5 Essential Meditations For Brain Retraining
Hi friends,
Things are starting to slowly turn around here. The thick ice that coated Portland last week is melting. River is walking better and can even get up the stairs on her own now. I’ve recovered from the longest flu ever and am back to working out and going out with friends. And although we’re bummed that we had to cancel our trip to Belize this month, I’m hopeful that life will continue moving onward and upward. Here’s to a New Year’s do-over!
In the meantime, I’ve been working on a few new meditation practices to add to my Insight Timer page soon. I’ve recently been getting some good feedback from listeners, especially those who are also recovering from chronic pain and illness. It feels good to know more of these people are finding my work, and are seeing the benefits of meditation in retraining the brain! Meditation is a pretty central practice to most brain retraining programs, especially Gupta and Curable, and I think it’s foundational to making consistent progress in health recovery. However, there isn’t just one sole style of meditation that helps with this! Thankfully, there are a handful of mindful practices that support rewiring the brain for calm, clarity, and confidence.
Whether you are currently doing a structured brain retraining program, or you simply want to support your nervous system regulation, I have five meditations I would recommend for you! So, let’s dive in. These are in no particular order, although the last one is my personal favorite…
1. Metta (loving-kindness)
Emotional healing is a key tool in health recovery, as many of us with chronic pain or illness hold a lot of emotional energy in the body. It’s also common for those of us who have lived many years with physical limitations to carry anger and frustration, and/or have strained relationships with ourselves and others. But again, even if you don’t have a chronic condition, this meditation can be truly transformative!
Metta, or loving-kindness, meditation is a wonderful practice for opening the heart and inviting in more compassion and understanding. This traditional Buddhist practice centers around a few phrases of love and well-wishes, directed first toward the self, then a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person, and the entire world.
You can easily find several variations on Metta online, including the one I recorded right HERE.
2. Heart Coherence
There are a few takes on the heart coherence practice, depending on the teacher you follow. People like Joe Dispenza and Dawson Church teach different versions of it, and of course, the HeartMath Institute is the major leader in this science. Personally, I found some overlap with this practice and certain brain retraining “rounds,” particularly in the emphasis on elevating the emotional state and visualizing a positive future.
Coming into coherence is about aligning the electromagnetic signatures of the brain and organ systems, as well as tuning into a frequency of healing, happiness, and abundance. You’ll start with heart-centered breathing, before boosting your DOSE chemistry with two targeted visualizations. And hopefully, you’ll close floating on a cloud like I usually do!
Check out my guided heart coherence practice HERE. I also have a version without music, by request, HERE.
3. Positive Sensory Focus
This is a relatively new meditation practice for me, but I’ve found it to be a simple and powerful way to help re-focus a brain that is stuck on discomfort. I often recommend this for clients who aren't quite ready for somatic tracking, or who are really stuck in fear around symptoms.
I first learned about this practice from Alan Gordon, among other pain reprocessing therapy techniques. Essentially, this is all about finding an area of positive or neutral sensation in the body, and gently bringing focus there. This is helpful for anyone who lives in a body, but particularly for those experiencing chronic pain or other discomfort. It’s normal to get hyperfocused on that discomfort, but this meditation can help show the brain that there are other sensations present, even nice ones! And over time, this creates more safety and calm in the nervous system and more connection with the body again.
HERE is my quick 8-minute positive sensory focus meditation!
4. Yoga Nidra
I remember the exact point in my health journey when I started doing yoga nidra regularly, and how it made such a big difference in the levels of “noise” in my brain! This practice is a type of Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR), which has been shown to have many effects on mental clarity, immune function, emotional regulation, sleep quality, and more. Yoga nidra, aka “yogic sleep,” is based on a long, slow body scan-type practice that I find particularly calming.
For most of my adult life, I struggled with sleep and could never relax enough to nap during the day. I used both prescription and OTC medications for years, just to get some shut-eye. But after practicing yoga nidra for a few months, I found sleep much easier, and nowadays I can fall asleep during the day (usually during this meditation)!
My favorite yoga nidra teacher is currently Ally Boothroyd. I also recorded a short, Reik-infused yoga nidra practice which you can listen to HERE.
5. Somatic tracking
Alas, we’ve come to my all-time favorite meditation practice for retraining the brain! Somatic tracking created one of the biggest and longest-lasting positive shifts in my recovery, and I still do it almost every day. While some traditional brain retraining tools teach you to stop and turn away from symptoms, this does the opposite. This practice is all about nonjudgmental curiosity and observation of body sensations, helping you see and feel sensations through a lens of safety.
Somatic tracking isn’t about trying to get rid of or control sensations like pain, fatigue, dizziness, etc, but instead about noticing and watching those sensations. Many people feel a sense of softening and calm after doing this meditation, while others see more long-term benefits. This is my #1 recommended practice for teaching the brain that sensations are not a threat, and to turn off the stress chemistry.
My 10-minute somatic tracking meditation can be found HERE.
Mindfulness is one of the best and quickest ways to induce change in your brain and nervous system, and honestly is one of my favorite parts of my day. Looking back, it wasn’t the special diets, supplements, detoxes, or treatments that made a lasting difference in my health- it was meditations like these!
So, whether you’re actively working to boost your neuroplasticity and heal from a chronic condition, or you simply want some more clarity and calm in your life, I encourage you to try these 5 practices.
I’d love to hear which of these meditations you like the most, or which has made an impact on you!
In the meantime, wishing you all joy and ease…
