Stilla Meditation

Watching the breath with the seven attitudes of mindfulness Non-judging - The constant liking and disliking that we do keep us in a push and pull relationship with our experience. Instead, we practise watching the objective reality of our experience without judgement. Patience - The wisdom to know that some things need time to unfold on their own. Give yourself time to be where you are. Beginners...

"What would you life look like without your feet?"

There is a classic story about how to catch a monkey that illustrates the art of letting go, or rather the suffering in holding on. Make a small hole in a coconut. Hide a banana in it and wire the coconut to a tree. The monkey will reach in and grab the banana but the hole is too small to get his hand with the banana out. Now he’s stuck because he refuses to let go of the banana in order to be fre...

Our mind wants to know. But what happens when we step into the Not Knowing? “I don’t know” Just say those words internally and feel how they land. “I don’t know.” Can you allow yourself to not know, just for now? What happens in you when you do? This is what I want to investigate together with you today.

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. - Marcus Aurelius

We live in two worlds. The Real world, made of what is actually here, felt through our experience in the present moment. And then there is the dream world of thoughts, existing only in our own mind as an abstraction and interpretation of the Real world. Most of the suffering that we experience in life is created out of this dream world. For example when we worry, we imagine a future that we don’t...

When I first started on my path of self-exploration I was pretty skeptical of the “listen to your body”-type of messages. To me, my body was there to move me around. If it wasn’t sick and it did what I wanted it to, walk, run, dance, etc, then what more could there possibly be? The fact is that our body is brilliant feedback system that we can use to guide our actions. When we do things that align...

Labelling is a great tool for detaching from our believes, opinions and judgements about our experience and stepping into simply experiencing reality as it is in this moment. Those believes, opinions and judgements is what we call our “story”. We all tell those stories about our experience and ourself. “I should not be feeling this way.” “If only my partner would…” “He is so ignorant” “I must…” So...

Allow your mind to take a rest for a few minutes and come back to the present moment. The only place that actually exists. The place where your whole life is happening.

By experiencing everything as if it was the first time, we become more open to new perspectives and receptive to new possibilities. Every moment is unique and from the beginners-mind we treat them as such. A few weeks ago I wrote about a mantra I have; “When the world has stopped being beautiful, it’s because I’ve stopped looking.” This is about beginners-mind. Experiencing nature, the sky, the ea...

“Everything that happens, every feeling, every emotion, every thought, it’s all an important part of our learning process in our growth as souls, in the expanding of our beings, because everything is lessons. That’s literally all there is.” This advice was given to me at a point where I was trying to hold on to a past experience of being in connection with my heart. I was desperately trying to re-...

Loving-Kindness meditation is a very powerful way to nurture a more loving and compassionate way to be with ourselves and with others. We find this compassion through recognising that we all share the same desire to be happy and safe.

I thought I’d share a mantra that has been with me for the last couple of weeks. “When the world has stopped being beautiful, it’s because I’ve stopped seeing.” I find that when I come back to the here and now something changes about my experience, I start to see beauty and life in the most mundane things and my attention is drawn to the natural world, the trees and the sky. It feels a lot like co...

One of the seven pillars of mindfulness is Trust. In this case trusting yourself and your emotions. By practicing staying connected to your lived experience moment to moment and being more attuned to what is going on inside, you will develop your emotional compass that guides you towards what you want and need in life. Truthfully answering questions like “How am I really feeling today?“, “What are...

Today we reconnect to the present moment using our breath. Sometimes the breath feels comfortable, sometimes not. No matter what it feels like we can always use it to return to what _is_.

Today I thought we’d use sound as our object of meditation, with inspiration from Alan Watts. If you don’t know about him, I thoroughly recommend listening to some of his talks (just search on youtube).

Love is the absence of judgement - Dalai Lama When we watch our experience without judging it, that is love in practise. By allowing ourselves to have the experience we are having without judging it we allow ourselves to be as we are in the present moment. That is self love.

Today I want to focus on the practise of letting go. We live in a constant stream of change where nothing ever remains how it is right now. Our bodies change, our mind picks up new preferences, our friends and family gradually become new people, our ice cream melts away in the sun that is soon replaced by rain and wind and then sun again. We know this to be true, and yet we cling to the things as...

We will appreciate the body for all of the things it does for us and exercise our mindfulness muscles by accepting whatever our experience is, without judgement.

Today's session we focus on loving-kindness. Practising compassion for ourselves and others It think can be of great help in these challenging times. Remember that we are all connected, we all need each other and we all share the same yearning to be happy and loved for who we are

Over the last couple of days with intense Coronavirus reports I’ve fallen into the fear trapp over and over again and it’s taken many forms; “Why is the government so weak?!“, “This is nothing to worry about, it’s fine.“, “People are so stupid, they don’t understand how serious this is.“, “How will this affect the world economy?“. “Am I in danger?“, “Are my loved once in danger?” Images of overcro...

We all have unconscious patterns that guide our actions, often backed up by fears telling us that we're enough, we're not loveable, we're not worthy. The more we become conscious of those hidden patterns and fears and the more we can face them, the more freedom we get in our lives. A common way of expressing this is "to shine the light of consciousness on..." whatever it is we want to see. With mi...

Behind the persona that we present to the world lies our true self, our essence, a bright light of love and compassion. By listening inwards in silence we strengthen our connection with this essence and it becomes easier and easier to come back to ourselves. Don’t believe this! It is only my experience. Instead, I invite you to investigate it for yourself. An experience belonging to someone else i...

Today we’ll try a new meditation technique that I just call “labelling”. I hope you’ll like! 🕉❤️

Today we are watching our thoughts, trying to become more aware about how they come and go.