Guided, four steps taken one at a time. Music underneath
I am a terrible meditator. Still am, after ten years. So I broke it into four steps and stopped trying to do the lot at once.
About 15 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.
Still, quiet, open, curious. One at a time, and no rush between them. Meditation is the gym, not the race. You are not training to sit better, you are training for the meeting you did not want and the driver who cuts you up. Aim at a quiet mind and the opposite happens.
Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
People who sit down to meditate and find the whole thing too much at once.
I am a terrible meditator. Still am, after ten years. So I broke it into four steps and stopped trying to do the lot together.
What happens in this meditation
Still. Just physically. Wiggle about, let the shoulders sit, let the face go. Nothing about your mind yet.
Quiet. Now you notice you are breathing, and that thoughts come and go, and you sit in that awareness without doing much with it.
Open. Instead of one thing, several. The breath and the taste in your mouth. My voice and a sound outside and where your body is touching the chair. Held loosely rather than gripped.
Curious. A slight grin. Every thought and feeling as a one off event you get to watch. What is this, then. This step is non attachment, without using the word.
How to get the most from it
Fifteen minutes, and take one step at a time with no rush between them. That is the entire design.
Meditation is the gym rather than the race. You are not training to sit better. You are training for the meeting you did not want to be in and the driver who cuts you up.
And notice this at the end: aim directly at a quiet mind and the opposite happens. Allow the four steps and it goes quiet on its own.
Questions people ask
What if I only manage the first step?
Then you have been still for fifteen minutes, which is more than most days offer. Some sessions that is genuinely all I do.
Is this different from your other meditations?
The content is much the same. The difference is that it is broken up, which matters enormously if the whole thing usually feels like too much at once.
Do I have to be curious about unpleasant things?
Curious, not delighted. A difficult feeling is still a one off event you have not had before, and looking at it that way takes some of the weight out of it.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
overthinking · mindfulness · stress
Read the transcript
Welcome to Finding Inner Peace. The Four Step Meditation Journey. Now this meditation is really
one that I do quite often when I just cannot stop my racing thoughts. When I sit down and my
body, my heart's beating and my body's just feeling restless.
Really why do I use this meditation, the four step process? Because when we sit down to meditate, we very
often have The intention of feeling calm or quieting our mind. or communicating with aliens.
Whatever reason we may sit down to meditate, but very often I do it just because I want to
feel a little bit of stillness and I
may have a thought that keeps going around in my head or I may have a meeting coming up that
I'm feeling a bit anxious about.
So I sit down and I do this four-step process simply because To do the whole meditation in one go,
sit down, relax and then just allow your thoughts to pass. And I find it all a bit overwhelming to
begin with. So even after all these years of meditation, I've still got to break it down because really I'm
a terrible meditator and I find it really difficult to meditate. And I know the goal of meditation is not
to quieten the mind, not to have no thoughts. It's not to switch off the heart or switch off the
brain. It's really just to have a deeper insight, to find calmness, to become
wiser and maybe we can understand a bit more about our bodies and our minds and the way they work.
By doing that, we end up with a deeper wisdom. We end up being able to deal with
situations better. And I always say meditation is like the gym. You have the gym that prepares your
muscles and all that for that big race. Whereas meditation is preparing you for that awkward moment where you're in
a meeting that you don't want to be in or that driver that cuts you up and you want to
react.
Meditation and teaches us not to react and we can just, okay, they may have made a mistake or
that family member may not be deliberately trying to annoy me and we become calmer and wiser and we just...
Make better decisions and we come at life from a really, a lot more peaceful way. So this
meditation really does help me to do that. And I hope it will help you. So so
the very first part of this meditation is embrace stillness. And what I mean by that is just find a
comfortable place. Wiggle your bum. Let your shoulders just sit. And just become a little stiller.
You don't have to do anything. Just become still.
And this is just a physical stillness.
And that's it.
You don't have to settle your mind. You don't have to do
anything else it's just become still Allow
your shoulders to relax.
Allow your face to relax.
When I say allow your shoulders and your face to relax, it's an invitation because your shoulders and your face
and your arms and your bum and your legs, they all know how to relax. They do it all the
time when you're not paying attention.
So when you just invite them to say, okay, you can relax now. Watch
how quickly they relax.
If you try to do it, it just doesn't work.
So just allow your whole body to relax into this moment.
You may become aware of your breath.
You may even become aware of your thoughts. That's
all fine.
If you're a seasoned meditator, you may probably already jump two or three steps ahead. And that's okay
But We're just embracing the stillness right now.
Now we move on to the quietness.
This step is about heightened awareness.
Acknowledge your presence in this space.
Become aware that you're breathing in and
you're breathing out
Aware of your chest and
become aware that your thoughts may come and go.
And just sit in the space of awareness
And just bring it back to your breath every time you have a thought. Smile and thank the thought and
bring it back to your breath.
You don't need to do anything with your breath.
Your body knows how to breathe in any given moment. It does it without us getting involved most of the
time. It's only when we get involved you
may notice that.
When we're just sitting here, just being aware of everything that's going on. Everything is just calm.
So by now you're probably feeling more still and more aware. And
you're just calm in this moment.
And the third step I use is just to open this awareness up.
Instead of just being aware of your breath, maybe you can be aware of your taste in your mouth
And your breath at the same time.
Maybe be aware of the sounds and my voice and the words.
Aware of any other noises.
You may become aware of a part of your body where you can feel it touching the chair.
It's trying to hold all these different awarenesses in one space without locking onto one too hard or
too harshly. It's
not about focusing on the sounds or the breath. It's about just having an open awareness.
It's just embracing everything that's happening right now.
Internally and externally.
Everything that's happening around you and the whole universe.
As well as your breath
And the sounds
And the thoughts coming and going.
Every single moment is completely different.
Then the final step I use is just be curious
one way I do this is just to have a slight grin on my face.
That this moment is all okay and it's just entertaining and it's all here for us to have this experience
You know From the breath, to the feelings, to the thoughts.
It's all here for us to be aware of.
It's all a dance and a play.
And it's watching it with a sense of wonder.
And you can almost feel that each thought and feeling is a unique event.
This step is about non-attachment. Letting experiences rise and fall without judgement.
Whatever feelings come in or whatever thoughts come in, maybe you become aware of your taste or you become aware
of an itch or something. Just be entertained by it as an experience in your life.
Wow, what's this?
What's this wonderful event? What's this experience that's arising within me now?
And I find this process easier to manage because it's one step at a time. I'm not a
multitasker and sometimes it's really not easy to jump to open awareness and sit down and be aware
of your breath. Sometimes just to be a little still and That's all I need to do.
Then to be quiet. Then to open up. And then be curious.
And it gives a sense of that we don't have to do it all in one go. And the wonderful
thing with this meditation, it's a pathway to self-discovery and acceptance of you have thoughts, you have feelings.
You have things arising within you. You hear sounds.
And it guides you gently into the meditation.
But it gives you a deep insight to what's really going on.
So very often I forget about the art of meditation.
Don't worry about meditation or mindfulness. Just
sit and be a little quiet.
Find a little stillness.
Open up your awareness.
And then be curious. Treat it all as an event.
Now in a moment I'm going to count back from five so you open your eyes and return to the
room. But just before we do that,
recognise how much quieter your mind goes when
we don't try to force things. If you focus on quiet in the mind, the opposite happens. If you focus
on being still, Or being aware It's really hard to hold that. But
if we just allow these things to happen, what
a joy that is. What a peaceful moment that is. And
you don't have to do anything with any of it.
Your mind knows how to be quiet. Your body knows how to relax. Your body knows how to breathe. Your
ears know how to listen. Your tongue knows how to taste. Just
allow these things to be what they are.
So five, four, Gently open your eyes. Three, shake out your arms.
Two, one. Just look around the room and just, yeah, just really appreciate the fact that
at the beginning of the meditation you're probably finding it quite difficult to meditate that's why you might have picked
this one. Or you're a seasoned meditator and I'm just breaking it down going one step at a time just
really makes things a lot easier. And
really appreciate your time with me here today. Thank you. And
I wish you a wonderful, peaceful day.
I'm Steven Webb and this is part of the Inner Peace Meditations podcast. What would be really amazing if you
could leave a review? How you felt or how much it helps? That would be absolutely incredible. And you can
find all my links and how you can support the podcast in the show notes. Take care. You're awesome.
