How we start the morning often sets the stage for how the rest of the day unfolds. Of course, life throws us curve balls in the middle of the day, maybe you get a stressful email or someone rear-ends you with their car or you lose that deal that you were looking forward to. Anything can happen in the present moment, but how we start our day can often affect how we greet those challenges.

Here are four tips to start your day that will help you with the inevitable ups and downs that you get handed.

Mindful Check-In

It’s good to begin the day simply by noting where you are starting the day from with this simple morning meditation. How is your body? What emotions are present? Is your mind calm or already racing off to work? If you’re lying in your bed, you just note that, getting a sense of whether the body feels comfortable or tense. Are you feeling calm, anxious, annoyed, or maybe neutral? What is on your mind? 

Here’s a two-minute mindful check-in video from The Now Effect to give it a go:

Prime Your Mind for Good

After a brief mindful check-in, one way of inclining your mind toward resilience, and even opening up to the good of the day, is to consider an intentional gratitude practice. What in your life right now do you have to be grateful for? It could be something simple, like waking up on the right side of the bed, having a roof over your head, or having a good cup of coffee in the morning. Just practice inkling your mind to the good in life.

Bring Presence to the Morning Activities

When you’re in the shower, be in the shower, not solving problems at work already. When you’re making breakfast for you or your family, consider the intention of that being to take care of yourself and others throughout the day. Put some love into your food. If there are pets or other family members in the house, before you leave, make sure to say an intentional goodbye, looking into their eyes.

Red Light Practice

As you drive this morning, use red lights as an opportunity to just check-in, pressing the reset button if traffic has got you flustered, or just using it as an opportunity to get centered and focus on what matters. You can make the choice to listen to your favorite music, intentionally plan the day out in your mind, or just have a quiet drive for a change. If you take public transportation, you can do the same thing every time the bus, train, or subway stops. If you work from home, try this before turning on your computer. Exposing yourself to choices and acting on them just feels good and primes your mind for the rest of the day that you have choices in how you want to respond to situations.

Try these four things each morning as an experiment to see how your life changes.

Meditation was very healing for me personally on my own path when I was working in the corporate world in New York City. I found myself becoming very burnt out and depressed. Meditation helped me to find peace and joy again, and to heal a lot of the wounds that were keeping me stuck in places of constant overwork and grasping for things that weren’t really making me happy.

What does healing meditation address?

There are thousands of different types of meditations, techniques, prayer, and contemplation. So what makes healing meditation different? Healing meditation is meant to consciously promote the health of the mind, body, and spirit. The main intention of healing meditation is to cultivate balance.

All meditations serve this purpose to one degree or another, but healing meditation is more intentional. You have the intention to heal some aspect of your life which are out of balance. This includes past traumas, fears, or unconscious beliefs. If it’s pain you are experiencing, you can practice body healing meditation for finding balance in that aspect of your life.

As a disclaimer, if you are looking to uplevel your health in general, always consult a medical professional. But healing meditation can help to create wholeness and health in any part of your life.

Types of Healing Meditation Techniques

There are three main approaches to healing meditation, which include affirmations, visualization, and using or applying “chi,” your natural healing energy. Combining these three approaches will help to create balance within the mind, the body, and the spirit. Let’s take a closer look at each one:

1. Affirmations

The most popular form of healing meditation is affirmations. Affirmations help to change your mind or the way you think. They also change your consciousness. So if you have always resonated with some subtle belief, such as, “I’m never good enough,” “Things aren’t good enough,” or, “I’m not doing enough,” then you can work with these healing affirmations:

“I am enough.”

“I am abundant.”

“I am whole. I am good. I am overflowing.”

These are examples of types of affirmations you might work with, especially if these are the kinds of beliefs you want to shift within your being. These limiting beliefs affect our cellular energy, or “chi,” which I discuss a little more below. Chi is our life force energy, and activating the flow of chi through our physical body, through our consciousness, can help create an expanded sense of healing.

2. Visualization

The second major approach to healing meditation is visualization. In this practice, you’re using the imagination or using your intention to visualize your health, your vitality, and your wholeness. This often makes use of elements in nature, like trees or the ocean. People find that visiting the forest or the ocean, even just in their mind’s eye, can be very healing and rejuvenating.

Visualization means using the faculty of imagination, to the best of our own abilities, and engaging all of our senses: sight, sound, smell, and touch. All of these different types of sensory emotions help to cultivate healing, which provides a strong sense of wholeness, fullness, goodness, balance, and calm within the self.

3. Chi

The third way to use healing meditation that I love to share is using and applying chi, your natural healing energy, during meditation. You might be familiar with Reiki, which is a form of energy healing. We teach energy healing through Sura Flow, which is the universal energy that we all have access to. There is no initiation: we all have access to natural healing energy, and the flow of energy around and through ourselves.

You can simply use your hands for self-healing. Think of Tai Chi or Qigong, where the hands are used in a very soft and fluid motion and start to cultivate the subtle electrical energy that moves through the body. Your body is like an energy superhighway system, with many meridians and channels. When these channels are blocked, you can experience tension and pain. It is possible to open up these blocked areas with the energy that naturally flows through your hands.

Simply place your hands on any tense areas of your body. You may notice that area under your hands become warm and relaxed. This is energy flowing through your meridians. When you activate this “chi” flow, it helps you balance your system and expand your awareness.

Why Should You Practice Healing Meditation?

You can apply healing meditation towards unconscious blocks and fears, or any place where you are experiencing a block in your life, whether it’s relationships, money, work, or even just finding your purpose in life. Healing meditation, which we also use in coaching, is the act of asking powerful questions in a state of meditation. You can invite healing into your practice by utilizing meditation coaching.

You can heal any aspect of your physical or life experience, including a relationship, your work, or where you live. You can even experience physical healing. Meditation has been shown to help with stress relief, reducing inflammation, and promoting calm and inner peace—but what it really does is change your energy. Meditation changes your energy at a very deep level, the level of your consciousness. So when you go into a very relaxed, open, receptive state, you are most apt to find healing. 

We all have this healing power within us, and you can access it through the practice of meditation. Click the following link if you’re ready to try a free practice healing meditation. Sit back, relax, and allow your healing meditation to happen. If you’d like to learn more about how to heal through meditation, visit my site for free resources at https://www.suraflow.org.