About Holiday
Holiday is a fresh new voice in the meditation world, calling the style she teaches Soulfulness - mindfulness with the soul. Fusing the practise of mindfulness - that teaches us to live in the present moment with the more soulful practises of compassion, affirmation and gratitude - that teach us to love ourselves and the life we are in.
Intent on bringing meditation to the next generation of meditators, Holiday has trained for years with some of the best meditation teachers in the world to help you with your meditation practice.
She founded Breathe & Stop – a modern meditation training rooted in science and free from fluff and facilitates regular meditation events - check out her events page for details.
