Ahhh blissful, delightful, divine, inner peace. Oh-so-easy to access when you’re on holiday strolling down a tropical beach or you’re spending the day getting pampered at the spa. And although these are nice treats to enjoy once in a while, most of the time our reality tends to look a little different. 

Whether it’s dealing with a busy schedule, a demanding to-do list or a particularly long workday, it’s in the hurry-scurry moments of everyday life that we find ourselves needing that inner peace the most. 

That ocean breeze can seem lightyears away when you’re running late for work, clumsily dash out the door where you manage to catch the bus just in time, just to open your bag and realise that you forgot your wallet at home. Gulp.

Accessing your inner-calm doesn’t need to happen on a mountaintop in the Himalayas. In fact, we have a whole wealth of inner peace that lies within us at all times. The key is learning how to tap into it.

To borrow some words of wisdom from Marvin Gaye (because, why not):

“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.” 

In other words, if we are constantly looking outside of ourselves for peace, we will seldom find it. But by looking within and creating more peace individually, you will create a ripple effect into the rest of the world.

A simple, yet powerful, antidote to integrating more peace into our lives is a beautiful kundalini meditation that has been adapted from Gabrielle Bernstein’s teachings. It’s a meditation that you can practice anywhere, any time and at any moment. Its simplicity is its true virtue. 

“Peace begins with me”.

Read it slowly. Read it again. Say it aloud. Tattoo it on your forehead if needs be!

This short meditation mantra reminds us that if we want to live a peaceful life, we have to choose that peace for ourselves and vibrate that state out in the world in order for it to reflect back towards us. 

When things go wrong it is easy to get overwhelmed with the chaos, to feel easily triggered and to experience a loss of control. It is in these moments, however, that we can turn to our spiritual tools to bring us back into alignment with our higher self, and in doing so, bring ourselves back to love and peace.

This meditation can be done with your eyes opened or closed and it will guide you back to your inner sense of harmony and the awareness that to experience peace, you must find it within yourself. 

1. Take your hand and place your thumb and your index finger together, creating the hamsa mudra. In your mind or out loud repeat the word “peace”
2. Connect your thumb and middle finger, and repeat the word “begins”
3. Connect your thumb and ring finger and repeat the word “with”
4. Connect your thumb and pinkie finger and repeat the word “me”
   
   

This is an excellent practice to do when you’re in the company of others, and you want to go inward to cultivate peace in a testing situation. You can practice the hand gestures under the dinner table during a heated conversation, when you’re in a stressful travel situation or even when you’re clashing with a friend or a partner.

Any time you feel a lack of ease and you sense your inner peace slipping, come back to this simple practice and repeat “peace begins with me” while allowing your hands to flow gently in the mudra.

It’s important to remember that challenging situations will come up time and time again throughout our life journey. We can’t realistically expect our circumstances to always be peaceful, but we can most certainly work on creating peace within ourselves when things get difficult.

If you prefer to practice this meditation method with a video, we’ve created a free guided meditation for peace using the technique described above. It includes a simple breathing flow that will help you come back to your breath, get out of your head and into your heart as you cultivate more peace and ease in your day. 

Next time you find yourself stressed out or overwhelmed by something, give this easy relaxation technique a try (no plane ticket to the Bahamas required). Who would’ve thought that peace on demand was so simple?