For all of the following exercises, please watch the video and view the reading assignment once through without trying to practice. Then repeat the video and try to practice along with the video. Next, reread the exercise instructions and then try the meditation practice once through without the video guide.

Return to this section and repeat the video and repeat the meditation practice once each day until you feel very comfortable doing the practice exactly as it is presented here, without having to look it up.

Check back again in a couple of weeks to make sure you are doing the practice correctly.

Meditation has been mentioned as a tool for just about every aspect of Bipolar by participants of every workshop. Unfortunately, some people refuse to consider it because they think it is unscientific or is about a specific religion. Actually, some form of meditation is practiced by every religion and many who consider themselves atheists. As mentioned in the section on Tool Adaptation, meditation is the most powerful tool for working directly with our mind. It affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, in our relationships, and even our career/financial lives. It is a shame that some would leave out this important tool because of mistaken beliefs about it.

Science has been studying meditation for many years and have made remarkable discoveries. A study of Mindfulness Mediation mentioned by Dan Siegel in his book Mindsight1 found that meditation increases the thickness of the prefrontal cortex, the very part of the brain that regulates the flow of energy and information in the brain. There are countless studies of meditation proving its effectiveness, but that is not the subject of this workbook; which is about how to use meditation and other tools to help you get to the next stage on the path from Crisis to Self-Mastery.

According to the dictionary, meditation means to focus one’s mind for a period of time.2 Although some might argue that there are much greater meanings, for our purposes it is a great one if it encourages everyone to give it a try. Some suggest not calling it meditation, but instead call it centering or finding your inner place of peace. Nonetheless, meditation is the most common term for the practice and we should not be afraid to use it.

A simple form of meditation appropriate for beginners is to focus on your breath. Sit in a comfortable position or lay down, but be aware that laying down can easily turn meditation into sleep. The object of meditation is to focus on one thing and ONE THING ONLY. The breath is not only a convenient thing to focus on, it also gives feedback at the same time by slowing down as you go deeper.

Watch your breath come in and watch it go out. Just make a mental note of it, don’t try to control it at all. Your mind will instantly go off to some other thought and when you catch it (sometimes ten minutes later) just go back to watching your breath. Do not judge yourself for failing or force anything, just calmly go back to watching your breath. The more you practice, the longer you can keep watching without distraction. At first it will be a few seconds, but eventually you can go a whole minute without another thought. For that minute nothing else exists, only the breath.

Eventually, as you become calmer, you start to notice that your breath slows down a little. You are starting to get there. Just notice it and keep watching. If you try to force it by controlling your breath you are making a mistake. Just watch the breath as if you are watching somebody else. The slower the breath gets, the more relaxed you become. The more relaxed you become, the more you start to lose focus again and the mind drifts away. It happens to everyone, so don’t be hard on yourself. Just remember to go back to watching your breath every time you catch your mind doing something else.

Try this exercise for three minutes every day and when you are comfortable go to five. Keep adding to the length of time you practice until you find it is too hard to keep up the habit. Back off until you find a length of time that you can stick with every day. There is no advantage to doing this for a long period if it breaks your habit. This is not a competition where the winner is the one who can go the longest. It is incomparably better to go very deep for ten seconds than to do a shallow effort for an hour as some people do.

At first you feel momentary glimpses of peace and they start to become both deeper and longer-lasting. You also learn to go deep much faster, so even a brief effort can return you to a deep meditative state. As that happens, the effect starts to spill over into your daily life even when you are not meditating. That is when you realize the power of meditation. You have found your inner place of peace and can go there even when not meditating, at least some of the time. It is from this place of peace that we can experience the flow of energy and information more clearly and choose how to react to it.

The more you practice with enthusiasm and concentration the more noticeable will be the results. Eventually, you will develop enough skill to find your inner place of peace and be able to go there within a few breaths. Once you have proven that it works, you can learn more advanced techniques and practice them both longer and more intently. When you practice intently and consistently, you will experience your first glimpse of being able to hold on to that peace while the world is crashing around you (during a deep depression or a manic state, for example). It may even motivate you to dedicate the effort to make that a permanent state. That is when you are in the Self-Mastery Stage.

Specific Meditation Techniques For Bipolar