focus

Prayer and Meditation

August 30, 2017 by @candesscampbell

In my office, when counseling and offering psychic readings and healing to my clients, I find that many are responding to the political climate of the time and experience a low grade fear, underneath what else is happening. You can feel the fear it in the air. It reminds me of when I was in Japan a couple months after the Tsunami in 2011. What I was reading in the United States newspapers was not what the Japanese were reading and I could feel the fear, even though I could not speak the language.

Today I am republishing my article originally published in Live Encounters Magazine.

I hope you find comfort.

Prayer and Meditation by Dr Candess M Campbell, #1 Best-selling Author, Intuitive Mentor, Speaker, International Psychic Medium Healer.

In this series on self-healing and transformation, prayer and meditation play an important part. Given these writings are from the book 12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine, this Live Encounters article will not be a overview of world wide prayer and meditation practices, but rather some of my own experiences and some tools for developing a practice.

When you have experienced pain or illness for a long period, I would imagine you turned to prayer. In exploring how important prayer is, let’s examine and revisit the way in which you pray.

Prayer

A verse in the Christian New Testament Bible assures that, “You will receive all that you pray for, provided you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). The way your parents and grandparents prayed may be different from how you pray today. Dr. Larry Dossey writes extensively about the power of prayer and healing in his 1993 book, Healing Words. In it, he cites a study by Herbert Benson of Harvard University Medical School.

Working with his fellow researcher and physiologist, Robert Keith Wallace, Benson showed that when subjects meditated with a mantra that consisted of an Asian word containing no meaning for the meditator, with use it became charged with ritualistic value, and healthful body changes occurred. These included lower blood pressure, slower heart rate, and lower metabolic rates. Benson believed there was no magic in the mantra.

To test this suspicion, he taught people to meditate using the word one or any other phrase they found comfortable. He then studied Christians and Jews who prayed regularly. He asked Catholics to use mantra phrases such as “Hail Mary, full of grace,” or “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me.” Jews mainly used either the peace greeting of shalom or echad, which means “one.” Protestants frequently chose the first line of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven,” or “The Lord is my shepherd,” which is the opening of the Twenty-third Psalm. All of the mantras worked, and all were equally effective in stimulating the healthful physiological changes in the body that Benson called the “relaxation response.” But Benson also found that those who used the word one, or similar simple phrases, didn’t stick with the program. Conversely, those who used prayers rather than meaningless phrases continued.

One way to pray is to be repetitive and this study shows using a word or words that are meaningful to you, affect your consistency. If you have ever used prayer beads or the rosary, you know this. Recital is another form of prayer. Many people use scripture from their religion as prayer. They may do this repetitively, or they may read scripture and then reflect on what it means. Others talk to God, Buddha, Allah, or their Higher Power as they would to a friend. I have often heard it said that prayer is talking to God, and meditation is listening.

Journaling is another way to connect with the Divine. “Dear God” letters are often effective in clarifying where you have become stuck. Having a heart full of gratitude is another way of praying. When you expand your view of prayer this way, you may find that you pray often through the day. I am a believer in the notion that whatever we focus on becomes greater and grander in our lives, so take some time to focus on gratitude and love. See how this affects your pain.

Meditation

Before I share with you about meditation, I want to acknowledge that you may experience resistance to meditation at first. You may be fearful to sit and really experience what you are thinking or feeling, or you may not want to become aware of the sensations in your body. Even this morning as I awoke, I quickly shifted my thoughts from meditation to something else. Why did I do that? Why was I so afraid to listen to what my mind was saying? Usually I awake with new ideas and plans and creative ventures. This morning I didn’t want to hear what I was thinking. I went back to catch the thought, and it was gone. When I sat up to read on my Kindle, I felt good. I looked at the calendar in my iPhone, and my day was set to write. It was a good day. What was I afraid to think about? I am sure it will surface in my meditation.

You may have this same experience. You may think there is just too much information in your mind, and you would never be able to quiet yourself, but it’s really not so difficult. Take a moment and just sit with your eyes open. Look at what is in front of you. Look at whatever you see and focus on the detail. Experience your senses. Feel the chair under you. Notice how your breath changes. You are becoming more aware, more awake, more alive, and you are beginning to come to a meditative state. Another way to do this is to close your eyes and listen. Listen to the sounds that are far away. Now listen to the sounds that are close by. Allow yourself to become more aware and more meditative!

Here are a few choices to begin a meditation practice.

Concentration Meditation

When practicing concentration meditation, you focus your attention on your breath, an image, or a sound (mantra) in order to still your mind and allow a greater awareness and clarity to emerge. This is similar to zooming in and narrowing the focus to a particular object or field.

Breathing Meditation

The most common meditation practice is focusing on your breath. Through this continued focus, the “mind clutter” begins to quiet, and you gain a sense of calmness and relaxation. Over time and with practice, the thoughts that were once racing or popping into your mind calm down, and a sense of peace takes over. As you focus on the breath, the rhythmic inhalation and exhalation deepens the breathing, and your mind and body become tranquil.

A more intense practice of focusing on the breath is pranayama breathing, which is a yogic practice. According to Swami Sivananda Rhada, this is a process of breath control. She says the purpose of this type of meditation is to connect with the cosmos and gain control over your central nervous system and mind. It is best practiced with character building and to learn to manage the lower physical self. This is a practice of alternate nostril breathing. “Character building” and “managing your lower physical self” means taking control over your thoughts and behaviors that no longer serve you, while creating new, positive, healthy thoughts and behaviors.

I first became aware of pranayama breathing when I traveled to India with a friend of mine who has a home in India but currently lives in the United States. He said that his uncle taught him this practice. When we were at his home in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), he sat cross-legged on the floor every morning and practiced this breathing for twenty to thirty minutes. This practice increases the alpha waves, and the benefits if executed correctly are to calm the mind, gain control over the emotions, refine the senses, and remove all selfish desires while gaining a sense of peace and harmony. It has also been said to balance the right and left brain.

Various teachers may instruct you to do this differently, but a simple method follows:

Close the right nostril with your right thumb, and inhale through the left nostril to the count of four seconds.
Then close the left nostril with your right ring finger and little finger. At the same time, remove your thumb from the right nostril. Exhale through this nostril to the count of eight seconds.
Next, inhale through the right nostril to the count of four seconds. Close your right nostril with your right thumb, and exhale through the left nostril to the count of eight seconds.
This is one round. It is recommended to start slowly with a few rounds and build up.

Focusing on an Object

Focusing on an object is another choice for concentration meditation. There are several objects you can use, but I suggest you find one that is pleasing to you. You could focus on an external object such as a candle flame, a bowl, a flower, or a photo of someone you love. You could also choose a photo of Jesus, Buddha, or an angel. Another method is to focus in the center of your head—the space above and behind your eyes, in the middle of your head. This is a place of neutrality. You may instead choose to focus either between your eyes or in the center of your heart. Another commonplace to practice focus is in your belly, three fingers below your belly button and inside a few inches. The conscious focus in the above examples is on the candle, photo, or particular body part. However, in focusing on those literal objects, you become aware of the breathing as well, and you experience a calm, relaxed, tranquil state of being.

Using a Mantra

A third concentration meditation involves using a mantra. A mantra is a short phrase with an easy rhythm used to increase results. A mantra is used to suggest a favorable state of being. My favorite walking mantra is, “I am strong, healthy, and fit.” Mantras originated in the Vedic tradition of enlightenment in India and have since been incorporated by many traditions.

According to “The Power of Mantra Chanting,” an article by Gyan Rajhans, “The sacred utterances or chanting of Sanskrit Mantras provide us with the power to attain our goals and lift ourselves from the ordinary to the higher level of consciousness.” This is believed to be so because “different sounds have different effects on the human psyche.” Repeating a mantra is a spiritual technique that calms the mind and makes one more attuned to Spirit.

Mindfulness Meditation

The practice of mindfulness meditation comes from Buddhism and has been also been taught by many in the West. In mindfulness meditation, you focus on the present moment and not the past or the future. While you notice your thoughts, you realize that they are just thoughts and let them go by. This is done with awareness that that your thoughts are simply your thoughts, and that you are not your thoughts. This meditation can be done at any time. It is a daily practice of awareness in the present moment.

There are many ways to practice mindfulness meditation. One that I particularly enjoy is to focus on the sounds close by and then the sounds that are far away. This takes me into a state of meditation that I enjoy, which is just being present.

Guided Meditation

Guided meditation is similar to hypnotherapy. In guided meditation, a person or a recorded script guides you into a meditative state. You can also take yourself through guided imagery with a script or with awareness of the images you would like to create.

As with hypnotherapy, guided imagery uses all of your senses, yet guided imagery is different in that it focuses and directs your imagination. When your mind is imagining, your body responds as if what it sees is true. An example of this might include imagining a vacation. Let’s pick a beach resort. As you are sitting at your desk at work, you find yourself drifting to the beach, feeling the sun on your face, smelling the sea, and imaging the taste of a fresh, cold lemonade next to you. Your body may relax as your breathing slows down and time speeds up. This is an example of going into trance and experiencing whatever you imagine.

Guided imagery is used for many purposes, and the imagery selected will depend on your goal. For instance, if you want to manage your pain, the imagery may be full of metaphors that help you to connect with your subconscious mind. For example, when I awake in the morning with pain in my neck from sleeping, during meditation I image a blue light coming down from the top of my head into the painful areas of my neck and shoulders. As I do this, I see the blue light cooling off the inflammation in my neck and shoulders. Within a minute or so, the pain is gone. (Remember that I have been practicing for quite some time, and this technique is a result of the practice. Do not be discouraged if you try this and it does not work for you immediately. Keep practicing!)

If you are interested in learning a guided meditation that teaches you self-healing tools and takes you through a process of clearing your chakras, you can use my CD, Chakra Clearing.

Make no mistake, whether prayer or meditation, the process stills the chatter and voices within so you can hear your own inner guidance—the voice of the Divine, God, the Goddess or your Guides. Prayer and meditation allow you to open yourself to wisdom and healing beyond what your Ego dictates or allows. No matter what you call it, when you achieve inner peace, you affect the world around you by increasing the peace of others.

————————

Live Intuitively: Journal the Wisdom of your Soul!

Candess M. Campbell, PhD is the author of the #1 Best-selling book on Amazon, 12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine and Live Intuitively: Journal the Wisdom of your Soul. She is an internationally known Author, Speaker, Intuitive Coach and Mentor and Psychic Medium. She specializes in assisting others to regain their own personal power, develop their intuition and live a life of abundance, happiness, and joy.

She specializes in DNA Activation and Karmic Clearing with a group of Ascended Masters called The Lords of Karma who include the Great Divine Director, El Morya, St. Germain, Maitreya, Kuthumi, Athena, Kwan-Yin, Clyclopea, Mary, Sananda and Lady Portia. Candess has been guided by this group of Masters since she was young.

At the core of her business, Vesta Enterprises, Inc., is the belief that all healing is self-healing and that becoming conscious and making positive changes increases one’s personal power and enjoyment of life. Firmly maintaining that people grow and benefit from feeling safe and receiving, her life’s work is in bridging spirituality and mainstream beliefs to promote and foster healing at all levels. https://energymedicinedna.com

www.amazon.com/candessmcampbellphd

© Dr Candess M Campbell

Save

Evaluating your Situation!

January 16, 2013 by @candesscampbell

Into the New Year, most people have taken a look back and reflected on the past year. Some have made resolutions and some just go forward with hope. Rather than making resolutions, I pick one focus for the year, one word to remember and increase in my life.

One year the word was money and I became more responsible in my spending, saving and earnings. That year I increased my income by 25%. I read money books, brought my attention to my habits and envisioned and created abundance.

Last year my focus was on food. I watched “foody” shows on television and regularly added nutritionally healthy foods to my diet. I drank green smoothies and my body glowed from all the enzymes. I increased my awareness on how foods affect my health (and my mood!)

This year my focus is music. I have a Martin 000M and my plan is to learn to play my guitar, listen to a variety of music throughout the year, attend concerts and experience music as a healing force in my life!

Speaking of a healing force in my life. I just published my book 12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine.

The first chapter focuses on Evaluating Your Situation. Whether it is emotional or physical pain, there is always an emotional component. I find that when people tend to focus on the past, they suffer from depression and when they focus on the future, it creates anxiety. On my website candesscampbell.com under Books and Self-Healing Tools you will find self-screening tests. One is for depression and the other for anxiety. If you find that you struggle with either of these, getting professional help is important.

Sometimes you live your life day to day without much self-awareness. It is helpful to look at whether or not you are getting your needs met. William Glasser, MD, a psychiatrist wrote a book called Choice Theory. In the book he talked about people having Four Basic Needs. The needs he lists are for 1) Love & Belonging, 2) Power and Worth, 3) Freedom and 4) Fun. These are beyond your need for survival.

Think about your life and what the main need is in your life. In your journal, write down your main need. Then write down friends and family you spend most of your time with. List some activities you engage in on a regular basis. Are you getting your needs met with these friends, family members and your activities?

For example I list as one of my loved ones, my Cairn Terrior/mix Domingo. The needs I get met by Domingo are Love and Belonging and Fun. When I image an oval shape and think about how full I am from my relationship with Domingo, I see the oval being maybe a third full. This means I need more people and activities to get my Love and Belonging and Fun needs met.

When I first did this exercise I listed out my friends. A few of the friends I spent most of my time with did not meet my needs at all. I found one friend met most of my needs. I realized I leaned too much on one friend and needed to create more relationships in my life where I felt more alive, full, and got my needs met. I also realized I needed to let some friends go. With self-awareness, I saw how drained I became after spending time with some friends.

Try this yourself. You may be amazed at how simple changes in your life can shift your emotional for physical pain!

Also, in evaluating your situation, it is important to look at the interrelatedness between your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. You can find a Total Behavior Map here to help you. http://candesscampbell.com/books/self-help-tools/70-2) On this map you can write out in the center what need you want to get met. Write down a situation that has been difficult for you regarding this need. List what you were doing, thinking and feeling. Then write again as if you were thinking something different. If you were thinking ___________, then what would you be doing or feeling?

You are an integrated being of Mind, Body and Spirit. You will notice that when you change your thinking about a situation, your feeling changes as well. You may choose to do something different and immediately your thinking changes and your feeling changes. The key here is you have 100 % control over your doing, 90 % control over your thinking and only 10 % control over your feeling. When you do or think something different – you feel better!

An example is Sarah was waiting for a phone call from Taylor to go out to dinner. (love and belonging and fun) Taylor didn’t call and Sarah thought, “I was stood up.” She started feeling angry and lost energy. Sarah began making up stories in her mind of what happened and worked herself into a frenzy.

An hour later Taylor called and said she was so sorry. She explained that she had witnessed an accident on the freeway and was pulled in by the police to share what she had seen. Taylor said she was so shaken, she didn’t even think about the dinner plans until she calmed down and realized she was hungry. She asked Sarah if she could come over, she needed a friend.

Sarah began to understand (thinking) and she empathized (feeling) with Taylor’s experience. She began cooking (doing) something to share with Taylor and prepared for her friend to arrive.

Can you see how the feelings followed the doing and thinking in this situation? You can write out some situations in your past, some times when you were really upset. Then write out what you could have done or thought differently, identifying how you would feel different.

Use your journal for this exercise and soon you’ll find you can do it quickly in your mind. So much of the emotional pain (which is under the physical pain) is manufactured in your mind. Now, you have a tool to change this!

Another tool is journaling. One situation I share in my book is for several days I found myself having a lot of pain in my shoulders. I left my office and sat down to rest and the pain was extremely disturbing. After about four days of this, I picked up my journal and began writing, “This pain in my shoulders. . .” and continued journaling for 20 minutes. What came up in my writing was a situation with one of my daughters. Once I wrote it out, the pain released immediately and was totally gone. This is a true testimony to how we carry pain in our bodies connected to our emotions!

There is so much more you can find in the book that will help you evaluate where you are and begin to move into self-healing. In February I’ll focus on Finding Your Passion!

12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine – UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/12-Weeks-Self-Healing-Transforming-Medicine/dp/0615693822/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine – US

http://www.amazon.com/12-Weeks-Self-Healing-Transforming-Medicine/dp/0615693822/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355705809&sr=8-1&keywords=candess+campbell

Meditation

June 20, 2012 by @candesscampbell

The greatest gift I have found to develop a greater intuitive experience is meditation. It was in my meditative experience one morning I was given a specific meditation I now use.

Many of you already meditate and if you do, that is wonderful! You know the value of creating this time for yourself and the incredible connection you find with your Higher Self and the Divine. For many there is also the experience of connecting and communicating with Angels or Guides.

Many people who have tried meditation and don’t continue often think they are doing it wrong. Let me clarify some of the misconceptions. In meditation, you will not stop thinking. You have a central nervous system and therefore your brain will be thinking. What happens instead is you quiet your thoughts and rather than active thinking, you have what I call passive thinking. This means thoughts will enter and go by, but you just notice and don’t actively follow them. You can then return to your quiet mind.

I have also found people have a hard time quieting their mind when they meditate in the middle of the day or in the evening. I like to meditate first thing in the morning before leaving my bed. This allows me to tap into the wisdom of my subconscious mind and my Higher Self that has guided my dreams. Meditating in the morning also allows me to become filled with the Light of the Divine first thing in the morning!

For those who have not began the practice of meditation, here is a simple way to begin. Here is the meditation I have been given.

Set a timer to begin. This will help you to lengthen the time of your meditation.

As in other meditations, sit with your spine straight. I like to place my hands on my lap with my thumb, index and middle finger touching, facing upward.

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and relax and adjust your body as needed.

Image a grounding cord such as a beam of light, a waterfall or a tree trunk going down from the base of your spine to the fiery center of Mother Earth. Release all the stress, tension and foreign energy down from the top of your head, down your face, shoulders, arms, hands, chest, upper and lower back, belly, pelvic area, hips, legs, ankles, and feet down your grounding cord.

Take another breath and bring your attention to above your head, to your crown chakra. Imagine a golden white Light spiraling down through the top of your head and spiraling in your heart. This is the spark of the Divine within you! This spiraling Light will emanate Light throughout your body and a few inches outside your body all around you.

Bring your attention to your third eye, which is between your eyes and a little above. Envision a water-blue color triangle at your third eye. Focus your attention through this triangle. Above your head about eight inches envision a burning ring of fire. This is the Eternal Flame of Isis. I share more about the triangle and the burning ring of fire when I teach intuitive reading.

Now you have the Golden Light Spiral, the Blue Triangle and the Fiery Ring of Fire set, bring your attention to your eyes. With your eyes still closed, move your eyes from right to left back and forth about 12 – 20 times. The pace is about one second for each set of from right to left and back. You can adjust this later to the best pace for yourself. This movement will be like pushing your eyes (with them closed) back and forth.

What you will notice is this takes you into a deeper into a meditative state. This increases with practice. Stop the eye movement and just be. Just notice what you experience. Stay in passive thinking and just experience and notice.

If you find you are thinking and lose the meditative sense, or you begin to come out of meditation, then use the eye movements back and forth to deepen again. This brings you back into a meditative state.

You may need to use the eye movement several times to deepen your meditation and this is fine. This takes practice, but if you commit to every day for a week, with a timer, this can change your life and increase not only your intuition, but your relationship with your Self and the Divine!

An added bonus, this eye movement is also therapeutic. It can assist in healing memories and traumas because moving your eyes from one side to the other activates the two hemispheres of the brain. When you begin your meditation you can set an intention of healing a specific situation, emotion, feeling, or thought.

Originally published in LiveEncounters