As adults, many of our experiences are colored by the past. The way we perceive what people do and say and even what we feel is possible comes from our past. Sometimes difficult experiences have us frozen in time because our fears are so loud we can’t hear our soul nudging us to move on.

Why Meditation?

In order to get ‘clear,’ we can use the power of the mind in meditation to move on. This at-home meditation will help over time as you repeat it and the idea of letting go becomes a normal part of your thought process.

Meditation works on changing the deeper ingrained subconscious thought patterns that can make us closed to new experiences or pessimistic about trying new things. They can help us let go of deep-rooted insecurities and pain. The visualization part of this meditation starts to reprogram the subconscious to perceive positive and peaceful ways to live.

For those who had a volatile home growing up, we can begin to repeat the behaviors we witnessed as children in our own relationships if we don’t set our intention to let those memories go. The mind is shaped in our youth but we can continue to shape it as adults. Many adults are using meditation apps to help them meditate and people are loving meditation so much that statistics show the number of people meditating in the US has tripled since 2012.

How This Meditation Can Help You

Whether you feel like you’ve been repeating the same patterns in your life, feel stuck in a routine or unable to see a way forward, this meditation can help you move on. Often we have trouble moving on when things change unexpectedly, or we go through a breakup. Meditation has been proven to help reduce anxiety, depression, and improve mental clarity. This meditation will help you overcome the energetic blocks to growth and happiness. Here are some other ways this meditation can help you:

• It will help you overcome the feelings of a heavy heart.
• It will help you be yourself more fully and find who that is.
• It will help you open to love and joy.
• It will help you be aware of what in your past is affecting you.
• It will help you on your path to empowerment.

Preparation for Meditation

Your environment greatly affects how deeply you are able to meditate. Before you do this meditation, set up a comfortable meditation area that is quiet and feels serene. Make sure you won’t be interrupted by putting your phone on airplane mode and then find some calming meditation music.

Binaural music can help you get deep into meditation and calm the active mind. Sometimes it can even be helpful to take a shower to clear your thoughts from the day and feel ready to get some deep healing done on your subconscious.

To prepare your space, you can light some incense and candles that will help bring in a sense of sacredness. You can also use essential oils to help you relax your mind so that you’ll be able to get into a deeper meditation space.

Sit in a cross-legged position if it’s comfortable for you and keep your spine straight. You may also choose to sit in a chair but make sure your feet are able to rest flat on the floor or a stack of books.

Read this next: Flow & Let Go: A Yoga Practice To Activate Your Intuition

Start with Deep Breathing

Start by taking deep breaths in your nose and out of your mouth for one minute. This will help you become present so you can meditate more effectively. The deep breathing allows your nervous system to calm down and also helps to clear your aura so you can focus and raise your vibration.

The breathing aspect is one of the most important parts of this meditation as the breath connects us to our soul which will help us clear the energy of the past.

Begin: A Meditation to Let Go & Move On

Continue breathing slowly and deeply through your nose. Now you will visualize yourself sitting in a grassy field. It is a calm day and there is a sense of peace all around you. You are totally enjoying the experience. You are going to allow yourself to let go of a story from the past that no longer serves you. You will see the story that is ready to be released in a moment.

Affirm

Before you do this, plan for the process to go smoothly and easily. To do this, mentally state this affirmation three times with real conviction, “I will find the rest of this meditation easy and it will help me move forward in my life.” OK, now you’re ready.

Visualize

You will see a paper floating down from the sky with the story that is ready to be released. It is not helping your mind and your soul’s progress to hold onto it. Put out your hand and let it land on your palm. Look at the black letters on the page and see what you will be releasing from the past.

Free Yourself

You now decide to tear this story into tiny pieces that the birds will use to make their nests. As you tear the paper, feel yourself being freed from the energy that this past event has been affecting you with. Feel yourself making space for new energy and optimism. Birds now land to take the paper and recycle it into their nests for the life they will support. Notice how you have a newfound sense of optimism as they carry away the pieces of your past that were weighing on you.

Accept Positive Energy

Now before you is a path that has cleared in the grass. It leads you to your heart’s true desires. It feels exciting to take each step on this newly revealed path, you are moving toward what allows you to feel most alive with each step. Now that you’ve released the energy that wasn’t allowing you to move forward, you now feel more invigorated, and sense your purpose with more clarity.

Freedom

In front of you on the path is an archway of beautiful white marble. In the center of it is written the word Freedom in gold letters. Passing under this archway is stepping into the freedom to truly be who you want and who you feel called to be.

When you’re ready, you walk through the archway and then you see what you wish to manifest in your life now that you’ve cleared the past. You can now see this new direction because you’re free from that past memory. Really take in what you see and how it makes you feel to acknowledge this part of yourself.

Good job. Now take a few deep breaths to bring yourself out of meditation.

Review and Record

Take a moment to write down how that past memory was defining your perception in your life. Write down how you now feel free from that perception. If you found the meditation difficult, that’s normal! Keep trying it once a day and you will find that visualization becomes easier and even focusing in the meditation will start to happen naturally.

Even if you’ve had difficult relationships, you can release the energy and the story that it will continue to be. The stories we tell ourselves can be altered when we decide what we want and when we realize that we co-create our reality. Our minds are a part of the Universal mind and what we think about will be magnetized to us. This is the basic premise of the law of attraction.

Set your intention to focus your thoughts on a positive future, one that you really want to live in, and you’ll find that the reality you experience does shift towards that vision. Be consistent in your visualization and you will harness the power of your own mind.

Closing

Much of the healing we do is about our own relationship with ourselves.

We can learn to treat ourselves with respect and gentleness in our thoughts by releasing the thoughts that have been running in our minds that don’t serve us. If someone made you think poorly of yourself, it’s time to free yourself of that. Allow yourself to trust the process and keep a journal for a month as you do the meditation each day.

This can greatly empower you to make decisions that are in your best interest and will lead to long term happiness.

Related Article: A Meditation To Find Inner Happiness

* Editor’s note: This article was previously published August 31st, 2018 and has been updated for relevance and accuracy.