The Peace Project | Meditations for inner peace and a healthier world

It is human nature to become distracted and our awareness can seem out of our control. This meditation helps you to be aware of distractions and to learn to be patient and sit with your distractions. Is it possible for distractions to make you more focused? This meditation explores this possibility. 

We all feel stress, anxiety, and overwhelming sensations at times. This quick 10 minute meditation will help you to manage and sit with your stress and learn to be at peace with it.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc​ 

During our normal day-to-day experience it's easy to get caught up in the world around us. This meditation asks you to explore where your awareness is.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc​ 

It is often hard to grasp the entirety of the space of awareness. This can lead to our thoughts and emotions taking up space without us even realizing. This meditation helps you visualize the whole of your awareness through imagining a place of calm and harmonizing it with your breath.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc​ 

We can often feel like the world is on our shoulders or that we are responsible for everything that has happened to us. This meditation focuses on your breath to explore our own egos and determine what we are in control of.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc​ 

We have the oppurtunity in each moment to greet our hopes, fears, desires, and sensations. This meditation helps you see these as friends and welcome them into your life.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc  

As we grow, we learn about the material facts of sensations. This can often block our mind from truly engaging with the sensation itself and feeling it as we experience it. This meditation will help you examine your feelings and sensations to experience them more fully.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc​ 

Often we are impatient or anxious and time gets distorted. The seconds pass like minutes or the hours fly away like seconds. Sitting with your breath and experiencing time as the passing of your breath can give you a more real grasp on the passage of time and allow to better move into the moment of now.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc​ 

Every moment of our lives we are breathing. Join me in breathing and living breath to breath in today's meditation.  Music by WorldMusicLabs For 7Waves Prod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nPGUdqqlY Check out their Mediation Music and Nature Sounds playlist at https://goo.gl/9LNPRc  

This meditation is for late at night when you are alone and thinking about the nature of your own existence. It is a very deep meditation and starts quite immediately. Prior experience with meditation is recommended.

Learn to bring the awareness and observation of meditation to moments of your day. In this 10 minute practice, you'll focus on getting to a space if awareness, leaving, and coming back to it quickly. This is how to learn to meditate throughout your day.

Take a break from your day and meditate with me. Learn to be aware of what is truly around you at every moment

One of the many gifts that meditation reveals is the space of awareness. Becoming aware of the place and qualities of where you exist is subtle but powerful change in awareness. This meditation focuses on helping you find that space.

Take a break from today to appreciate the unique experience that is being alive as yourself.

Take a break from your day and observe the feelings that arise in your awareness

Take a break from your day and meditate. Today's meditation focuses on observation and the space of awareness.

Often when we are anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, or fraught with racing thoughts; we may find ourselves stuck. If we feel we are unable to leave, these negative feelings can overstay their welcome. This practice helps you greet these feelings without self-judgment, sit with them without harm, and allow them to leave you in peace and freedom. This 9 minute exercise should be practiced and repeated to help train your mind to deal with anxious and overwhelming thoughts as they appear throughout your life. This is not a quick fix, and should not be used as such. Doing this once or twice will at best have minor results. With continued practice, this exercise has brought me peace, freedom, and control over the time I spend with my anxiety.  

Negative emotions will arise in our minds and bodies and can cause us suffering. Often we continue to focus and give attention to this emotion, or we add self-judgement on top of it. This only feeds the fire of suffering that is burning in our awareness. In this meditation, allow yourself to sit near the fire without it consuming you. Allow yourself to snuff it out and feel the cool space of peace and freedom from suffering. 

Every living organism breathes from the same air. Allow yourself to fully experience the unity held in this simple truth. This meditation explores how breath units the planet and that we are all breathing together as one being. 

It is easy to say you want peace, or that you love another. But what does this feeling actually entail? The meditation guides you to examine how you feel about your own peace, along with that of your friends and enemies. It asks you to explore the peace, joy, and freedom you feel and to extend it out to the rest of the world. 

Everything we experience passes through our mind. The world we see and interact with exists in two places: outside and inside. This meditation guides your attention to find the place where thoughts and sensations take place. 

To function in society, we need language, customs, rituals, and systems to allow us to be productive. However, when we come to the space of meditation, we can allow ourselves to let go of these thoughts that overlay our direct sensations and feelings. In this space, much like a newborn who does not yet understand their surroundings, we can truly feel and experience raw sensations without letting them become attached to ourselves.  If you’d like to support the peace project, have questions about meditation, or would like to schedule a private mediation session, please email thepeaceprojectmediations@gmail.com.

While guided meditation is a great way to learn new practices and introduce yourself to new meditation concepts; your meditation practice should be your own. This guided meditation helps you learn what to look for and how to grow in the silence of your own time spent experiencing the gifts of consciousness. Repeat this and other practices with and without the guides, and soon you will be able to meditate and gain spiritual and emotional insights of your own.  

This quick meditation will help expand your awareness to the universe and out of your day to day perspective. Often we can let fears and pressure of failure to hold us back from living true to ourselves. Focusing on the epic size and lifespan of the universe can allow you to break through these barriers to realize that your life is truly yours to live as you want.  Inspired by Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmic Perspective. 

Often our stress, anxiety, and depression can come from a misunderstanding of our place in the world. We can feel grave responsibility, impending doom, or insignificance when we are overwhelmed by the pressing concerns of our world or it's vast size and complexity. This meditation will help you find exhilaration and freedom in these awe inspiring feelings. 

If you have trouble with guided meditations or want to explore your personal meditation journey, this is a meditation for you. After a brief intro, this meditations gives you 20 minutes of music to meditate by yourself with a guide. 

Racing thoughts can distract us from being in the moment and even hold us in negative patterns or unable to make choices. This meditation practice can help you clear racing thoughts or overwhelming feelings by focusing on one thought or aspect of the feeling and noticing where the others go as you focus.  Do it once for a quick refresh or repeat it multiple time to relax when you're feeling really overwhelmed.  If you're having harmful thoughts or  feeling in danger for yourself or someone else, please contact The National Suicide Help Line 1-800-273-8255 or the National Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Helpline 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for referral to a specialist near you. Or search online for "mental health help now"  to get sources for immediate help specific to your location.

If you're feeling down and need a pick up, this quick meditation will help you focus your mind on the love and care you deserve instead of the negativity you may be experiencing. Once your mind is focused on love, you will be in a better headspace to deal with whatever is upsetting you or stressing you out. 

Have you ever asked yourself "what is peace?"  In this meditation, Dave guides you to find and discover inner peace and practices fostering it in your daily life. This meditation will help you learn what peace feels like and how you can discover and grow in peace every day. 

Throughout life it is inevitable that we will lose focus on our goals. By taking time to focus and acknowledge this truth, we can prepare for and better accept distraction when it finds us. This quick meditation will give you insight and peace when you are upset over being distracted. 

Grab a pen and paper and a clock that you can see seconds on (or use your phone ) for this meditation excercise. When time is moving fast due to stress, anxiety, or worries, it can help to focus on the passage of time. This excercise will focus your mind and slow down your experience of time.

This meditation focuses on loving yourself by focusing on the life give parts of our human bodies and the bodies of all living things. Once that love is felt, it can be shared with all life. 

Learn to meditate by practicing your own meditation. Use this space of thirty minutes (with check ins every ten minutes) to guide yourself on a meditation. This can be used for any sort of meditation, relaxation, stress relief, or other exercise that lasts thirty minutes. 

Today's meditation focuses on selflessness and realizing your place in the universe. Often we can feel like the world is out to get us, or that bad luck is controlling our lives. When you step outside of yourself and look at the bigger picture, these stresses can often be relieved. 

Learn to focus your attention inward and slow down racing thoughts with this breath awareness meditation. 

Only one meditation on this episode. Recorded from the beaches of St. Lucia, this meditation will help you find peace and harmony in the differing rhythms of nature and your body. This episode was recorded on my phone so the audio quality may not be as good as usual

Today's 5 minute meditation focuses on self love and compassion. Relieve yourself of negative thought patterns by focusing on the whole picture of you.  Our full meditation focuses on having empathy and compassion for people you do not know by recognizing that all humans deserve the same dignity and respect for our one and only human bodies.  Thank you for listening. I'll be hosting a meditation class in Logan Square Chicago in the coming months. Stay tuned for more information. 

Our Quick Meditation today will help you find relief in situations where you find yourself getting angry, overly stressed, or frustrated.   Today's meditation is a beach visualization that will help you learn to separate your conscious mind from unconscious experience and raw sensory input.  Thank you and let me know what you think of the new format with a review or by emailing thepeaceprojectmeditations@gmail.com

Today's podcast is not a meditation. This is instead a walk through of visualizing what higher dimensions may look like. This is a creative visual exercise conceived by Rob Bryanton. This is not meant to be taken as science fact or to be an explanation of our universe. It is merely a way to imagine what is outside of our normal 4-dimensional (3 space, 1 time) reality.  If you enjoy this thought experiment, you can find more in depth exploration at  https://www.youtube.com/user/10thdim .  http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/

Today’s meditation is about using simple truths and rational actions to overcome obsessive thoughts and/or negative thought patterns. Our minds are constantly seeking stasis in a harsh world and many times our negative racing thoughts are simply this act of finding a balance expressed through a mental illness. If you can accept this and see through the pattern to a concrete rational action that will bring you stasis, hope, and/or joy; you can find peace and break through the obsessive negative thoughts.  If you're feeling in danger for yourself or someone else, please contact The National Suicide Help Line 1-800-273-8255 or the National Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Helpline 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for referral to a specialist near you. Or search online for "mental health help now"  to get sources for immediate help specific to your location. 

If you're feeling anxious, it can be a combination of overwhelming physical sensations and fearful thoughts. In this quick meditation, Dave helps you to slow down your anxiety and begin to separate the sensations from the negativity attached to them. If you're feeling in danger for yourself or someone else, please contact The National Suicide Help Line 1-800-273-8255 or the National Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Helpline 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for referral to a specialist near you. 

This is a brief introduction to the Zen style of meditation known as counting breaths. This is an extremely simple meditation technique practiced for centuries will help you relieve stress, focus your mind, and center your awareness. 

Dave walks you through a proven stress relief breathing technique 8,4,7. When you are stressed, breathing in for 8 counts (as much you can) holding your breath for 4 counts, and then exhaling for 7 counts (as much as you can). Practicing this breathing pattern will help increase oxygen levels in your body and slow speeding thought patterns. 

Life brings grief, trauma, and sadness. Whether it's the loss of a loved one, life not working out the way you expected, or something else, this meditation will help you give space to feel your grief and then move on from it to get through your day. If you're feeling really down or an overwhelming sense of malaise, talk to a friend or seek counseling. If you are in a place of grief that feels dangerous to you or others, please contact the national suicide hotline. They can be reached at 1-800-273-8255. You can also find more specific hotlines for non-suicidal grief at https://griefresourcenetwork.com/crisis-center/hotlines/

 A guided meditation to help you focus on your experience even in a noisy environment. This was originally going to be a nature meditation; however, the park was busier and louder than usual. I took this as an opportunity to focus on dealing with distractions during meditations and in everyday life.

Learn to focus your love and compassion on those who need it or on your self. 

If you're feeling stressed this quick meditation will help calm your mind and anchor you to world. 

Do you have trouble sitting in silence? Find yourself always needing background noise? This meditation will help you learn to appreciate the world around you and quiet your mind to listen.

Ever have something (a ticking clock, noise from an outside room, a pet, etc) keeping you awake at night? This meditation focuses on learning to be at peace with distractions and annoyances and allowing them to lead you to a restful and restorative night's sleep. 

We see every day, but do we take the time to examine and truly experience all our visual sensation has to offer? Take 15 minutes to meditate and explore your vision.   Music used Aurora by Jonny Easton Link: https://youtu.be/Ct44WnxlPC0 Check out his channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/jonnyeaston 

This meditation explores feeling gratitude for the basic facts of life. Gratitude is an emotional sensation of feeling grateful. More of it in your life can help you feel better, happier, and more satisfied with your life. 

 A meditation focused on time and breathing.  Music used Aurora by Jonny Easton Link: https://youtu.be/Ct44WnxlPC0 Check out his channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/jonnyeaston 

A quick sleep meditation to listen to before bed to help you drift off to a pleasant and relaxing dream. 

A meditation centered on becoming aware of your breathing. Cultivate inner peace through meditation with The Peace Project.

Get in a comfortable place and focus on your breath in this meditation