Meditation + Sound Healing
Body Positive Works
Meditation Classes, Pranayama, and Sound Healing Bergen County, NJ
Our meditation teachers will guide you through techniques, including pranayama and sound healing, to help you develop an experience of inner peace, compassion, and understanding.
Specializing in addiction, anxiety, depression, grief + loss, eating disorders + disordered eating, negative body image, and trauma.
What is Meditation?
Meditation is a way of training your mind in order to transform the experience of being inside of your head. Imagine if you were able to send negative thinking on its way without it taking you over? What if you were no longer a victim to whatever thought or feeling drifted into your mind?
You will learn to observe these thoughts or feelings without judgment and at a distance, enabling you to create a moment-by-moment experience of peace, perspective, and positivity.
Learning to meditate is like learning any skill. Think of it like going to the gym – it takes time to build muscles that you’ve never used before. Two things are needed to build that muscle – consistent practice and a teacher to instruct the techniques and keep you motivated.
What is Pranayama?
One of our meditation techniques is pranayama. Pranayama is an integral part of yoga practice and is listed alongside asana (physical posture) in classical texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The word is composed of two Sanskrit words: “prana” meaning life force, and “ayāma,” meaning to extend or draw out. Thus, the word pranayama means “extension of the life force.”
There are multiple techniques under the umbrella of pranayama, and each technique can be manipulated and combined with other techniques, resulting in a nearly infinite number of ways to practice. The intensity of pranayama comes through challenging the breath in various ways. We challenge ourselves by slowing the breath down, alternating its movement through the nose, and momentarily stopping its flow.
Unlike many “advanced” yoga postures, pranayama does not rely on physical dexterity to create a challenge. Because breathwork takes us into an intimate dialogue with the mind, it could be argued that pranayama offers a more direct route into truly advanced yoga practice.
What is Sound Healing?
Another of our meditation techniques is sound healing. Our sound healing practitioners use Himalayan Singing Bowls and gong meditations to quiet the mind, clear energetic and emotional blockages, and decrease anxiety; these are just some of the benefits of sound healing.
The idea is to raise your body’s vibrational frequency to release negative energy and open up pathways to healing, peace, and clarity in the physical world.
Benefits of Meditation
The benefits of meditation are nothing short of life-transforming:
◐ Improves your overall sense of wellbeing by developing inner peace, compassion, and understanding
◓ Releases stress
◑ Supports your body, mind, and spirit in returning to their natural state of peace and wholeness
There are thousands of clinical studies on the health benefits of meditation; the conclusion is that meditation’s health benefits center around its ability to relax the nervous system. Benefits include lower blood pressure and heart rate, less stress, anxiety, and depression, and an increased sense of wellbeing.
There is growing evidence that, with regular practice, these benefits are long-lived – that calm mind and feeling of inner harmony will last long after you’ve stacked your meditation cushion.
Why Choose Us?
Our meditation teachers will help deepen your practice, teaching you techniques to help you de-stress and develop your experience of inner peace, compassion, and understanding, empowering you to act with equanimity, even when life goes pear-shaped. Move off your cushion feeling inspired, nourished, and balanced.
Our Meditation Classes
To book classes and to see our schedule click here.
Meditation and Breathing (Pranayama) Class:
Prana is our breath and the vital life force in our bodies. Pranayama is the relationship to our breath, teaching us to control the movement of our minds. The more that we become aware of our breath, the more that we are able to calm the mind and access and experience the bliss of our existence through meditation.
This class will help you understand the breath and teach you techniques to access the breath, quiet the mind, and turn into the sublime radiance of your heart. This class will also teach you how to meditate, exploring what meditation is, and what it is not.
Interesting and new meditation styles will be introduced, especially geared to calm the mind, alleviate depression and anger, and make the mind stronger. Prepare to feel blissful and access the source of your inspiration, creativity, and highest potential.
Pranayama and meditation will greatly benefit your yoga practice – by creating more awareness of your breath. But, most importantly, pranayama and meditation will significantly improve the quality of your life, both in the way that you lead your life and the way in which you respond to life.
These practices will deepen your connection to Spirit and have the potential to manifest abundant happiness and peace in your life. Think of pranayama and meditation as food for the brain, nourishing it to become more healthy, vibrant, and easeful.
No previous experience with pranayama or meditation is necessary. Both beginners and experienced meditators are welcome.
Is Pranayama Right for You?
If you are curious about how yoga practices inform the yogic conception of the mind, and you are interested in experiencing the more subtle and powerful benefits of yoga practice, pranayama might be a fascinating and helpful practice for you. There’s only one way to find out, right? We welcome you to come take a class and experience the magic for yourself.
Sound Healing Meditation
Quiet your mind, and release old physical and energetic patterns with sound healing meditation. The use of Himalayan Singing Bowls, vibrationally attuned to each energy center, allows for healing pathways to open and stuck energy to be released. Find your inner calm, and walk away feeling refreshed and renewed.
Sound Healing classes take place on the first Friday of every month from 7:00-8:30 pm. Limited to 15 people. Book early!
Group Meditation Classes NJ
Our meditation classes are appropriate for everyone – from kids and teens to the middle-aged and the elderly.
Some of the ways we can help:
Meditation for beginners
Meditation for kids
Meditation for tweens
Meditation for teens
Meditation for prenatal and postnatal women
Meditation for menopause
Meditation for negative body image
Meditation for addiction
Meditation for eating disorders
Meditation for depression
Meditation for anxiety
Our Meditation Teachers
Joy Mino
Joy is a sound healing practitioner, using Himalayan Singing Bowls. Studying with Katherine Hamer in NYC and certified through the Atma Buti Sound and Vibrational School in Boulder, CO, she works privately with her clients, as well as leading group singing bowl meditations. Her sessions focus on quieting the mind, clearing energetic and emotional blockages and decreasing anxiety to open up pathways to healing, peace and clarity in the physical world. She is also excited to offer, in the near future, gong meditations after recently completing her gong training with Marco Dolce.
Amanda Dhi
A little bit about me...I have been practicing yoga for over twenty years. What I practice and how I practice, has evolved many times over. More than anything, yoga has taught me to be adaptable to change. I am an RYT-500, having taken both of my 200 and 300hr teacher trainings at Yoga Synthesis. I have also trained and specialize in Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra. My classes are based on the philosophy that the journey never ends, and that every day presents an opportunity for positive growth and change. I emphasize adaptability, accessibility, and acknowledge the individualistic experience of growing a yoga practice. Currently, I am studying to become certified in Yoga Therapy. My other life calling is being an End of Life Doula (EOL). Being a doula is a great honor, and I am forever humbled and grateful for the many lessons this role continues to teach me. I use my training and experience as a doula to teach Yoga and Meditation for Grief and Yoga and Meditation in Palliative Care. I believe that we are all put on this earth to help one another, to learn from each other, and to lift each other up. We all have good days and bad days. Our experiences are as unique as we are. Yoga has taught me that there is space for it all, for everyone. That even as we journey as individuals, we always journey together.