Tag: meditation

Conor Creighton – Meditation: A Deep Dive into the Self

Posted on by Alexandra Kreis

Meditation: Often, we think of it as a practice that uses techniques such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm, and stable state.

It has been scientifically proven that it reduces stress and anxiety. It also promotes emotional health and awareness. The meditation practice during this pandemic has the potential to complement treatment and is a low-cost beneficial method of providing support with anxiety for all.

Conor Creighton, an Irish meditation teacher, and award-winning journalist has a lot to teach us on that!

He came to it in 2012 and quickly became immersed in the study of mindfulness, and vipassana meditation. He trained in India with the Dalai Lama, and at the Redwood Institute in San Francisco. He has sat several long retreats and studied a number of meditation types. Conor’s teaching is a cross-pollination of ancient techniques and contemporary wisdom. He teaches courses throughout Ireland, from art studios to prison yards.

In this podcast, Conor talks about how can it help you change and grow as a person. Explore mindfulness meditation techniques that allow you to understand your mind, diffuse stress, and release tension so you can lead, create and perform at your best. This is ideal for people who don’t think they can meditate.

Learn how to change bad habits, focus the mind and set intentions. Meditation—particularly Conor’s course—has been praised to foster better self-awareness, stronger emotional intelligence, and a bag of happiness hacks to help survive modern life.

Links mention in the podcast

Podcast Highlights

  • 02:29-6:51 –  How Meditation changed Conor’s life
  • 10:59-16:27 – 10 days of Meditation
  • 23:53-28:30-  – Success in Meditation
  • 29:03-36:22 –  Teaching Meditation

Pocket Quotes

  • “Meditation opened me to find ways, find identities where I would finally feel some sense of contentment within myself.” – Conor Creighton
  • “When you start to meditate, you activate your empathy and inspire a certain compassion in a person.” –  Conor Creighton
  • “Don’t confuse the telescope for the stars.” –  Conor Creighton
  • “The knowledge of meditation will not help you but the experience of it will transform your life. “ –  Conor Creighton
  • “The joy and happiness that we are looking outside is actually inside.” Conor Creighton

Guest Bio

MeditationConor is a down-to-earth teacher, and a natural storyteller, a skill he learned in part from his many years as a writer, but also as a bartender. He is based in Berlin and Dublin. 

Author, journalist, coach, and meditation teacher. Conor Creighton has been traveling the globe as a reporter, a motivational speaker, and a meditation teacher for nearly twenty years. 


Conor is the author of two books and has been published in the Guardian, the Irish Times, and Vice Magazine. He’s won the Irish Travel Journalist of the Year Award, the Gwaertler Foundation Award, and the Simon Cumbers Media Fund on three occasions.

Face your fear and welcome a new way of life

Posted on by Alexandra Kreis

[vc_row padding_top=”0px” padding_bottom=”0px”][vc_column fade_animation_offset=”45px”][vc_column_text]I’ve been talking a lot about fear lately. Right now, fear is at the forefront for everyone and in order for us to come back to ourselves after all of this and feel truly self-empowered, we should be doing certain practices to make sure we are dealing with how the world is changing around us. Naturally, people are trying to drown this fear, whether that’s by binge-watching Netflix or baking another batch of chocolate chip cookies. Instead of avoiding these anxious feelings, we can face them and try to welcome the new way of life that is arising from this darkness.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row padding_top=”0px” padding_bottom=”0px”][vc_column fade_animation_offset=”45px”][vc_column_text]Fear is something that needs to exist in us because it needs to warn us. It’s something that connects us all, now especially, and leads us into a deeper understanding of ourselves. Taking on healing practices at this time is not so we can escape feeling anything. It’s so we understand what needs to be realised. When we avoid our fears and disregard our emotions, they are just going to dig deeper. And the more we push them aside, the more they will come back to haunt us.

In my own personal experience, I’ve learned that everything expresses itself very quickly through my body. And so for me, during this time, I would feel lost without self-massage.

Hands-on healing

Self massage is a way of giving love to ourselves. Physical touch is important and can bring us calm and restoration. At a time like this, we can’t as easily feel physical touch from others – whether it’s just a hug we’re missing from our friends. Self massage is a way we can address this underestimated lack of self-care.

Are you breathing?

It might sound glaringly obvious, but making sure you are breathing properly is a calming practice to master. In Ayurveda the oxygen in our blood is called “jivana”, which means “life-giving”. It’s the fuel behind our goals and intentions. Making sure that you begin the day breathing correctly is the best way to start. 

The practice of opening your breath body every morning before eating, and allowing your breath to be the first meal of the day, can have such a profound effect. Make sure you are taking a few conscious deep breaths in the morning. Maybe as you go for a walk outside, or when you are stepping onto your yoga map, or sitting down for a cup of tea. Use your morning routine as a cue to starting moving and breathing intentionally.

Sitting in silence

For some people, the habit of sitting down to meditate is one of the most difficult habits to maintain. It’s hard for us to stay put, let alone in silence and a clear mind. The best thing is to stop thinking and start doing, with some tips to keep in mind:

  • Choose a time every day for your meditation.
  • Set a timer for your practice.
  • Get an accountability partner, to sit at the same time as you sit in silence.

Meditating with others online or seeking out guided meditations will help you to maintain this habit. If you feel like you need help staying on track, then join the 12 day meditation challenge, and find your peace of mind with the support of a global community.

So think about what you can do to face the fear that’s happening right now in the present. Don’t avoid these feelings or get trapped thinking about the future or the past, because both will remove you from the present. In that notion, we will start fearing the new world instead of embracing it.

In the same way that we discover Spring again every year, this comes with letting go of the past – or the Winter darkness. We forget how the trees can blossom so beautifully or how the sun beams from the sky. When life is changing, everything feels new, but we know deep down somewhere that the change is coming. We just have to take the step to remember and embrace the darkness.

If you want to learn more about the sweet and reassuring method of self massage, while connecting with yourself (and others online), take a look at Isolation? Connection. Self massage!

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Ayse Dayi – A Refined Advocate For Women’s Health

Posted on by Alexandra Kreis

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Ayse Dayi is an academic and meditation teacher who has been living in Berlin for a year. In her academic work, she researches, teaches and conducts activism around women’s health and sexuality, on unnecessary medicalization of women’s reproductive services (in gynecological care including gyn visits, abortion, birth control and birth) and neoliberal health policies.

She has encountered Tai Chi and qiqong for the first time in the U.S in late 1990s, and has fallen in love with the practice. Since then, she has been practicing and learning it. In Berlin, she attends WDP (Wudang Deutschland https://www.wudang-deutschland.de), a wonderful school of internal martial arts, which has excellent teachers and a community of practitioners. She also holds a sitting meditation practice, following Thitch Nhat Hahn’s Plum Village tradition and integrating Taoist qiqong practices and learnings from other teachers. Ayse teaches meditation on Sundays at the Internationales Begegnungszentrums der Wissenschaft (IBZ) to a wonderful group of international scholars and their family and whoever joins from outside. The classes are in English and Turkish. http://www.ibz-berlin.org. She hopes to work with children and educators on mindfulness as well.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Ayurvedic Cleanse