You can buy our book at all good bookshops – there guys are especially nice.
My Mind Won’t Shut Up! Meditation for people with short attention spans. Our book’s out now!
Fuck It
We get it – sometimes you’d rather pick the peas from the back of the freezer than meditate
You’ve got stuff to do! A company to run, a house to organise and lies to tell your children.
You don’t have to feel like it to meditate. Yep, you in your ‘oh fuck this I’d rather unclog the drains’ state is ideal because if you waited for a window where you feel calm, motivated and serene, well you’d never do it at all, would you? Waiting on a good mood, or for the perfect five minutes to arrive is a really good way of not doing any meditation at all.
Not In The Mood For Meditation, Meditation
- Accept your mega-strop and sit down
- Fold your arms, think to yourself ‘this is ridiculous’
- Roll your eyes and REFUSE to meditate
- Focus your attention on one breath
- Breathe in. Breathe out
- When you get distracted, go back to your breath
- Repeat for 10 breaths
Meditation isn’t about being calm and happy. It’s about accepting when you’re not.
It’s actually better to do meditation when you don’t feel like it because you learn that tolerating, or getting interested in your massive sulk is excellent training. It teaches you that any emotion is a good object for meditation, and the worse the mood the easier it is to focus on!
Just bloody do some.
We’re the No1 Book To See You Through 2021 – says Metro
Metro asked us for some advice about New Year resolutions, and kept in the swearing, which we enjoyed. They also listed as the No1 book to get you through 2021, which was nice!
A Really Interesting But Often Overlooked Aspect Of Consciousness…
Hold on to your didgeridoo, we’re going to talk about the open nature of consciousness…
Er what?
Yep, it’s a big concept but actually one you live with all the time. A good example is hearing sounds. This is a tricky idea to get your head round because it’s such a normal part of your experience. But here goes…
You hear stuff all the time, right? But try not hearing things.
We’re not talking about your ability to control sounds: putting your fingers in your ears or playing the trumpet. We’re talking about how you receive sound.
You can’t make make sounds last a second longer than they do. Noises just come and go as they damn well please.
Hearing is effortless, you don’t need to do anything.
Your awareness (another word for consciousness) is always open.
There is no effort to be made. Likewise, you don’t control your ability to taste, touch or see.
Once you stop thinking all the bloody time, meditation makes the unstoppable nature of this river of sensation ever clearer. You can relax with the constantly changing input from your senses. Like really relax.
Eventually you’ll see that all experience is like this. Sensations, thoughts, sights, emotions. They all come, do their thing and go.
You don’t have to respond to everything you receive. The effort you make to control all this information is why you are tired, frustrated and scared. So relax and let them pass instead.
Meditating With Beastly Emotions
Meditation gives you space to be honest about how fucked off you are
One of meditation’s great benefits is that you have an opportunity to be completely honest about what’s on your mind and how you feel – even if that means you’re purple-faced, tear-stained and bewildered.
Nobody is entirely comfortable with strong emotion, particularly if you’re feeling so sad or angry that you’re not sure whether to scream or eat a banana
Feeling intense emotion is part of the human condition. So if you experience fear, excitement or a wave of sadness when you meditate, that’s okay. It’s good to acknowledge that any emotion is present, because noticing it is a step towards feeling better.
Stop fighting it
You may have been putting up a fight trying to hold off inconvenient or painful feelings. But pretending to be fine when you really want to howl is exhausting. Give yourself a break and allow what you feel to do its stuff.
Emotions have a physicality that needs to be worked through before you can let them go
Don’t judge your emotion, try not to become annoyed, even if it’s something you thought you had already dealt with. Putting so much energy into disguising your emotions is draining. If you’re feeling sad, pissed off, jealous or over-excited, so be it. Accepting how you feel brings relief, releases tension and encourages self-acceptance.
The more you meditate, the less biscuits and booze you’ll need to help you cope.