Alpaca Meditation

Tomorrow I will be attending my first ever silent retreat and quite frankly it is causing me a huge amount of anxiety. I have practiced mindful meditation almost every day for the past four years and still I can’t quiet my mind over my feelings of worry about tomorrow. I say this to show that even as a generally mindful person I still suffer from anxiety over some things. I believe the main reason for this is that my anxiety is very deep routed. Some of you may know my story but for those that don’t 6 years ago I had one of my vocal chords removed. Ignoring the trauma of the many surgeries that resulted from this and a year spent in and out of hospital my main issue is that I couldn’t speak for six weeks and as I learnt to talk again I could only manage a very quiet whisper. I talked with this whisper for 2 years. For those 2 years I barely used the telephone as many people couldn’t hear me and those that could either claimed there was a problem with the line or assumed that I must b...

The NHS website recommends that an adult of working age needs between 7 and 9 hours sleep a night and yet one in three of us don’t get enough sleep. Sleep is hugely important to help the body rebuild and reset itself and during this time when we are all suffering from the effects of the pandemic it could be argued that it is more important than ever to get enough sleep so that our minds can settle and reset themselves and to help our mental health. Mindfulness can help you to go to sleep, stay asleep and if you do wake in the middle of the night to get back to sleep, but before I go into how it can help, here are a few other tips that will set you up for a good nights sleep. Getting your mind and your body ready for bed Switch off electrical devises well before bed. Some research say two hours but it seems sensible to turn devices off at least 30 minutes before bed. The blue light that emits from screens fools the body into thinking it is the middle of the day and so it doesn’t ...