Guided Meditation for ME Community

Stuart Murdoch, frontman of Belle and Sebastian, invites you to join him in a guided meditation. Through his own journey with ME, Stuart has discovered how meditation can calm and support the nervous system. #MEAction is deeply grateful to Stuart for sharing his time and talents to uplift the ME community. We encourage you to take a moment to listen and follow along with his meditation. Please adapt the practice in whatever way feels right for you.

Transcript

Introduction

Hi folks, this is Stuart Murdoch here, and I'm the singer in the band Belle and Sebastian. I've been asked by ME Action to guide you in meditation. You might think, well, why is this guy in a band being asked to guide people in meditation? Well, I've had ME for 35 years or so, and for about 33 of those years, meditation has been one of the tools that I've gone to that I found really, really helps me cope with the situation. I'm not better from ME, but sometimes we have to use the tools that we can find to get us by. And meditation's very much one of my tools.

Why Meditation Matters for Our Community

It's a tricky time of year. I find that the run up to Christmas, everybody's running about mad and finding all that extra energy to do stuff. And of course, we just have the same energy, the same root reserve of energy that we always have - the same low supply. So what we do with it is very important.

One of the things about meditation is that in the course of meditation, you can reassure your body, you can reassure your nervous system by giving it good conditions - good conditions to heal, and by trying to be calm when you need to be calm. These are the kind of things that meditation's good for.

Creating Safety and Peace

I really hope you have decent conditions. I hope you have somebody on your side, good friend or a carer, and I hope you feel safe. Safe has been a big word for me this year. Let's face it, when you're unwell, it's hard to feel safe because you have all the worries of the world, plus the fact you're unwell. So it's not surprising that we worry about it, that we feel unsafe, and obviously this can add to our ME conditions, and it can be a bit of a spiral sometimes.

Another thing I love about meditation is I feel like it's going to a safe place. I feel like it's going to a place where we can stop the spiral downwards, that we can reassure our body with our own practice. With the practice of meditation, we start with our mind to reassure our body. So while we're waiting around for the scientists to come up with a cure for ME, we can try our best to feel safe and to feel peaceful.

Getting Comfortable - No Rules for Us

Usually I sit with a straight back, but this is definitely one cohort of people that does not have to - you don't have to sit with a straight back. You can be sitting in a chair, you can be sitting cross-legged, you can be lying on the sofa, you can be lying in your bed, whatever works for you. This is about going inwards with your thoughts and trying to calm your thoughts downwards so we get a peaceful mind.

The Meditation Practice

Starting Out

When you close your eyes, the first thing you might notice is that your mind is actually quite busy and it's darting around, and that's okay. That's what your mind is like. But hopefully by accepting where you're at just now, your thoughts might start to slow down a little bit.

You can accept your situation. If there's any symptoms that are niggling at you just now, try to accept them for the next few minutes just by saying, "Okay, I know you're there. I know you're doing your thing. I'm just going to let you be just now. I'm going to focus on my mind for a second."

Focusing on Your Breath

One really good way of focusing your mind is to focus on your breath. People have been focusing on the sensation of their breath for thousands of years. Whether you're breathing through your nose or through your mouth, can you start to notice the sensation of your breath? You might feel the cool air being breathed in and the warmer air being breathed out. You might feel the movement of air around the tip of your nose or through your mouth.

Every time you lose focus or other thoughts come in, you say to yourself, "That's okay. I'm just going to go back to focusing on the breath."

Cultivating Peace

At this stage, you might notice that your mind is ever so slightly calmer than it was when you started the meditation. Can you think about that calmness and actually try to focus on any sense of peace or calm that you're experiencing right now? The idea is that if we focus on it, we will allow it to grow in our mind.

Building Your Practice

If this is your first time meditating or you've done it a few more times, I would say to you that if you felt any slight inclination of feeling more peaceful during the meditation, then you could say to yourself, "Well, I felt that once. There's no reason that if I tried it again, that I might not feel even more peace, or that if I practiced I could increase that feeling of peace."

That's all there is to it. That's about the simplest meditation there is. You can take what I've shared and adapt it to your own use, which is what I do. I've taken what I've learned over the years and adapted it to my own use.

Continuing the Journey

I quite often do online sessions that run a bit longer on the Belle and Sebastian Facebook page, and I have quite a lot more chat and I meditate on different topics - health topics and mental health topics. You're very welcome to visit me there. I try to do that once a week.

I hope that you have a peaceful and a safe Christmas and New Year. All the best for now.