Hello!
You are listening to Meditation and Coffee,
The weekday meditation podcast that helps you start your day off calm,
Aware,
Intentional,
Focused and most importantly,
Awake.
Because did you know that the word Buddha actually means awakened one?
I'm Hannah,
Your host and founder of the online meditation community Breathe Like a Badass,
And I am obsessed with starting the day with good coffee and seriously simple meditation.
As a trained meditation teacher and a female entrepreneur,
My mission is to help anxious yet ambitious women cut through overwhelm,
Negative self-talk,
Constant comparison and fear so they can get the calm,
Clarity and focus that they need to build happy,
Fulfilling,
Freedom-filled businesses and lives.
Meditation is not magic,
But it's a pretty good place to start.
So whether your coffee is a shot of espresso,
A latte decaf or even a tea or a chai,
I invite you to join me every weekday to start your day off right.
FYI,
These sessions are recorded live on my Instagram page,
At Breathe Like a Badass,
So if you'd prefer to join in and watch them live,
You can do so there every weekday morning between 8 and 8.
30am London time.
The videos are also available after the lives on my IGTV page.
Now,
On to the meditation and coffee.
Good morning,
We are live.
Hello,
How are you doing?
I am just going to let a few people come on to the live because I know it doesn't always push the reminder out automatically to everyone.
Super at the beginning.
Anyway,
For those of you that will watch this on the replay,
Hello,
Thanks so much for being here.
Of course,
It is another meditation and coffee sesh,
And I have my cup of coffee right here.
I'm just going to post the topic of today's meditation into the comments so that everyone can see what we've got going on today.
Thank you so much for the people that are here,
It's great to see you.
Okay,
So I've pinned that comment.
So you can see that today's meditation and coffee session is called Let It Be Easy.
And this is one of.
.
.
Good morning,
Nice to see you.
This is one of my kind of mantras actually in business and in life and it's something that I have to remind myself of all the time,
Which is that you can let it be easy.
It's not supposed to be something that is difficult or that feels like another thing on your already packed to do list.
So just as I do these meditations with my first cup of coffee of the day,
Sometimes my only caffeinated cup of coffee of the day,
I must say,
It's kind of just a moment to stop striving,
Stop pushing and stop being in that mode of what do I need to do,
How can I be better,
What didn't go right yesterday,
And all these things that we can start the day with that just make us feel stressed almost before we've even got going.
So the idea of let it be easy and the meditation that we're going to do today is really to remind ourselves that we are allowed for things to be easy.
We're allowed to choose the path of least resistance sometimes and it doesn't mean that we are lazy or doing it wrong.
And like I say,
This isn't just with meditation,
This is with everything.
Business,
You're allowed to do something that feels fun.
You're allowed to remember,
Oh yeah,
I can be playful,
I don't always have to be serious all the time,
I don't always have to feel like I've got to write the best email ever or show up as my most perfect self every day.
It's like no,
You can let it be easy,
You can be yourself and that's great,
That's okay.
And with meditation,
It's a brilliant tool for reminding us of that because the meditation teacher Anushka Fernando Pulle has this really great phrase and she says,
Change is as constant as gravity.
And the reason I bring that up is because for me,
Let it be easy is allowing ourselves to sit back and just notice things as they are rather than constantly trying to force ourselves to be different to who we are or control what's happening around us.
And the reason why change is as constant as gravity works as a phrase is because we can't control everything,
Everything is always changing.
So the idea that we think that we can grab hold of things and make them how we want them to be or force ourselves to be how we think we should be and different to how we are and let it be easy,
Let us sit back in our meditation today and rather than trying to control ourselves with this kind of iron grip,
Instead,
Like let's let go of that iron grip and instead,
Let things flow,
Let it be easy.
So we'll explore that in the meditation.
So if you're going to come along and join us today,
I'd love to see that and let's just get into a comfortable position.
However you like you can sit in a traditional meditation pose with your legs crossed or you can sit upright in a comfortable position and allow yourself to come into a balanced,
Safe feeling,
Grounded position and breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
And if you'd like to close your eyes,
You absolutely can.
Or you can just leave them open gently,
Just looking at a spot in front of you,
Whatever works,
Whatever feels comfortable.
And in this session,
We're practicing approaching mindfulness with a light touch.
Often,
If we think that our meditation has to be hard,
If we think that we have to empty our mind completely and get rid of all of our thoughts,
We can start to feel really difficult.
We can feel as if we're really having to concentrate really hard on making it happen.
Instead,
Today's meditation is about seeing ourselves as simply the container to whatever is already happening around us.
An open container.
And instead of trying to focus our attention in a really difficult,
Harsh way,
We're instead just going to notice what's already here.
So even starting with the breath,
Sitting back,
Keeping your chest open,
Dropping your shoulders,
Coming to melt into the seated position that you have now.
And noticing the breath,
Just noticing how it is without you having to do anything to it.
So breathing in,
Breathing out.
How does it feel today?
Is it fast?
Is it shallow?
Where do you feel it if you just breathe normally?
Where do you feel your breath?
And if you find yourself getting distracted,
That's okay.
If you imagine that you are a container and that we're allowing things to just flow backwards and forwards and notice them as they are,
Then your thoughts and your distractions are just another thing in that container.
So as soon as you notice that you've been distracted,
That's okay.
Try to let it go gently and come back.
Come back to noticing how your breath is on any given normal day.
And now I invite you to notice the sounds that you can hear around you.
What layers of sound are there?
Can you hear things that are closer to you,
Maybe happening in the house or in the same room or birds just outside the window?
Or can you hear sounds from further away than that?
Or maybe you hear nothing and only hear the sound of your own breathing.
That's fine too.
Notice how sounds happen on their own.
You don't have to make them happen.
You don't have to go out and look for them.
They come into your ears,
They come into your hearing on their own without any effort from you.
And that's the quality that we're building when we do a session of mindfulness meditation.
Noticing what's already there without any effort from us.
Getting into that place of what we sometimes call relaxed or open awareness.
What's here?
What's here already?
No extra effort from us required.
And now again I invite you to notice what you can smell.
If anything,
Maybe you can smell your coffee.
Maybe the shower gel that you used in the shower this morning or the smell of your washing powder on your clothes.
Or maybe,
Maybe nothing.
Again,
Smell is not something that we have to do.
It's something that we notice that's already out there with absolutely no extra effort from us.
And now tuning into your body and tuning into the physical sensations that you can feel.
So what is here?
What is here now as you sit?
What do you notice?
The hair on your body,
On your skin or the texture of your clothes?
The gravity of your body sitting on the chair?
The texture of the sofa that you're sitting on,
How it feels on your skin or on your clothes?
Are there any areas in your body that you're gripping or that you're tense?
Or any areas that feel particularly loose or that feel particularly calm this morning?
Without trying to change what you find,
Simply observing what you find,
Curiously,
Without any extra effort or forcing or striving from you.
And if you like,
You can cycle through these different senses and maybe choose one that feels most natural to you.
I particularly like opening my ears up to what I can hear.
That works for me.
Whatever helps you to take that easy approach of sitting back and realising that things will happen and change and flow easily without any extra effort or forcing from yourself.
And the reason we practice this,
As I said at the beginning,
Is it's a reminder that we can't always control everything and that we don't want to.
And often if we're quite stressed or anxious,
We're people that want to get a lot done,
We feel like we have to control everything.
We have to have everything sorted,
Everything planned.
We have to just try a bit harder and we can control it.
But so much in our life happens without our control,
Without input from us.
And life can often feel so much easier,
So much less stressful,
So much more intuitive if we realise that we can't control everything and instead we practice that sense of open awareness,
Of noticing and realising that change is as constant as gravity and things will come and go.
And we can be okay with that and show up for that.
So as you sit here noticing the different senses,
Noticing how you feel today,
Maybe ending this session with some calm breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth.
And each time you breathe out,
Again just allowing yourself to relax,
Muscles in your face,
Muscles in your shoulder and your jaw.
But still keeping your mind and your sensations alert to how it feels to be here today or the sounds that you notice,
The smells.
And coming to that place of balance between noticing and being aware of what's there without trying to force our attention to be anything that it isn't.
Without trying to be so focused that we're trying to grab hold of what we notice rather than just letting it be.
That balance between awareness and openness.
So just taking one last deep breath before we close and if you had your eyes open you can,
If you had your eyes closed sorry,
You can open them now.
And as always giving it a little stretch,
The neck,
The shoulders,
Coming back into the room.
Noticing how you feel now compared to when you started.
And as I say that is a meditation that allows us to practice letting it be easy.
We don't have to show up and be the world's best meditator.
We're not trying to force our mind to be empty or peaceful or any of those myths that people often think about meditation.
It's not another thing on our to do list that we have to force ourselves to do.
It's more of a permission,
A space that we're giving ourselves to notice what is.
Without us having to always be the one that makes something happen or tries to force something or control something or grab hold of something.
It's a letting go.
It's a stepping back.
And that's what I mean when I say meditation to let it be easy.
So thanks so much for being here.
If you're watching on the replay thank you so much for doing so.
Anyone let me know if you have any questions or comments of course.
And yeah thank you so much.
I really appreciate every single person that shows up and listens to this and I hope that it helps you start your day or whatever time of day you might be listening or watching.
With a little bit more ease and calm and grace,
Self love,
That's what we're all here for.
So thank you so much.
I'm raising my coffee to you.
Have a wonderful Friday.
And remember when things feel difficult and you feel like you're trying to control things that cannot be controlled,
Take a step back and let it be easy.
Thanks so much and I will see you next week.
Have a great weekend.
Bye.
That's it for today.
Thanks so much for listening and spending your morning with me.
If you like this podcast and you are as obsessed with coffee and maybe meditation as I am,
Please go ahead and leave a rating and a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you normally listen as it helps spread the word and get the message out to more brilliant women just like us who need it.
You can also share with your friends on Instagram tagging me at Breathe Like a Badass.
I always love to see you there.
If you like this and you'd like to hear more from me and Breathe Like a Badass on how to use meditation to get the calm,
Clarity and focus you need to build a happy,
Fulfilling,
Freedom filled business and life,
Head on over to my other full length interview style podcast.
Just search Breathe Like a Badass anywhere that you normally listen to podcasts.
Thank you so much for listening and I will see you for the next one.
