Process Meditation a Simple Method for Restoration
By Abhay C. Denis
29/05/2025
Introduction: What is Process Meditation?
Process Meditation is a simple yet profound practice that helps individuals navigate their inner landscape through conscious awareness and relational connection. Unlike traditional therapy or counseling, Process Meditation exists as an ongoing "In Process" approach to daily living—a method that can be integrated into everyday life while complementing formal therapeutic practices.
At its core, Process Meditation acknowledges that human growth occurs through relationship—both with ourselves and others. It provides practical tools for processing emotions, memories, and experiences in a way that promotes healing and personal evolution. This method doesn't reject therapeutic approaches but offers complementary tools that have demonstrable benefits for wellbeing and require only consistent practice.
The practice is founded on the understanding that our bodies, memories, and consciousness work together to create our experience of life. When this natural flow becomes disrupted—through trauma, stress, or disconnection—Process Meditation offers a path back to coherence and harmony.
The method begins with core processes as its foundation, builds understanding around trauma, and then applies these insights within relational stages, supported by practical tools and qualities that enhance the journey.
Core Processes
The Core Processes form the foundation of Process Meditation. These four elements are concurrent and always utilized throughout the practice. They represent the essence of the method and underpin all other aspects.
Breathe (Inhale and Exhale)
Conscious breathing creates a foundation for presence and calm:
Physiological Regulation: Slow, rhythmic breathing (approximately 5-6 breaths per minute) activates the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing stress hormones and promoting a state of calm alertness (McCraty & Zayas, 2014, HeartMath Institute).
Heart-Brain Coherence: Intentional breathing patterns help synchronize heart rhythm patterns, leading to improved cognitive function and emotional stability (McCraty, 2015, HeartMath Research Center).
Enhanced Present Moment Awareness: Focused breathing anchors attention to the present moment, interrupting rumination about past or future and creating space for conscious choice rather than automatic reaction.
Practical Example: Practice 4-7-8 breathing (inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7 counts, exhale for 8 counts) before stressful situations to activate your body's relaxation response.
Observe (Senses and Emotion)
Non-judgmental observation allows us to witness our experience without being consumed by it:
Emotional Regulation: Observing emotions without immediate reaction helps reduce emotional reactivity and increases the capacity for self-regulation (Siegel, 2010).
Pattern Recognition: Regular observation practice helps identify recurring thought patterns, emotional responses, and physical sensations that may be linked to past experiences or trauma responses.
Increased Self-Awareness: The observing stance creates space between experience and reaction, allowing a deeper understanding of one's internal states and processes.
Practical Example: During a conflict or challenging conversation, notice physical sensations and emotions that arise without immediately acting on them. This creates space for choice rather than automatic reaction.
Think (Reflect and Analyze)
Conscious reflection invites deeper understanding of our patterns and possibilities:
Cognitive Integration: Thoughtful reflection helps integrate emotional experiences with rational understanding, leading to more balanced responses to life's challenges.
Meaning-Making: Analysis allows us to reframe experiences and construct more adaptive narratives about ourselves and our lives.
Pattern Transformation: Reflective thinking helps identify and transform unhelpful patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that may have developed in response to past experiences.
Practical Example: After noticing a recurring negative thought pattern, take time to journal about its origins and how it might be reframed in a way that better serves your wellbeing and growth.
Act (Behavior)
Intentional action transforms insight into lived experience:
Embodied Change: When we act from a place of awareness, we create new neural pathways that support healthier responses to stress and challenge.
Response Flexibility: The practice enhances our capacity to choose appropriate responses rather than reacting automatically from habit or fear.
Integration: Conscious action helps integrate insights from breathing, observing, and thinking into daily life, making the practice sustainable and transformative.
Practical Example: After recognizing a pattern of withdrawing during conflict, practice staying present and expressing needs calmly in low-stakes situations first, gradually building capacity for more challenging interactions.
Core Stages
Although presented sequentially, the Core Stages are fundamentally relational. This process is highly experiential, with understanding of the stages being applied both during formal practice and in everyday life as a way of being.
Stage One: Contact
Contact means approaching with awareness that understanding another person takes time. The goal is to recognize that individuals need to understand themselves to process, evolve, and become.
1. Facilitation
Facilitation creates a context for self-discovery. The facilitator provides structure and support while honoring the explorer's autonomy and capacity for self-understanding. This involves creating a space where exploration can unfold naturally, offering guidance as needed, and maintaining presence with the conviction that the person has the potential and value to become.
2. Connection
Connection forms the relational bridge between facilitator and explorer. This involves establishing mutual trust, presence, and attunement that allows for authentic sharing. When genuine connection occurs, both parties experience a sense of being seen and valued, creating a foundation for deeper exploration.
3. Exploration
Exploration involves curious investigation of internal states, patterns, and possibilities. The facilitator supports the explorer in venturing into their inner landscape with openness and courage. This process is non-linear and moves at the explorer's pace, honoring their readiness and capacity for discovery.
Stage Two: Bonding
Bonding means connecting with another person to produce a favorable relational foundation that cultivates growth, maturity, civility, wisdom, and healthy boundaries.
1. Listening
Empathic, humble, and patient listening forms the crux of the practice. This means attending fully to the explorer without judgment, creating space for their authentic expression.
Example: When an explorer shares difficult emotions about a past experience, the facilitator maintains eye contact, offers small nods of acknowledgment, and refrains from interrupting or offering solutions—allowing the full experience to be expressed and heard.
2. Reflect
Reflection involves the internal process of contemplating what emerges during bonding. The facilitator holds what is shared with care, considering it from multiple perspectives without jumping to conclusions.
Example: After hearing the explorer describe feelings of inadequacy in professional settings, the facilitator takes a moment to consider how these feelings might connect to earlier experiences, current circumstances, and potential growth edges—all while maintaining a stance of openness rather than diagnostic certainty.
3. Respond
Responding encompasses both verbal and nonverbal communications that acknowledge the explorer's experience while fostering deeper awareness. Drawing from person-centered principles (Rogers, 1961), responses are characterized by empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard¹.
¹ Note on unconditional positive regard: In Process Meditation, we recognize that true "unconditionality" is complex in a universe that is inherently conditional and dynamic. Rather than absolute unconditionality, we practice a form of positive regard that honors the person's inherent value and potential while acknowledging that certain conditions foster health and coherence. This positive regard is maintained within the boundaries of ethical behavior and mutual respect. It does not endorse harmful actions but maintains a compassionate stance toward the person's core self while helping them recognize and transform patterns that may be damaging to themselves or others.
Stage Three: Healing
Healing occurs when contact and bonding have established a relational foundation strong enough to facilitate releasing and resolving trauma and stress. This stage represents the transformative process that unfolds through being "In Process."
1. Release
Release involves letting go of stored stress, trauma, and limiting beliefs through the relational connection and meditative practice. As trust deepens, the body and mind naturally begin to release what has been held—often through emotional expression, physical sensation, or shifts in perspective.
2. Resolve
Resolution occurs as facilitator and explorer work together to address the root causes of distress. This process involves recognizing patterns, understanding their origins, and gradually transforming their hold on present experience. Resolution doesn't always mean complete elimination of difficulty but rather a new relationship to it.
3. Restore
Restoration happens naturally as release and resolution progress. The explorer begins to experience a renewed sense of self, reconnecting with their inherent value and potential. This isn't about returning to a previous state but evolving into a more integrated way of being.
The Tool Kit
The Tool Kit comprises personalized items that help entrain the body, mind, and emotions to embody the memory of relational stages. These tools create a source of positive memory that reinforces one's sense of value and potential. Research indicates that sensory engagement can help anchor new neural pathways associated with safety and wellbeing (Siegel, 2012).
Imagery
Visual elements that promote calm and positive states:
Natural scenes (trees, flowers, streams, sunny days)
Coherent geometric patterns
Art depicting serene settings or beauty
Shapes or objects that inspire and encourage
Research shows that viewing natural scenes activates parasympathetic nervous system responses and promotes alpha brain wave activity associated with relaxation (Brown et al., 2013).
Music
Auditory elements that induce relaxation and harmony:
Nature sounds (bird song, rivers, ambient tree sounds)
Binaural beats inducing alpha waves
Classical music
Studies demonstrate that specific music forms can reduce cortisol levels and promote heart rhythm coherence (McCraty et al., 1998, HeartMath Research Center).
Activities
Engaging practices that promote grounding and presence:
Painting, drawing, writing
Walking in nature
Meditation and breathing exercises
Jogging or fast walking
Reading calming & innocent literature
Holding natural objects (leaves, stones) for visceral grounded sensations
Martial Arts, e.g. Tai Chi and Chi Gong
Research indicates that mindful engagement in creative activities promotes flow states that reduce anxiety and enhance wellbeing (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Visualization
Internal imagery that promotes positive states:
Imagining beautiful flowers, meadows, blue skies and sunlight
Recalling happy memories or places
Focusing on words like peace, calm, love
Invoking feelings like gratitude and forgiveness
Visualization practices have been shown to influence autonomic nervous system functioning and promote immune system effectiveness (Trakhtenberg, 2008).
Silence
Creating space for quiet presence:
Holding space for quiet while simply sensing
Being present in the moment with oneself
Practicing stillness in various postures (sitting, walking, standing)
Research indicates that periods of silence promote neurogenesis and cognitive restoration (Kirste et al., 2015).
Smelling
Olfactory stimulation for relaxation:
Scent of flowers
Aromas of good cooking
Scented candles (non-toxic)
Incense (non-toxic)
Studies show that certain scents can directly influence brain activity and emotional states through the limbic system (Herz, 2009).
The Two Types of Trauma
Understanding trauma is essential to Process Meditation, as it often disrupts our natural capacity for presence and connection. Whether your experience involves abnormal or normal trauma, know that your feelings are valid, and you deserve a compassionate space for healing.
Abnormal Trauma Base
Abnormal trauma results from unnatural adversities outside the normal life course. Examples include abuse, offense, or violations enacted upon the body and memory with intent to injure or violate.
Characteristics:
Triggers primal survival responses (amygdala-driven)
Anchors the body and memory in abnormal response patterns
Creates an identification with traumatic ideology that persists beyond the event
Often deeply impacts one's sense of self-worth and identity
May lead to beliefs like "I am damaged" or "I am not worthy"
When identity is sourced in abnormal trauma, it draws on subconscious processes tied to the traumatic memory, reinforcing cycles of fear and devaluation. Research indicates that interpersonal trauma can significantly erode self-esteem through experiences of betrayal and violation.
Normal Trauma (and/or Stress) Base
Normal trauma arises from adversities that are part of the natural life course. Examples include death, disease, old age, loss, developmental challenges (breakups, divorce, family deaths), learning, and education.
Characteristics:
Universal and inherent to human existence
May cause temporary distress but aligns with life's natural processes
Does not inherently disrupt the universal process of life
Can still significantly impact self-worth, particularly without proper support
May offer opportunities for growth when processed with care
It's important to recognize that while normal trauma is part of human experience, it can still cause significant distress and temporarily affect self-worth. The difference lies not in the intensity of suffering but in its source and cultural context.
Both types of trauma deserve equal care and attention in the healing process. Process Meditation provides tools to help individuals reconnect with their inherent value regardless of trauma type.
Practice: Detachment, Attachment, and Non-attachment
Process Meditation involves three interrelated practices that help navigate our relationship with experience.
Detached Practice
Detachment involves observing the breath while allowing thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations to come and go without identification. This practice calms the body and mind, creating a foundation for deeper exploration.
Purpose: To withdraw from traumatic ideas and beliefs, calm the physical system, and create space to process experience intuitively.
Attached Practice
Attachment involves observing the breath while consciously exploring the thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations that arise—ideally with the support of a facilitator.
Purpose: To engage with experience directly without identifying with trauma as a source of meaning or purpose. This practice helps recognize that the true self exists beyond trauma-based narratives.
Non-attached Practice
Non-attachment represents the maturity of both detached and attached practice. It involves the capacity to detach, calm, and relax, while also exploring and healthily re-attaching to one's sense of value and potential.
Purpose: To develop a relationship with experience characterized by neither avoidance nor identification—a kind of "detached attachment" that allows both freedom and engagement.
Note: Trauma can impact these practices by causing imbalanced detachment (where a person devalues themselves and withdraws from relational awareness and the responsibility of conscious living) or harmful attachment (where a person sources their identity in trauma-based beliefs and struggles or refuses to take responsibility for resulting behaviors, projecting them onto others).
Core Virtues
These three virtues form the foundation for effective Process Meditation practice, both for facilitators and explorers. These virtuous qualities serve to enrich the the core process and the core stages.
Compassion
Compassion simply means "I care, sense your emotions and life, and see it as sacred and important." Research from the HeartMath Institute shows that compassionate states create coherent heart rhythms that benefit both giver and receiver, promoting physiological synchronization between individuals (McCraty, 2017).
To develop compassion: Practice empathic presence with others, engage in altruistic activities, and regularly reflect on the shared human experience of both suffering and joy.
Humility
Humility means "I am willing and open to learning. I sense others' understandings and knowledge may have value, and I recognize that growing is sacred." Studies indicate that humble leadership promotes psychological safety and enhances group cohesion and creativity (Owens & Hekman, 2012).
To develop humility: Practice curiosity about others' perspectives, acknowledge your limitations openly, and approach each interaction as an opportunity to learn rather than dominate with one's sense of knowledge.
Patience
Patience means "to hold space for another person to grow and mature, explore and evolve through the process." Patience is a neutral quality—the qualitative virtue that allows the gradual development of the other two qualities. Research shows that practicing patience reduces stress hormones and promotes cardiovascular health (Schnitker, 2012).
To develop patience: Practice mindful waiting, focus on process rather than outcome, and cultivate appreciation for natural timing and development.
Facilitator Role
The facilitator is someone who possesses a willingness to work on themselves deeply and attempts to entrain and embody the core processes,
relational stages, practices (detachment, attachment, and non-attachment), and the three qualities.
A facilitator has experience and training in meditation and breathing exercises, understands Process Meditation philosophy, and can apply these principles both for themselves and with others.
Key responsibilities include:
Creating a safe sphere for exploration
Modeling the practices and qualities
Supporting with conscious application of direction as needed (if needed)
Meeting the explorer with an open heart
Continually developing their own process
Training Path for Facilitators:
Personal engagement with the Process Meditation method
Education on theoretical foundations presented in accessible language
Skill development in active listening, empathy, and facilitation techniques
Regular practice with peers, receiving feedback from experienced facilitators
Ongoing self-reflection and deepening of personal practice
Explorer Role
The explorer is someone prepared to curiously investigate their internal states and consciously begin the journey of better processing their daily life through this practice and with a facilitator.
The explorer's goal may be to eventually become a facilitator themselves or simply to integrate the practice into their daily life.
Key characteristics include:
Willingness to be curious about internal experience
Openness to the process
Commitment to regular process
Honesty about current states and experiences
Patience with the unfolding process
Explorer's Journey: The explorer's path involves developing self-awareness, learning to recognize patterns, and gradually building capacity for self-regulation through the core processes. With consistent engagement and the support of a facilitator, explorers often experience increased clarity, emotional balance, and a deeper connection to their inherent value and potential.
Direction and Dependence
It is natural to be directed and dependent at different times in life. Whether as facilitator and explorer, parent and child, teacher and student, peer to peer, helper and helpee, carer and cared for—we fluctuate in this dynamic throughout our lives.
Process Meditation seeks to allow this natural fluctuation while maintaining the goal of self-responsibility and co-responsibility without extremes in either direction.
The Directive Aspect & The Dependent Aspect
The directive nature of the practice occurs when the explorer indicates—either through verbal communication or non-verbal cues—that they need direction or support to settle their nervous system. The facilitator would then gently encourage the explorer to return to the core processes or suggest taking a break.
This balanced approach recognizes that both direction and dependence have constructive and challenging expressions:
Constructive Expressions:
Guidance that respects freedom and encourages growth
Compassion that responds to suffering without creating neediness
Humility that honors connection without diminishing worth
Patience paired with understanding
Balance between giving and receiving
Challenging Expressions:
Control that stifles freedom
Indifference that withholds support
Arrogance that denies interconnection
Calculated waiting without true care
Imbalanced relationships of power and submission
References
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