The Balance Blueprint: Meditation

There is so much to discover in meditation beyond sitting in stillness.  Listen in for the all the juicy ways to create your own limitless expansion through stillness meditation and how it applies to your personal balance blueprint.

*Note that I mention some part of the brain.  Here is more info on that:

• Hippocampus: part of the limbic system that responds to fear. When this part of the brain reduces in activity, the energy can go into the mid-brain
• Pineal Gland: part of the mid-brain that becomes energized and more activated when energy to other parts of the brain decreases.  Empowering this gland takes us deeper into meditative states
• Cave of Brahma: ancient reference to the cave-like structure of the mid-brain composed of the corpus callosum, thalamus, pineal gland, and hypothalamus.   When energy goes here the Brahma or Source consciousness activates.

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome to Centered the Podcast. I'm your host, Leslie Braverman, and I'm sharing holistic content that reconnects you to your most centered self, that place within you that is energized, knowing, and uplifted despite the chaos and demands of life. It's that place within you where you can become a portal of possibility. We are continuing our mini-series on the balance blueprint. And today we're getting into interconnection. And interconnection, really through meditation, is what I want to share. And if you're like, oh no, I don't want to listen to that, just notice what's coming up inside of you as that happens. Because in a lot of ways, I feel like we really have not been given the full information, the full transmission, the full download on what meditation is really meant to do. And our very like fact-based culture has us believing that meditation is to help regulate the nervous system and clear the mind and to just help us calm down. And these are all so true, but they are really just scratching the surface on what meditation is really meant to do. And that's what I want to get into today. So let's just start for a moment with the science because we have integrated meditation or at least stillness meditation into our well-being lexicon. And that's fantastic. They're, you know, pioneers from John Cabotzin to Andrew Weil to, you know, there's so many people. But you know, this all started with the yogis and the Vedas in the Rig Veda, it has been written. All of these blueprints or all of these ideas for health and longevity were written for us long, long ago. And these ancient practices always include meditation. So if you have a meditation practice, fantastic. I'm not looking to disturb that in any way. Really, I want to talk to how to expand that, how to advance that. And if you don't have a practice, this possibly could motivate you to start one. So creating a little space for meditation is key. A little altar something. I started with like an old coffee table. I know at one point I also used like an old nightstand bedside table and just started accumulating little things that made me feel happy on them. So, you know, crystals are having a moment that can be really nice, a crystal that you connect with. I'm a huge flower person. So I will bring flowers in, fresh flowers, and then just let them like turn into flower petals and then let the flower petals dry and just kind of see what arrangement they come into. I always put money on my altar. I always have something. I'm just looking at my altar right now. I always have some sort of photo that inspires me. And it can be a photo of yourself at a time when you were feeling really collected and confident. Maybe you had just finished some sort of great feat, whether it's a graduation or completion of something or some memory of travel that can be a really inspiring one. I have stuff from my kids sometimes on my altar. So just you got it like get the idea, right? I mean, you get it. Like it's you want to create something that is meaningful to you. And some sort of comfortable way to sit, like whether it's a yoga block or a meditation cushion or some sort of pretty cushion that you found, something that entices you to sit there. So these are all ways to help build interest and commitment to this practice. And then stepping into this commitment is, you know, it's attempting to do some amount of time to start. In the beginning, it's very common to be like, I'm gonna meditate for five or 10 minutes, and it becomes a practice that you just do, and you just sit there and you experience the consistency and regularity of coming to your cushion at the same time every day, regardless of what happens. And I can tell you, having had a meditation, a daily meditation practice for three over three years, where I've never missed a day, and then having had meditation practice where I where I wasn't as consistent for 30 years, the difference is huge. So committing to actually showing up every single day, regardless of what's going on in life, and if the time has to change, the time has to change. If the, you know, the like time in the day has to change, that's fine. And what I noticed is giving myself a pass for sitting up. There were times over these years where I didn't feel well, and I would show up to my mat, but I would lay or my uh cushion and I would lay down. And so, wrapped in a blanket, like whatever was going on, that allowed me to continue my practice. And then in times when things were really like, you know, compromised or whatever, I would do it in my bed. So just allowing yourself to be completely devoted to this practice is amazing. And then once you have that, you will have achieved a whole new like level of responsibility, self-responsibility. So in our in our lexicon about, you know, like quieting the mind and relaxing the nervous system, like we don't talk about this. We don't talk about how much dedication and commitment is actually required to show up every day for those five to 20 minutes, whatever timing you set. So once you start that practice, you'll notice a lot of shifts in other ways that you're more able to show up for things. You're able to show up more grounded, more calm, more centered. And that's what I want to talk about as kind of the hidden benefits of meditation in the like the physical form. Okay. That said, the other thing that isn't talked about enough is that once you get to a certain level or experience of meditation, your auric field and your energetic centers, your chakras, will start to open. They'll start to be able to trust that they can open safely in that space. In that space you've created is a huge space of connection between you and your higher self, your higher mind, your subconscious mind, and your soul. And if you like, additional frequencies. So the whole idea behind settling down the small mind is to then connect to higher frequencies. And there's a yoga sutra. I won't, I mean, this isn't a yoga podcast, but I do want to bring this ancient knowledge in. And this this is a very, this is a line from the Yoga Sutras, it's very old. Yoga Chiri, Chitta Vritti Narodaha. And that's just from memory. Like I've always remembered that one, but it translates as yoga is the cessation of fluctuations in the mind. And originally yoga wasn't practice as movements, a few movements were done to prepare the body for meditation. So in the in the sutra, when they speak of yoga, what they're speaking of is meditation. And what they're saying is, you know, gently do some movements to prepare the body to sit, and then for the connection to the higher realms to happen. Now, in order for the connection to these higher realms, which are higher frequencies, in order for this to happen, we really need to be at a higher frequency, a higher energy, a higher vibration. And we need to be able to do that consistently, repetitively enough that the pineal gland starts to open and activate. And this is the third eye. So the space in between the hippocampus and the brain and the pineal gland opens up. And it's known in our literature as the cave of Brahma, Brahma being that connection to all that is and the higher source of you. So this is like a lot, right? So not everybody sits down to meditate for that reason, but I want to tell you like that's where the juicy stuff is. That's where the gold is. So, but we have to go through, and I'm not saying like it here in my 20s, meditation was done for the physical benefits. I was doing a lot of work, you know, environmental work. I was working 60, 70 hours a week. I was traveling all over the country and Canada to do cleanup work, and I really, my yoga practice was about sanity and balance. And so is the meditation part of it. And then in my 30s, it became sanity from having kids. And my practice really shifted a lot of times to the shower. That's where I was able to actually have that calm time to connect with my soul, to connect with my higher self. It was happening in the shower. And it was not, there was not a lot going on in terms of quieting the mind. It just did my best. And then in my 40s, with more space and more understanding of consistency and the benefits of that daily work, I've been able to then really open up the pineal gland and the crown chakra and connect to the higher realms where I'm doing astral travel. And I've I've talked about this in other websites, I mean other websites, other podcasts. And so what I want to share is that it doesn't have to take 30 years for that to open, but it does take consistency and repetition. And then once you have found that consistency and repetition, one of the things you can do is start asking. Because this is a free will dimension. This is a free will planet and a free will dimension, which means we have at our fingertips all of the divine support that we can ask for as long as it's soul aligned. But unless we actually do the act of asking, there can be no assist. And this took me a long time to learn, too, which has been great. It was one of the first big downloads from my higher self when my crown and pineal really opened and were ready to receive the next layer of information. So you'll never receive more information or more connection than your nervous system and your body and your mind are ready to handle. But if you want to start playing with this deeper connection to your most authentic self, your most centered self, and really figuring out how to create the balanced blueprint that's for you, it's gonna happen through meditation and this inner connection. So you simply, as you start to create more space, more ability for the small mind to stop the fluctuations and to be able to absorb the silence and the stillness, you can start to ask for a clear connection to the higher self. You can ask for a clear connection to the soul self just by saying, I'd like to experience connection to my higher self. And then sit and receive and see in what form it comes in. Again, this goes back to like I think it was the second podcast on your the intuitive languages in which you receive these subtle messages. And so it can be in the form of pictures, it can be in the form of sensation, it can be in the form of sound, it can be so many different things. But the idea is that you're creating enough consistency that there is a new door is opening to receive. So play with this, and I want to hear back from you. Tell me how it goes, tell me what obstacles you're running into so I can help and address them. And if you want to go deeper, I have a variety of meditations on the Centered by Leslie website. And these go into all sorts of things from connecting to your cells to connecting to the outer realms, the quantum field. There's a lot of depth and deliciousness that comes once you get past the ability that the body, like it's it's like toddler work in a way, right? You to just sit down every day and do the prep to create the stillness of the mind, to create the openness to the higher frequencies, and to start learning how to receive. These are the many steps of stepping into your own authors and authenticity and this balanced blueprint. So keep going. You already are this portal possibility. This is just a new way to connect into it. All right, lots of love.