Stilla Friday Meditations

Your breath takes care of itself, you don't need to take responsibility for it. In this way you are always supported. Let this be a space for rest and relaxation.

Let go of your expectations about how this moment should be, and simply be here instead

Connect with steadiness, dignity, openness and ease through your body. These are different qualities of presence that you can connect to and nurture simply by paying attention. In this session we explore just that!

Mindfulness can be an effective way to deal with anxiety and panic attacks. 1. Investigate your thoughts and ask yourself “Is it really true?” Remembering that your thoughts ain't facts. The thoughts will often be about the future, so ssk yourself “Am I OK right now?” Moving your focus back to the present moment and away from the minds fear based catastrophe scenario. You can take a sober look at the future when you feel more balanced). 2. Breath. Slow deep breaths. It helps regulate the nervous system and it gives you something physical to focus on rather than the mind loops. 3. Use your senses. Listen to sounds, watch colors and reflections of light, smell the air, feel the sense of warmth and cold. Try to do it without naming the experiences. Just experience them “raw”, as they are. Inspiration from https://www.mindful.org/4-ways-curb-panic-attack/

When was the last time you stared into space for 30 min, doing absolutely nothing? Exactly - Never! Life will not slow to to hand you the perfect moment to to meditate. “When things calm down” is an illusion. You don't FIND time to meditate; you MAKE time to meditate. It's a choice - A simple, powerful choice. Enough with the excuses: - “it's so much right now” - “it's not the right time” - “I always forget” And the rationalizations: - “I'm too stress” - “I feel fine, I don't need it” The truth is, you're here because you've set an intention to practice. That intention brought you into this space. Now, it's time to act on it. Only you can make this real. And you CAN. If not now, when? Sit down, take 20 min. Show up. Make it real. Don't overthink it—just do it. Hear me roar! I believe in you, and I love you.

It's three years ago since Björn Natthiko Lindeblad passed away. He was a Swedish munk in Thailand, a wonderful teacher and a big role model for me. He reminds me of the importance of kindness and how our imperfections are what makes us human. We borrow our life, our body and each other for a short time before we move on. Take care of each other and try to bring out the best in each other. While you are here you can act on your lightest intentions. Try to live a little less with closed fists and a little more with open hands. With a little less control and little more trust. Today's meditation will be in his spirit

In the gap between experience and response lies your freedom. Let me explain. Your reflexes makes you withdraw your hand instantly when you touch something hot. It's not a conscious choice that you make, your body does it for you. This is a useful and healthy reaction that work to your benefit because it protects you from getting burned. Great! In the same way you have all kinds of similar reactions to other situations. - A friend invites you to something you would rather skip but you automatically say ‘Yes' - Your partner gives you some constructive feedback and you immediately start defending yourself - A colleague has a different opinion than you and you start arguing about it All of those reactions are ways for you to “pull your hand away” to avoid some difficult emotion. The problem is that these reactions are not necessary in the first place, they cause more problems than they fix and they are not who you are. So what happens here then? They are mechanisms that you built as a child in a time where you didn't have all the wisdom and resources you have now. You are reacting as if you were six years old again and your mother is criticising you for not making your bed. And these reactions create your life! How many conflicts have you been in with your partner because of these kinds of reactions? Ten? Hundred? Thousand? What if you could go back to all of those moments and change your response to how would have liked to respond? How different would your life be now? Of course, you cannot go back and change, but you CAN build the awareness to catch yourself in all of the future triggers that WILL come. Build the gap between experience and response so that you can consciously decide how you want to live your life. This is the mindfulness-gap that we are building here!

Happy New Year!

I thought I'd share a little about what it has meant for me to learn to meditate. Breaking Negative Patterns Increased awareness helps me identify and change negative thought and behavior patterns, like blaming others for pain that is inside of me. Improved Relationships Before, I often fell victim to my doubtful thoughts in my romantic relationships, causing them to fall apart within a few year. Becoming aware of these thoughts and learning to just observe them has made it possible for me to stay with my partner and choose something else. Appreciating Life Most importantly, it helps me to Be in life instead of standing on the sideline and watch. When I really feel the present moment it strikes me how wonderfully simple existence is.

Tuesday meditation is an opportunity for you to… Take a break, reset and come back to work with re-filled batteries. Nurture your inner capacity to be present with yourself and others. Learn about your mind and how to navigate it.

Let's try something! Inhale deeply. Exhale fully.
Notice the pause between the end of the exhale and the next inhale. Listen to the stillness in the pause. This tiny space holds a profound teaching: rest exists within movement, stillness within activity. Even in the busiest of moments, this pause reminds us that peace is always available, hidden in the rhythm of our breath. Every time you pause, you reconnect with the quiet wisdom of simply being.

Imagine your most unwanted feelings as little children.
They won't stop acting out simply because you ignore them or push them away.
What they truly need is your loving embrace, your steady presence, and your patient understanding.
Only then can they relax and reveal the fears that lie beneath their behavior. Each of us carries little inner children—parts of us that feel hurt, abandoned, or unseen.
Yet, these tender parts also guard our greatest treasures:
our playfulness, wonder, love, and gentleness. You have the power to become the parent your inner child has always needed.

Breathing in Let it out Breathing in Let it go

You are the light of your soul The love of your heart You are what you long for You are

I had a tough morning today and started joking with my partner that I have quite a tight schedule today. 9-9.45 Self pity 9.45-12 Contemplating my existence 12-12.45 Lunch 12.45-15 Ruminate over past mistakes 15-15.15 Fika 15.15-23 Doom scrolling Afterwards I felt much better. Sometimes humor is the best medicine.

“Be happy in the moment, that's enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.” - Mother Teresa

I got a mindfulness trick from my theatre teacher yesterday. Count colors! Look around the room and see how many red/blue/yellow things you can find. It will shift your attention from rumination to the present moment. This is a helpful way to recharge and then you can come back to the problem at hand with a bit more spaciousness.

Warmly welcome to the extra meditation today as part of the World Mental Health Day. By practicing being fully present and aware in the moment we nurture a calm and relaxed inner world, a great antidote for stress and anxiety!

Let the breath expand you from inside and release tensions and contractions

Your attention is a beautiful thing! It creates your whole world. Try this out. Look around the room and look at five things you find beautiful, really see them and take them in. Feel how it impacts your mood, your thoughts and your body. Then look at five things that you find ugly or annoying and really take that in. What is the impact on your mood, your thoughts and your body? Our whole life is shaped by what we pay attention to, so learning how to choose what you pay attention to is a great investment. This is what meditation can teach us.

All of our “negative” emotion carry gold when explored properly In fear there is strength and personal will In anger there is personal power and true nature In sadness and grief there is love and compassion In guilt and shame there is integrity and true value In loneliness there is unity and connection

I've been reflecting on boundaries lately. Boundaries, as I see them, are the personal guidelines we set to determine what we allow into our lives. This includes what we eat, the media we consume, the people we surround ourselves with, and how we permit others to treat us. These are what I would call outer boundaries—they protect us from external influences, helping us manage the flow of energy and information coming from the outside world. But there's another important type of boundary, which I think of as inner boundaries. While outer boundaries face outward, inner boundaries govern how much of ourselves we choose to share with the world. They involve questions like: What do we reveal about ourselves, and to whom? How often do we compromise our own sense of self to meet others' expectations? And how do we treat and speak to ourselves? I find this distinction between inner and outer boundaries enlightening. It helps me recognize when I'm giving away too much of my energy—whether through fear, habit, or a misplaced sense of obligation. Ironically, when we're more mindful of containing our energy, we often end up with more to offer. But this time, it's shared from a place of strength, not at the expense of ourselves.

When you look at a baby, it is obvious that they are enough as they are. They are already worthy of love and belonging. And all they do is sleep, eat and poop. As this baby grows, this never changes, it is still worthy of love and belonging. Even though this baby is now all grown up and is doing its best to navigate being an adult. That baby is you and me and everyone else. You are still worthy of love and belonging.

The mind and the body are deeply interconnected and mirror each other in their functioning. When the mind is stressed the body will tense up. When the body is tense it will lead to stressful thoughts. This creates a feedback loop where stress and fear will circle around between body and mind until the cycle is broken in some way. This is quite an uncomfortable state to be in, both mentally and physically and our default way to deal with discomfort is to fix it by thinking our way out of it. However, this is usually not a very good idea because our mental capacity is reduced quite a bit and our perspective is heavily distorted by the stress and fear. Basically, in this state, we are idiots. A much more useful approach is to first meet the discomfort in the body, before trying to deal with the thing that we think is causing the discomfort. When this is done with presence we discover new approaches to deal with the issue that works better or we realise that there is no problem in the first place, that the problem was caused by us trying to avoid the discomfort.

I saw a YouTube short the other day that I thought was really beautiful and a bit eye opening. Imagine that right before you were born you were given a human, And you were told that for the rest of your life you need to take care of this human, My human is called Anton and it's my responsibility to take care of him Your responsibility is to take care of… insert your human's name here Your human has thoughts, emotions and the body And they are important because your human is important But they are not you, You are the awareness that can hold it all

Our mind is a wonderful thing. It can plan for the future, set goals and plan how to reach them. It can create abstractions and read the weave of correlations. It makes us aware of risk and danger and much much more. However, when it comes to our mental health, we tend to rely too much on our mind. We seem to believe that we can think us out of any emotional difficulty. “If I only find the true reason why I feel this way I can fix it and feel good again.” What we don't see is that the mind will do almost anything to stay away from the vulnerability of simply feeling, and that is exactly what we need to do to come home to ourselves again. In order to feel without succumbing to our emotions we need awareness, and that is what we train when we meditate.

Stop Just stop Let it be And let whatever is, wash over You are not going anywhere You are already here

Here is a lovely poem by Jeff Foster on the principle of embracing what is here. At the heart of every addiction is the attempt to run away from ourselves. To flee our sorrow, self-doubt, anxiety, shame, fear, guilt, loneliness. To be somewhere other than where we are. To be out of the Now. Meditation, true meditation, courageously dismantles the core addiction, the addiction to 'somewhere else', to 'another Now', to 'not here'. In true meditation, we are... HERE. NOW. We allow ourselves to be exactly as we are, where we are, today, in this moment. We 'bless the mess' of our imperfect humanity with bare naked attention. Even if it hurts. Even if it stings. Even if it burns. We stay. We just…stay. And... We also honour the part of us that doesn't want to stay! The part that wants to run. The part that wants to be a million miles from here. The part that wants the drink, the drug, the cigarette, the contact, the excitement, the chocolate, the shopping trip, the next… high. We do not shame that part either. We see it, and bow to it. We offer it unlimited compassion. It is also sacred. And young, and scared. Friend, even your non-acceptance is acceptable to life, and not ugly, sinful, unspiritual or a mistake. Even the most 'violent' thunderstorms are welcome here in the vastness of the Sky that is your undying, merciful Presence. - Jeff Foster

I'm back again after vacation so today there will be Tuesday meditation as usual. I'm looking forward to seeing you

Recently I've listened a lot to Sam Harris, the author of Waking Up and the creator of the Waking Up meditation app - which I really recommend btw. I enjoy his precise pointing and his uncompromising perspective on what the actual benefits of understanding your consciousness are. Let me paraphrase him. Saying that you should meditate to deal with stress and lower your cortisol levels is like saying that you should learn to read for the same reason. Sure, reading can have that side effect but the real reason is much more profound than that. Imagine the difference between a life lived as an illiterate and a life where you learned to read. The difference is enourmous. The same can be said about knowing how your consciousness works on an experiential level.

Hello dear

you are already here there is nowhere to go wherever you look there you are

Today we dive into the emptiness and silence of awareness!

You carry images of who you think you should be in your mind. We all do. You are aware of some of them, others are held in the shadows. Some of the images you agree with, others will shock you when you become aware of them. You are constantly trying to live up to those images by pushing yourself, trying to satisfy the critical voice in your head by doing the right thing, according to the images. If you are like most people, you seldom stop to take inventory of what image it is you are trying to live up to and what the consequences are for trying. And most importantly, why do you think you need to live up to this image in the first place? It is likely that you carry a belief that if you only live up to this image you will be safe, be loved, be enough, others would like you more, mum and dad would be proud of you, etc. Those are interesting believes that are worth questioning and examining more deeply because they control your life to a large degree. As an example, is it really true that you will be abandoned and lonely if you are yourself? Is it really true that you will be judged by others if laugh as loud as you want? And if it is true, is it really true that it is dangerous for you to be judged by others? So stop, take a breath and reflect. What are you trying to live up to now?

The inner voice of the critic, the pusher and the perfectionist are not there to make us happy. That is not their job. They are there to keep us protected from some imagined disaster. So if we follow these voices it will not lead to the happiness that we imagine, it will lead to stress and effort. A better way is to ask, what do I enjoy in life? And let that be your guide.

For you, this group can be - A break during the busy workday - A chance to reset the mind and body - A space to slow down - A way to gain more clarity around ongoing questions and challenges - A chance to try out different forms of meditation

There is no audience to perform for, there is no approval, no admiration to attain, there is no role worth playing, there is no one to convince. Let it go.

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” - Confucius

What lies in front of you are potential pasts. Which one will you actualize? Man's search for meaning - Viktor Frankl I love this picture of having all my potential pasts in front of me. It helps me see how many possibilities there actually are and quite often it highlights that the path I'm about to take is not what I want to look back on. Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist that survived Auschwitz. In his book “Man's search for meaning” he speaks about finding meaning in facing once suffering with dignity and introduces his therapeutic method, logotherapy.

Today I want to share a micro practise with you. A micro practise is an exercise you can do in a matter of seconds that helps you reconnect with the present moment. Last week I invited you to take three slow and deep breaths. Great micro practise! This week I invite you too look around the room and name five things that you enjoy looking at.

Stop. Take three slow and deep breath. It takes around 30-50 seconds. Do it now. It's quite nice, isn't it?

You are an inconceivably tiny fraction of the great cosmos. Your life here is a mere blink in the timeline of reality. To put if frankly, you do not matter. As such, there is nothing you are supposed to do. You are not bound to any contract to fulfil some destiny or some way to be. You are not amounting to anything. You are heading the same way all of us are heading, and what happens after that we don't know. “My life is not important.” It means you can do anything you like, it doesn't matter anyway. This is freedom! Another perspective is that you are infinitely unique and valuable. There has never been anything like you and there will never in the lifetime of the cosmos be anything exactly like you again. Without your vibration there would be a piece missing, reality would not be THIS, and it IS! Beyond your utility, you are a unique gift to the world by simply existing. I love this paradox!

We do not 'come into' this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. - Alan Watts You are part of this world You belong here You are infinitely interconnected with everything

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson If you were to stop holding yourself back in one area of your life, what would that look like to you?

The most important thing is not what happens, but how you relate to what happens and your capacity to choice your response. This is freedom.

Release your shoulders, drop that jaw, eyebrows soften, open heart, say it loudly, “Jag är bra” eeey macarena

Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present. - Bil Keane Why is it a gift? The present moment, the hear and now, is the only place that can hold beauty, laughter, happiness, love, compassion, fulfilment and connection. They can never be felt in the past or in the future, only here and now. By practising again and again “waking up” from our thoughts to what is here and now we invite those beautiful aspects of life to be part of our journey.

Mindfulness has been linked to several health benefits! Stress reduction Mindfulness techniques can help individuals manage stress by fostering present-moment awareness and non-judgmental acceptance of thoughts and feelings. Improved mental health Regular mindfulness practice has been associated with reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. It can enhance emotional regulation and resilience. Better sleep quality Mindfulness practices have been shown to improve sleep quality by reducing rumination and promoting relaxation, leading to more restful sleep. Pain Management Studies suggest that mindfulness-based interventions can help individuals cope with chronic pain by changing their perception of pain and increasing pain tolerance. Enhanced Well-being and Quality of Life Overall, mindfulness practices are associated with greater subjective well-being, increased life satisfaction, and a greater sense of overall quality of life.

Work-life balance is an important part of our mental health and mindfulness can be a helpful skill to improve it. How? Recognise signs of burnout Mindfulness practices help individuals become more aware of their thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. This heightened awareness allows them to recognise signs of stress, burnout, or imbalance in their lives, enabling them to take proactive steps to address these issues. Manage stress Mindfulness techniques such as meditation, deep breathing, and body scanning can help reduce stress levels by promoting relaxation and calming the mind. By incorporating these practices into their daily routines, individuals can better manage work-related stressors and prevent them from spilling over into their personal lives. Setting boundaries Mindfulness encourages individuals to set clear boundaries between work and personal life. This means establishing designated work hours, unplugging from technology outside of these hours, and prioritising time for self-care, hobbies, and spending quality time with loved ones. Enhanced work satisfaction Practicing mindfulness can lead to greater job satisfaction by promoting a sense of purpose, fulfilment, and engagement in one's work. When individuals find meaning and enjoyment in their professional lives, they are less likely to feel the need to overwork or sacrifice their personal time for career advancement.

Mindfulness is a useful tool for improving emotional regulation. Mindfulness practices help individuals become more aware of their thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and impulses in the present moment. This heightened self-awareness allows individuals to recognize their emotions as they arise, without judgment or reaction. Rather than trying to suppress or avoid difficult emotions, mindfulness encourages acceptance of them as natural parts of the human experience. By acknowledging and accepting emotions without judgment, individuals can prevent them from escalating or becoming overwhelming. Mindfulness cultivates a gap between stimulus and response, allowing individuals to pause and consider their reactions before acting impulsively. This enables them to respond to challenging situations in a more thoughtful and deliberate manner, rather than reacting automatically based on emotional triggers. Mindfulness can break the cycle of rumination, where individuals get stuck replaying negative thoughts and emotions. By staying present in the moment, individuals can let go of repetitive and unhelpful patterns of thinking, reducing emotional distress.

Mindfulness can help improve all kind of relationships in several different ways. It can help communication by increasing our capacity to listen. By being less reactive to our triggers it is easier to stay connected with our friend, colleague, children or parter in conflicts. Mindfulness cultivates empathy and compassion towards yourself and others. When you are more empathetic, you are better able to understand your partner's perspective and respond with kindness and support. Mindfulness teaches individuals to accept themselves and others as they are, without trying to change them. This acceptance fosters a sense of security and trust in the relationship. For me, this kind of acceptance is what love is.