It’s almost three months since I started teaching meditation at The Soul Spa in the centre of Bath, UK in Spring 2023. I guess it’s probably time for some reflection not only on how well it’s going but an analysis on how the various elements of meditation present themselves as challenges and/or opportunities both at group and individual levels.

Stats first…

Let’s start with numbers. I am honoured to have welcomed 18 individuals so far, at different levels of experience, some of whom are now regular members – and making great progress! I have hosted 13 classes over the last three months, each one themed around a specific meditation technique, alongside full body relaxation and mindful breathing.

Feedback has been great and here is what one participant said:

“A whole hour of stilling myself with a group of curious individuals is to be treasured in these busy distracting times.”

I appreciate the feedback and everyone who came to classes – it’s been an absolute pleasure meditating with you. So, it seems the classes are here to stay! We are blessed to have a beautiful setting like the Quantum Field at The Soul Spa which helps us get into a relaxed mental and physical state relatively easily. My heartfelt thanks go to The Soul Spa for sharing this wonderful space and offering 20% discount to my regular members to one of your amazing sound baths! On this point, whether you are a member or not, you should definitely add the sound baths into your bucket list of ‘things to do in Bath’. Here is where you can book a sound bath.

Expectations

I mentioned challenges and opportunities earlier. These could actually be one and the same thing. A challenge can be an opportunity to learn something new, change one’s opinion, get out of one’s comfort zone and make progress. It’s all good.

That said, some of the challenges we have in class are typical of most things in life – when we learn something new or are face to face with a new style of delivery, we can’t help comparing it against our past experience or held expectation derived from information from external sources – other people or publications.

So I often wonder what the expectations of individuals are when they attend a class. I realise we are all at different levels of experience, there are beginners, intermediates and advanced meditators. Each of us with our own unique experiences and expectations, which can be both helpful and limiting in terms of the extent to how much can be achieved through meditation.

Meditation is wonderful. It helps to relieve stress and anxiety, provides a sense of overall well-being and has scientifically observable positive impact on the heart and blood pressure.

But there’s a catch. It requires a certain level of commitment, a regular practice if your goal is to reap all those fantastic benefits. Our weekly classes at The Soul Spa are there to teach effective techniques, encourage a regular practice and hopefully provide you with a first hand experience of what can be achieved from a dedicated practice. One session may well provide a sense of wellbeing, but to get the full and long-term benefits, it is important to incorporate meditation into your weekly, leading to daily routines, to form a habit. Have patience, practice regularly, stay focussed and most importantly, enjoy the journey.

“Patience is not passive waiting. Patience is active acceptance of the process required to attain your goals and dreams.” Ray Davis

Therefore, I would say, remove all previously held expectations and scales of comparison. Come to class with a blank canvas, open and eager to experience meditation in a new or slightly different way. That is when you will truly enjoy the journey and reap the benefits.

Subtle energies

Both in yoga and meditation, we work with prana, lifeforce energy, also known as chi in Chinese therapy. It’s a subtle energy that helps our organs to function at optimum levels through making new nerve connections and increasing the efficiency of communication within the body.

Following a yoga or meditation class, we often feel a sense of wellbeing. This is usually because prana is running more efficiently through the chakra system (wheels of energy / energy centres in the body) and the organs helping the mind and body to strive to reach their highest health potentials.

At our weekly meditation classes at The Soul Spa, we sometimes practice chakra activation meditation to unblock energy channels (nadis in Sanskrit) so that prana can move freely within the body. Because we are working with subtle energies, the benefits may not be immediately recognisable at the physical level. This doesn’t mean that the practice didn’t work for you. It’s really important pay attention to these subtle energies and observe any changes in your emotional, mental or physical state in the minutes, hours or days following the meditation. In my own experience, I remember having an unusual beautiful experience two weeks after starting a powerful daily meditation.

Visualisation

According to coaching and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), we roughly have three types of individuals when it comes how we naturally perceive and represent the world we live in; although we would all have some percentage of the other types, of course. People are predominantly visual (learn through seeing) or auditory (learn through hearing) or kinaesthetic (learn through touching). These are called representational or rep systems in NLP.

“NLP is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created in the 1970s. The title refers to a stated connection between the neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”) and behavioural patterns that have been learned through experience (“programming”) and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life.” Wikipedia.org

At our weekly meditation classes, we use various techniques to train the mind to focus on the here and now, which sometimes involve visualisation or mental imagery. These sessions can be particularly challenging for people whose main rep system is auditory or kinaesthetic – through no fault of their own, I might add. On the flip side, visual or kineasthetic people would find verbal or written instructions more challenging than learning through observation or having hands-on personal experience. These are simply natural tendencies and nothing to worry about. But remember, challenges are opportunities to change, and we can always learn new behaviours!

Visualisation is a powerful and extremely helpful tool both in meditation and coaching. There have been numerous scientific studies on how the brain makes no to very little differentiation when it responds to a visualised incident compared to a real-life event. I would therefore advise all meditators to make the effort to further develop or advance their visual rep systems. This can be done through practicing at home some of the visualisations we do in our weekly classes, or any other techniques that can help you get the most of your meditation practice through visualisation.

I hope I have presented some food for thought. Thank you for taking the time to read it. And thanks to all who have come to my meditation classes – I do hope you are enjoying them as much as I am! I look forward to continue to practice with you.

If you have any questions or comments, you can comment below or email me through my website. You can read more about our meditation classes and make bookings on my website.

May you be well and happy.

Sossi