by Matthew Koren | Jul 13, 2023 | Community Conversations
Setting strong boundaries is an essential skill for maintaining emotional resilience and fostering healthy relationships. Boundaries act as protective shields, ensuring that our emotional well-being is not compromised by others’ actions or expectations. However, many people struggle with setting and enforcing boundaries effectively. In this blog post, we will explore practical tips on how to establish strong boundaries, enabling you to prioritize your needs and cultivate emotional resilience.
Understand Your Limits
To establish strong boundaries, it’s crucial to be self-aware and understand your limits. Reflect on what makes you feel uncomfortable or emotionally drained in different situations. Recognize when someone’s behavior or demands encroach upon your personal space or values. Knowing your limits will help you identify where boundaries need to be set.
Communicate Clearly and Assertively
Once you recognize your boundaries, it’s important to communicate them clearly and assertively. Clearly express your needs, expectations, and limits to others without feeling guilty or apologizing for them. Use “I” statements to express your feelings and make requests, focusing on your own perspective rather than blaming others. Effective communication helps ensure that others understand and respect your boundaries.
Learn to Say No
Learning to say “no” is a powerful tool in setting boundaries. It’s essential to prioritize your own well-being and not overextend yourself to please others. Practice assertively declining requests or invitations that do not align with your needs or values. Remember, saying no does not make you selfish; it empowers you to protect your emotional resilience.
Identify and Manage Emotional Guilt
Setting boundaries can trigger feelings of guilt, especially if you’re accustomed to prioritizing others’ needs over your own. Recognize that taking care of yourself is not selfish but necessary for your emotional well-being. Manage guilt by reminding yourself of your worth and the importance of honoring your boundaries. Surround yourself with supportive individuals who understand and respect your boundaries.
Establish Consequences
Boundaries without consequences are merely suggestions. Clearly establish consequences for those who consistently violate your boundaries. Consequences may range from reducing contact or setting distance to more significant measures if necessary. Enforcing consequences reinforces the importance of your boundaries and demonstrates your commitment to self-care.
Setting strong boundaries is an ongoing process that requires self-awareness, clear communication, and self-advocacy. By understanding your limits, communicating assertively, learning to say no, managing guilt, and establishing consequences, you can protect your emotional resilience and build healthier relationships. Remember, setting boundaries is an act of self-love and a vital step towards prioritizing your well-being.
Matthew is a certified Guide for Conscious Leaders, and is inspired by the potential of connecting the measurable and immeasurable, Science and Spirit, to bridge the worlds of scientific theory with the magick of real-world experience. He is driven by a need to understand why we exist and our place in the multi-universe. Matthew’s approach assimilates the latest research in consciousness studies, psychology, business, organizational development, mindfulness and meditation, resonance and quantum field theory to support his clients.
Matthew now serves as a consultant and guide for his clients at Spirit in Transition. His affiliations include: Certified Guide and Ritual Master by the Modern Mystery School, Member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, & Conscious Capitalism International. Matthew Koren lives in New York and Florida with his partner, and travels nationally and internationally to coach, consult and teach. Matthew invites you to introduce yourself by contacting him for a virtual meet-and-greet by clicking the following link: https://templemedicine.as.me/online-consult
by user_dd | Dec 23, 2016 | Community Conversations
Raise your hand if you’ve done this before—tried to dissect what meditation is while meditating? While very meta, this can be distracting. In this article, we review some meditation techniques and styles so that next time you meditate you can focus on doing it rather than thinking about it.
What is meditation?
There are no universal goals and methods, nor even a consistent definition of what meditation really is. Different groups have completely different definitions for what meditation is, how to do it, what it’s for, and why it’s worth practicing. Also, there are many branches of Buddhism that commonly reference meditation as a means of attaining enlightenment of some form. Suffice it to say, meditation is a generic label for a wide spectrum of mind training practices that exists across many cultures and traditions.
Different groups have diverse opinions on what the practice is, the attainability of certain mind states, and even the definition of nirvana itself. Various branches of Christianity view meditation as a means of bringing the practitioner closer to God. With the advent of eastern practices leaking into contemporary western society, many have come to argue that Christian meditation does not aim to pursue spiritual enlightenment at all, but rather to fill the time with the recitation of Biblical passages or devotionals.
It is worth noting that the 21st century mindfulness movement appropriates its roots from the Buddhist notion of Sati. Mindfulness is still a relatively new term for an old concept that’s always been trending in history. Where Christian and Buddhist forms of meditation often focus on spiritual growth, the more recent mindfulness movement ultimately dwells on workplace bodily intervention and maximizing workforce productivity.
How do I meditate?
The views that I have about meditation in this article are limited specifically to simple pieces of advice—they are not an attempt to reduce the huge variety of traditions and practices out there to a singular phenomenon or practice. For the purposes of this article, meditation is a series of practices that exist to promote psychological and spiritual growth as defined by the individual. For me, meditation is the paradoxical act of sitting still: willfully letting go of any intent to act, think and feel and slowly let all of the impulses, feelings, memories from below the conscious surface of your mind harmlessly unfurl. This means that experiencing strange and uncomfortable emotions and thoughts might be a part of the process.
Below I provide different physical forms that meditation can take place, but the internal technique you choose is up to you. Our goal is to integrate meditative moments into all aspects of your life. This guide is written under the assumption you’re busy: the practices I’ve listed below benefit incrementally from practice, so regardless of whether you end up practicing 5 minutes a day or once every few months, you will experience more benefits over time the more consistent you are with your practice..
Sitting Meditation Techniques
The first one that I’d like to introduce here is sitting meditation, where you sit in a chair when you meditate. A good meditation posture will ultimately prevent your posture from pulling you out of meditation, but it should not be so comfortable it lulls you to sleep. Meditations done in a chair are ideally short, I’ve found 20 minutes of zazen in a chair to be something I can do silently in public. While the usual assumption of meditation is to find as peaceful and quiet of a place as possible, experiencing your attention morph and shift in a busy place is a key part of zazen!
Walking Meditation Techniques
Here’s a practice I engage in on an almost daily level: the walking meditation. The act of walking itself can end up being a meditation in itself, though different schools will emphasize different parts of the experience. A unique part of walking meditation is the physicality of the body in motion. With walking meditation, I find the most crucial elements to focus on are the process of lifting your foot and planting the next step down. Walking meditation is crucial to me as it puts my experience of the world in perspective: from my steps, to my knowledge of the length of my commute, to the feelings and thoughts I have each step of the way to the end. Basically, I like walking meditations because of their subtle moments which make room for greater reflection.
Zhan Zhuang Meditation Technique
From my own training, there is the classical chinese Zhan Zhuang meditation, which literally means “standing like a post.” Zhan Zhuang is best done 15-20 minutes a day, ideally each day. There are many, many variations of this practice and many would argue it itself is not a form a meditation. The goal of Zhan Zhuang is to learn how to hold the position comfortably. Based on my previous definition of meditation: to willfully let go of any intent to act, think and feel, and to slowly let all your impulses, feelings, and memories harmlessly unfurl, Zhan Zhuang does exactly that. As a practice, I love it as a way to return to my center of gravity, emotionally and physically.
Meditation is an age old practices with different goals, methods, and definition spanning history and geography. There have never been “universal” mediation practices nor are there universal goals to meditation. In spite of that, modern science is currently under the impression that certain definitions of meditation work to promote peace of mind and, there is emerging proof meditation can physiologically changes its practitioners. This shows a few things: even though our lives are radically different than those of thousand years ago, meditation definitely does something.
