Category: meditation

meditation, story

This just in: A new kind of meditation method based on storytelling

Christa Avampato
Meditate on stories
Meditate on stories

I start every day with 10 minutes of meditation. I used to sit up in bed, close my eyes, and just focus on my breath. For the last couple days I’ve been trying something different—I remain lying down, eyes closed, and let my mind create a story. It’s completely spontaneous and I don’t force the characters or actions. Something akin to free writing with only my mind.

When I open my eyes, I try to get it all down as accurately as I can without editing. What strikes me about this meditation method is that the little stories that float through my mind aren’t in my voice at all. It’s literally like my imagination is just telling me a story, and my conscious mind is the willing audience of one.

On Friday morning I started thinking about Levi, a character I’ve been working on for a few months. This was his stream of consciousness:

“Have you ever felt like God was listening? I mean really listening, and watching and waiting to see just how much you really need something? Best I can tell that thinking’s for church ladies and the grieving. And they say love is blind. Grief? That’s way worse. Grieving people come up with all kinds of hidden meanings when something terrible’s happened to them or someone they love.

I know all about grief. I see it every day, even on weekends. I try to steer clear of it but that’s impossible when you share a house with dead people. My mom and dad are here, too, but they’re so busy tending to dead people, and the living people who love the dead people, that they barely notice me. It’s their job. They’re morticians. 

Now don’t you go feeling sorry for me just because I have busy parents who find a corpse more interesting than me. I’m fine, really fine. Shelby, my next door neighbor, says I should be grateful for the neglect because it sure beats smothering. I have to agree, mostly because I’m not in a position to disagree with Shelby. Shelby’s the producer of my soon-to-be radio show, and she’s gonna make me famous. That is if I don’t screw it all up in the process.

I’ve got a dilemma, and I’m really gonna need some help soon. That’s where you come in. Dead people are calling me, and they’re not easy customers to please. They’ve got demands and I’m not really in the position to tell them I can’t do their bidding. They’re dead so they’ve got nothing else to lose. Me? I got everything to lose. Including my dreams of having my own radio show, my producer, and my chance to meet my idol, Al Green. 

I was hanging out in bed, practicing death yesterday. I’m trying to put myself in their shoes. Call it customer research. It’s not hard really. I just lay there on my back, hands on my belly, and try not to move or breathe much.You’re not gonna believe this but death feels pretty relaxing. No wonder everybody dies eventually. You should give it a try, just to see what it feels like since someday we’re all gonna die. Might as well be prepared for what’s coming. Death’s not scary at all. You really want to feel scared? Try living.” 

encouragement, health, meditation

This just in: Joining forces through long distance meditation

Christa Avampato
Call your angels
Call your angels

Yesterday, I gave myself the gift of a 30-minute meditation. I needed to shift my energy and state of mind in a big way. I also needed to release a lot of emotions that I didn’t want to carry around with me and I wanted to send more healing energy to Phin. I was chatting with my friend, Mary, and she asked what time I planned to meditate so that she, her wonderful husband, Tom, and their sweet kitty, Jamie, could join me and Phin. I’m in Florida. They’re in the Boston area.

I never long-distance meditated before yesterday, though I now want to make it a regular part of my life. I could literally feel their energy flowing through me and Phin, and I was able to send that goodness back to them. I also strongly felt supported and cared for. As it turns out, Mary actively sent that feeling to me in many forms. Just knowing they were out there and that we were in this practice together made my meditation much richer, and more powerful. When I compared notes with Mary later, we actually had some identical insights rise up with regards to my future. That synchronicity amazed and inspired me. Even Phin and Jamie connected by ending the meditation asleep with their faces resting on their paws in the same way.

I feel so lucky to have had Mary, Tom, and Jamie with us in spirit during this stressful time. Their light, energy, and strength made it down the Eastern seaboard and I’m so grateful for that. United in distance. As Mary said to me, “All will be well.” And so it is.

health, healthcare, meditation, social media, Twitter, writing, yoga

Inspired: Yoga and Meditation for Caregivers

Christa Avampato

an AFA publicationI am honored to have an article I wrote about yoga and meditation for caregivers appear in this quarter’s issue of care ADvantage magazine, a publication of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA). To dovetail with the article, I was also the invited guest host for AFA’s monthly Twitter chat on this same topic.

The article is available online at http://www.alzfdn.org/Publications/care_advantage/issues/CASP14.pdf

The transcript of the Twitter chat is available at https://storify.com/alzfdn/careadvantagechat

Happy to answer any and all questions related to this topic!

meditation, yoga

Beautiful: A Lesson in Yoga – Anxiety and Grief Need to Be Exercised Before We Can Breathe

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

Lately I’ve had unexpected opportunities to talk about yoga and meditation in the context of the health challenges I faced following my apartment building fire. Yesterday my eyes were closed but I could feel the hush of the whirling, swirling minds as I taught meditation to a room full of community aid workers who continue to assist people affected by Hurricane Sandy. My job was to give them a set of tools to use in their work.

After a few techniques, I opened up the floor for questions. One woman asked me how to help people who are in throes of heavy anxiety. In the moments when we need it most, access to our breath as a tool to calm down can fail us. It’s also true that in the deep dark moments of my own PTSD if someone had told me to “close my eyes and just breathe”, I would told them to F- off. And then I would have apologized profusely for being so rude and then explained that I couldn’t help it because in a state of high anxiety, my mind and body are not my own.

In the aftermath of my fire, I would run long distances, working my body to the point of total exhaustion. I would do 20, 30, 40 sun salutations on my yoga mat until I collapsed in a heap on the floor. Only then could I access my breath. Only then would that awful continuous loop of “what if” scenarios stop playing in my mind. I needed to be worn down to the bone, laid bare to the world in order to give myself the help I needed, to find my breath.

I wish this wasn’t true. I wish we could somehow sit ourselves down, invoke our inner Cher a la Moonstruck, slap ourselves across the face,and say, “Snap out of it.” It doesn’t work that way. Anxiety is a strange mistress. It consumes you, tries to destroy you, and then becomes an odd kind of comfort because it does chase away something far worse – the numbness that follows a traumatic event. That lack of feeling, the void, the shock, is worse. It leaves you hollow. And you’ll do anything to keep that at bay.

Here was my advice on breathing and anxiety: give people a way to work with the frantic energy. Help them work it out in the body. Give them a safe space to do whatever they need to do to physically process their grief. Let them talk and say whatever they want to say without fear of being judged. That is a part of moving through it. It cannot be asked to sit. It cannot be asked to breathe. We must allow anxiety and grief to just be for a while. We must recognize it as legitimate. Only then can we move past it. Only then can we find a way to move on. The breath is a tool, but it must be used in the proper place at the proper time.

health, invention, make, maker, meditation, yoga

Beautiful: Vote for my 1st invention on Quirky – a temporary web-enabled health tattoo to reduce stress and anxiety

Christa Avampato
An epidermal electronics tattoo

For a few months, I’ve been working on ideas to combine my love of technology with my passion for health and wellness. I posted my first invention idea on Quirky to accomplish this: a temporary web-enabled health tattoo to reduce stress and anxiety. I’d love it if you’d hop on over to the page where it’s posted and like it if you’re so inclined: click here.

What this invention does:
This invention utilizes temporary tattoo technology currently available to monitor muscle tension, temperature, and blood pressure, all early indicators of stress and rising anxiety. Connected to a mobile app, the user would receive a ping from his or her mobile device and be led through brief meditation and breathing exercise to help reduce his or her stress level. The user can then chart stress level over time for personal reference and review with healthcare providers. This invention raises awareness of our stress level while also giving us empowering tools to manage it when we need it most.

A few different circumstances inspired this idea:
1.) At Advertising Week I learned about epidermal electronics tattoos that are temporary films applied to the skin to monitor vitals signs like temperature and blood pressure
2.) My sister, Weez, had such a tough day last week that she got a backache for two days from the stress
3.) While I love there are so many e-health apps that are now on the market, many of them require us to manually input a lot of information, making them cumbersome and time-consuming to use
4.) Some scientific studies have shown that stress is one if the root causes of as much as 90% of all disease

What the heck is Quirky?:
Quirky is an online platform that gives independent product developers like me (and you!) the opportunity to put their ideas out into the world and have the crowd vote on the ones that they find most useful. To date, they have enabled the development of 398 of these ideas with a community of 544,000 inventors.

How you can help bring this product into being:
My idea will be live for 28 more days and needs 198 more votes to be put into the Quirky production consideration phase. I would love love love if you would vote for it by following this link: http://www.quirky.com/invent/685515/action/vote/query/sort=ending_soon&categories=all

Thank you so much! Let’s make something awesome together to help us all be healthier.

creativity, meditation

Beautiful: From Ah! to Om…: A Meditation Guide for Beginners and Two Guided Meditations

Christa Avampato
From Ah! to Om…: A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation

I’ve been wanting to put together a few guided meditations for some time now. At long last, here they are for your viewing, listening, and downloading pleasure! Thanks to my pal, Alison, for prompting me to get this done and out into the world.

From Ah! to Om…: A Meditation Guide for Beginners is just that – 5 tips to help you begin your own meditation practice. Whether you’ve never tried to meditate before or you’ve tried many times before without much success (which was me not that long ago!), these 5 tips will help. With some beautiful images, music, and a voiceover by yours truly, I hope you enjoy this multi-media presentation. Prezi presentation link.

Ujjayi Breathing for Beginners is a guided meditation that shows you how to practice this simple technique to calm your mind and deepen your breath. Plus you can hear what I sound like, at least when I’m teaching meditation. Prezi presentation or audio only. Take your pick!

Chakra Meditation for Beginners is a guided meditation that gives you a little flavor of what chakras are and the power of each one to restore balance to your life. Prezi presentation or audio only. Take your pick!

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions. Happy Om…

California, fear, health, meditation, teaching, yoga

Beautiful: How Meditation Helped Me Through a Bout of PTSD Triggered By the Santa Monica Shooting

Christa Avampato
Crowds on June 10, 2013, make their way to a campus memorial for the five killed in a shooting rampage on June 7 at Santa Monica College. The gunman was also killed. (Andy Holzman/Los Angeles Daily News)

I thought I was through with it. I don’t panic anymore when I hear fire engine sirens. I’m not afraid to be in my home. My nightmares have disappeared. I don’t end up crying on the street wondering how I got there after forgetting where I’m going. These were all symptoms I had after my apartment building fire almost 4 years ago. At the time, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just felt crazy. Then after I started going to therapy shortly after the fire, I realized I had PTSD.

Brian, my wizard of a therapist, and I worked through decades of issues that my PTSD triggered and after almost 3 years of hard work, I found my way to stability and confidence. That was a year ago. Last week the Santa Monica shootings sent me into a spell. I’ll be staying near there all summer on a house swap. How could this be happening to me? I felt dizzy with the what if scenarios. What if I had been there already? What if I was driving and I had been the car that was hijacked? What if I was out walking Phineas and I had been hit by a stray bullet? What if. What if. What if. I started crying. And shaking.

I used my tools. I closed by eyes, placed one hand on the heart, one hand on the belly, and started to breathe. Body into the hands on the inhale. Body into the back of the chair on the exhale. I kept my attention at the third eye. I replaced those racing what ifs with this truth: “You are safe.” I began to wind down, slowly and with a lot of effort. It worked. I was safe, and then I felt safe.

This is what meditation can do for you. It can take you from panic to peace. I can take also take you from helpless to helpful. After I calmed down, I had the most incredible thought. What happened in Santa Monica is awful. There are people there who might be scared, people who might need the gift I have to give. Maybe there’s a way for me to teach what I know. After all, I’ve lived with those what if thoughts for a long time. I learned how to chase them away. I learned how to have power over them rather than the other way around. Maybe the people of Santa Monica need that gift, too. Maybe this summer I will be in just the right place at just the right time for people who need me.

community, meditation

Beautiful: Meditate for a Better World

Christa Avampato

I am certain that if every person on the planet learned to meditate and practiced daily for 5 minutes, we’d have a better world in no time. We’d have more joy, peace, and compassion. We’d have less fear, violence, and instability. If we could all sit and tap in, we’d find that we are so much more connected than we ever realized.

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meditation, stress

Beautiful: The Simplest Definition of Stress Reduction

Christa Avampato

Meditate“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” ~ William James, American psychologist and philosopher

With Phin’s hospitalization, my preparation to leave New York City for two months, the move to my new apartment, and the winding down of some of my freelance work, I’ve felt pulled in many different directions, emotionally and physically. Sometimes, I felt completely off kilter (I’ll be giving more specifics on this in an upcoming post). As a meditation and yoga teacher, I have the tools to bring myself back to center. It takes time and patience (sometimes more of both than I would like), but it happens every single time. My practice has never failed me. It’s never failed anyone I know.

So if you’re under the dark clouds of stress and anxiety, sit down. Close your eyes. One hand on the heart, one hand on the belly. Take a deep breath and place your attention right between the eyebrows (the third eye). Your mind doesn’t control you. You control the mind. You are empowered to replace that stress with peace. You can will it to happen. It doesn’t cost you a dime. It doesn’t require any special equipment. And yet, it is the most valuable gift you can give to yourself. Teaching this simple fact is certainly the most valuable thing I give to the world.

choices, decision-making, dreams, meditation, yoga

Leap: Everything is Difficult

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Have you ever shied away from doing something because you thought it was too difficult or because someone else told you that what you wanted to do was too hard? This pesky thought creeps into any and every crevice of doubt – about our careers, relationships, passion projects, and any time we are considering a change of any kind. It is the enemy of good decision-making and the only appropriate response to this thought is a loud, strong “Get out and stay out!”

It’s all tough. Everything you want to do in life has challenges. If you are waiting for the seas to part and the obstacles to disintegrate you are wasting your time and undermining your own strength. The path of least resistance that we hear so much about never said anything about a complete lack of resistance.

For a long time I lived with this conflict: I face a lot of challenges in my life and then in yoga class I hear that we shouldn’t struggle because life is supposed to be easy. Then a clear nuisance revealed itself to me. Life is challenging. We are almost always in the midst of difficulty. However, even a troubled road can be traveled with ease.

We can soften around obstacles so that we can navigate our way around them. We can move our attention inward when we need to replenish ourselves after a long day of work. Life may be filled with struggle but that doesn’t mean we have to be strugglers and take on all of the stress and anxiety that comes with that. To travel a hard road, we need strength, courage, stamina, and resilience – all the things that yoga and meditation provide.

So you go right on choosing your deepest, most passionate dreams, regardless of how hard it will be to bring them to life. Be confident in the fact that everything worth doing requires an effort of some kind. The trick is to also find the ease that lets you enjoy the journey and keeps you motivated to stay the course. Need some help with that? Contact me – my pep talks will make that pesky voice of self-doubt head for the hills.