August 11, 2025 • 14 mins
When we sit down to meditate, we are trying to get to a place of stillness, calm, and silence to easier place ourselves in the present moment. In the present moment, we gain clarity and balance and one way into that place of calm is silence. This meditation hopes to assist the meditator to get to that place. Listen to the silence. One breath at a time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to mindful meditations with calm, the bleep down. As always,
I'm your guide Michael Beckameier, and today we are going
to sit in the silence. Let's get started. As always,
(00:34):
we have a mindfulness quote to help get us started
into our meditation with some intent. And today our quote
comes from Michael Jeffreys and it reads, when we run
from silence, we run from ourselves. I really like that
(01:04):
quote because when I am meditating, and we've done this
here before recently, even when we are meditating and we
are holding our breath up at the top of the
breath and then holding it down at the bottom of
the breath, what I think of that as is creating
some silence inside my body. It's kind of like when
(01:29):
you're driving down the road. You got the radio playing,
you got the air conditioner on, maybe the windows are
rolled down or something like that, and you have noise
coming in. But every now and then, for some reason,
you'll turn the radio off and maybe it's cold, so
you turn the air conditioner or heater whatever down or off,
(01:52):
and suddenly the car feels still. There's still noise, there's
still things happening, but it seems still. You can hear
what's going on inside that environment. I notice the same
thing when you flip a fan on or off in
a room, Suddenly the room feels much more quiet. And
(02:17):
I've started thinking of myself that way. So when I'm
having a hard time tuning into what's going on during
my meditation, if I'm tired or i just woke up
and I'm still kind of dozing and I'm trying to
keep myself awake for my meditation instead of falling back
(02:39):
asleep or something like that, I'm distracted. For whatever reason
I find myself. I find it easy easier too. I
find sometimes that it helps to hold my breath, And
at that moment when I'm holding my breath, your body
(02:59):
is a art again because it's like, why are we
holding our breath? What are we doing? What's happening? But
if you're doing that, and if you do that with
some intent, you can actually feel the rest of your
body happening. And sometimes the active breathing and the act
of you know, moving around and getting comfortable kind of
(03:22):
creates a noise, a sound, a distraction. But when you
remove the distractions and just listen to your body, there's
all sorts of things going on. You can feel it
tingling in places, you can feel it just buzzing you.
You can feel your heartbeat, you can feel things happening
(03:45):
inside your body, and for me that really helps sometimes.
So but the quote when we run from silence, we
weren't we three two one, But the quote when we
(04:06):
run from silence, we run from ourselves also made me
think about the shutdown a while back when we had
COVID and everyone was so worried about staying inside for
(04:28):
just two weeks, And I really feel like part of
that was that so many of us spend so much
time avoiding things, avoiding our thoughts, avoiding solving a problem,
and sometimes getting out of the house is serves as
(04:53):
a good distraction. I'm going to leave because I don't
I don't want to deal with this right now. And
it's not just the lockdown, but it's in life what
I felt was happening then, the general anxiety that was
happening is being stuck in a room for two weeks
means I have to be alone with my thoughts because
there's not going to be anything else to do or
(05:13):
think about. But those of us who meditate, at least
for me, I was I was on fire right then
I was like, oh, I can meditate. I was meditating
like two hours a day, something that I haven't done since. Then,
(05:33):
By the way, meditate that much in one day. There
was just nothing else to do, So we meditate. I
think the quote is very profound because we are running
from ourselves when we run from the silence if we're sitting,
if we're able to sit in silence, it's kind of
(05:55):
like standing in front of a mirror and staring yourself
in the face. What do you see when you're meditating
and you're creating some silence for yourself? What do you
hear if you're running from that? That itself is the
(06:25):
spotlight of the issue, and we all do it. We
all have things we avoid, don't want to handle because
it's hard or difficult or heavy. But so much of
(06:49):
this is about getting back to our truly happy self,
and the only way to do that is to get
comfortable in the silence, figure out the problem, do something
about it, take action so we can take a step forward.
These are uncomfortable things because if they were comfortable things,
(07:10):
we would have done them already. So that's what we're
going to meditate on today. So to get started, get
yourself comfortable. You can either sit down or lie down
for this meditation as always, and start slowing your breath
(07:34):
in and out, start letting your body relax. Maybe you're
at the end of a day, maybe at the beginning
of a day, and you are working the kinks out,
stretching a little bit, whatever helps you get to a
(07:56):
relaxed state. So you can meditate. Scan your body from
head to toe, relaxing all those places that might be
holding some tension. Your eyebrows, your cheeks, your ears, your jaw, shoulders,
(08:26):
torso all the way down your legs, feet, arms, and shoulders.
What I want you to do is on your next inhale,
(08:47):
just hold your breath for a few moments at the
top and listen to your body. In that moment, feel
the life, the energy that continues to stay in motion
that very often is just happening beneath the surface. It's
(09:10):
just happening and we don't even notice it because it's
just an autopilot. It's just doing its thing. Sometimes when
I'm meditating, I like to tune into that so I
can remind myself what presence feels like and what being
alive feels like, and what right now feels like. This
(09:34):
is happening right now. So let's take along sort of
deep breath in and hold it up at the top
of the breath, hold it, listen, exhale. When you exhale,
(09:57):
hold it down at the bottom of the breath and
listen again. Feel it long, slow, deep breath in. Hold
your breath, exhale, hold it down to the bottom of
(10:25):
the breath. Feel the life in your body, the energy
you can breathe normally. Now did you feel it? If
(10:46):
you did, that is what the present moment feels like.
That's happening right here, right now. That will never happen again.
It happens right now. It's the never in everlasting present moment.
We can always tune into that moment with our breath.
(11:11):
So take a few moments and practice this on your own.
Breathing in, holding a breath at the top, breathing out,
holding a breath at the bottom. Just listen to and
feel the energy taking place in your body. If at
(11:41):
any moment you notice your mind has wandered, and it will.
And if you have noticed that your mind has wondered,
that is mindfulness. Do not get frustrated or annoyed with yourself,
Just observe the thought, say hello, and then return to
your breath, over and over and over again. Okay, it's
(12:30):
time to return to your normal breathing. Take another moment
here and let the silence and stillness settle in for
just another moment and our last few breaths together. And
know that your body is always happening. Your body is
(12:55):
always here right now. Your body is not living in
five minutes ago. Your body is not living ten seconds ago.
Your body is living right now. And when we feel
out of tune with our body, out of tune with ourselves,
(13:15):
very often, most of the time, I think it is
because we are so far detached from the present moment
that we have lost sight of it, of ourselves. The
good news is that it's just that easy to return
(13:37):
to it. It doesn't mean your problems will go away,
and it does not mean everything is okay. It just
means right now is right now. The only way we
can truly solve a problem is by being present in
that moment, thinking clearly, and moving forward into the next
present moment. So let's take a long, slow, deep breath
(14:04):
in and out. Let's do that one more time in
and out, and when you're ready you can open your
eyes and go about your day. No mustake,
Welcome to mindful meditations with calm, the bleep down. As always,
I'm your guide Michael Beckameier, and today we are going
to sit in the silence. Let's get started. As always,
(00:34):
we have a mindfulness quote to help get us started
into our meditation with some intent. And today our quote
comes from Michael Jeffreys and it reads, when we run
from silence, we run from ourselves. I really like that
(01:04):
quote because when I am meditating, and we've done this
here before recently, even when we are meditating and we
are holding our breath up at the top of the
breath and then holding it down at the bottom of
the breath, what I think of that as is creating
some silence inside my body. It's kind of like when
(01:29):
you're driving down the road. You got the radio playing,
you got the air conditioner on, maybe the windows are
rolled down or something like that, and you have noise
coming in. But every now and then, for some reason,
you'll turn the radio off and maybe it's cold, so
you turn the air conditioner or heater whatever down or off,
(01:52):
and suddenly the car feels still. There's still noise, there's
still things happening, but it seems still. You can hear
what's going on inside that environment. I notice the same
thing when you flip a fan on or off in
a room, Suddenly the room feels much more quiet. And
(02:17):
I've started thinking of myself that way. So when I'm
having a hard time tuning into what's going on during
my meditation, if I'm tired or i just woke up
and I'm still kind of dozing and I'm trying to
keep myself awake for my meditation instead of falling back
(02:39):
asleep or something like that, I'm distracted. For whatever reason
I find myself. I find it easy easier too. I
find sometimes that it helps to hold my breath, And
at that moment when I'm holding my breath, your body
(02:59):
is a art again because it's like, why are we
holding our breath? What are we doing? What's happening? But
if you're doing that, and if you do that with
some intent, you can actually feel the rest of your
body happening. And sometimes the active breathing and the act
of you know, moving around and getting comfortable kind of
(03:22):
creates a noise, a sound, a distraction. But when you
remove the distractions and just listen to your body, there's
all sorts of things going on. You can feel it
tingling in places, you can feel it just buzzing you.
You can feel your heartbeat, you can feel things happening
(03:45):
inside your body, and for me that really helps sometimes.
So but the quote when we run from silence, we
weren't we three two one, But the quote when we
(04:06):
run from silence, we run from ourselves also made me
think about the shutdown a while back when we had
COVID and everyone was so worried about staying inside for
(04:28):
just two weeks, And I really feel like part of
that was that so many of us spend so much
time avoiding things, avoiding our thoughts, avoiding solving a problem,
and sometimes getting out of the house is serves as
(04:53):
a good distraction. I'm going to leave because I don't
I don't want to deal with this right now. And
it's not just the lockdown, but it's in life what
I felt was happening then, the general anxiety that was
happening is being stuck in a room for two weeks
means I have to be alone with my thoughts because
there's not going to be anything else to do or
(05:13):
think about. But those of us who meditate, at least
for me, I was I was on fire right then
I was like, oh, I can meditate. I was meditating
like two hours a day, something that I haven't done since. Then,
(05:33):
By the way, meditate that much in one day. There
was just nothing else to do, So we meditate. I
think the quote is very profound because we are running
from ourselves when we run from the silence if we're sitting,
if we're able to sit in silence, it's kind of
(05:55):
like standing in front of a mirror and staring yourself
in the face. What do you see when you're meditating
and you're creating some silence for yourself? What do you
hear if you're running from that? That itself is the
(06:25):
spotlight of the issue, and we all do it. We
all have things we avoid, don't want to handle because
it's hard or difficult or heavy. But so much of
(06:49):
this is about getting back to our truly happy self,
and the only way to do that is to get
comfortable in the silence, figure out the problem, do something
about it, take action so we can take a step forward.
These are uncomfortable things because if they were comfortable things,
(07:10):
we would have done them already. So that's what we're
going to meditate on today. So to get started, get
yourself comfortable. You can either sit down or lie down
for this meditation as always, and start slowing your breath
(07:34):
in and out, start letting your body relax. Maybe you're
at the end of a day, maybe at the beginning
of a day, and you are working the kinks out,
stretching a little bit, whatever helps you get to a
(07:56):
relaxed state. So you can meditate. Scan your body from
head to toe, relaxing all those places that might be
holding some tension. Your eyebrows, your cheeks, your ears, your jaw, shoulders,
(08:26):
torso all the way down your legs, feet, arms, and shoulders.
What I want you to do is on your next inhale,
(08:47):
just hold your breath for a few moments at the
top and listen to your body. In that moment, feel
the life, the energy that continues to stay in motion
that very often is just happening beneath the surface. It's
(09:10):
just happening and we don't even notice it because it's
just an autopilot. It's just doing its thing. Sometimes when
I'm meditating, I like to tune into that so I
can remind myself what presence feels like and what being
alive feels like, and what right now feels like. This
(09:34):
is happening right now. So let's take along sort of
deep breath in and hold it up at the top
of the breath, hold it, listen, exhale. When you exhale,
(09:57):
hold it down at the bottom of the breath and
listen again. Feel it long, slow, deep breath in. Hold
your breath, exhale, hold it down to the bottom of
(10:25):
the breath. Feel the life in your body, the energy
you can breathe normally. Now did you feel it? If
(10:46):
you did, that is what the present moment feels like.
That's happening right here, right now. That will never happen again.
It happens right now. It's the never in everlasting present moment.
We can always tune into that moment with our breath.
(11:11):
So take a few moments and practice this on your own.
Breathing in, holding a breath at the top, breathing out,
holding a breath at the bottom. Just listen to and
feel the energy taking place in your body. If at
(11:41):
any moment you notice your mind has wandered, and it will.
And if you have noticed that your mind has wondered,
that is mindfulness. Do not get frustrated or annoyed with yourself,
Just observe the thought, say hello, and then return to
your breath, over and over and over again. Okay, it's
(12:30):
time to return to your normal breathing. Take another moment
here and let the silence and stillness settle in for
just another moment and our last few breaths together. And
know that your body is always happening. Your body is
(12:55):
always here right now. Your body is not living in
five minutes ago. Your body is not living ten seconds ago.
Your body is living right now. And when we feel
out of tune with our body, out of tune with ourselves,
(13:15):
very often, most of the time, I think it is
because we are so far detached from the present moment
that we have lost sight of it, of ourselves. The
good news is that it's just that easy to return
(13:37):
to it. It doesn't mean your problems will go away,
and it does not mean everything is okay. It just
means right now is right now. The only way we
can truly solve a problem is by being present in
that moment, thinking clearly, and moving forward into the next
present moment. So let's take a long, slow, deep breath
(14:04):
in and out. Let's do that one more time in
and out, and when you're ready you can open your
eyes and go about your day. No mustake,
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