Meditation (plus)

Over the years I’ve been asked to lead “Mindfulness Meditations” or “Mindfulness Workshops” in a business setting. The people asking me to do this are under the impression that mindfulness and meditation are the same thing; probably because a lot of wellness literature promotes Mindfulness Meditation.

Focusing on mindfulness is handy for workplace wellness programs because it is easy to understand and implement. The drawback (and ironically the reason it is so popular) is that it focuses almost entirely on the body.

Mindfulness (which I call focusing in present time) is one of many excellent tools used during meditation, but there is so much more to consider. I like to think of meditation as Mindfulness Plus.

Mindfulness is a wonderful gateway to what I think of as meditation: the “Plus” part of the equation.

Some of the pluses I teach in my meditation classes are:

  • Focusing as a spiritual being – working in conjunction with your body to learn life lessons.
  • Understanding how the body’s basic energetic system works and using grounding, centering, and energy flow to control and cleanse the chakra system.
  • Using neutral symbols to clear older and deeper issues without re-experiencing them.
  • Using spiritual techniques to create what you want.
  • Maintaining your space around others, including creating an energetically safe space, setting a deliberate energy level through the use of color, and separating your energy from that of other people.
  • Getting assistance through spiritual communication.

Practicing mindfulness allows a person to let go of stress by focusing on the present and deliberately noticing emotions, mental stressors, and physical sensations and then making a choice about how to respond. My concern is that Mindfulness Meditations can uncover deeper issues that people are not equipped to process so they get scared and quit.

If you currently practice mindfulness, I encourage you to learn some of the “pluses” of Meditation. If you don’t have access to one of my classes, Mary Ellen Flora has written an excellent series of books with accompanying CDs containing practice meditations that teach several of these techniques. You can find them at https://www.cdmspiritualcenter.org/spiritual-center-store/.