Meditation has been and is practiced in many countries by many cultures and is slowly becoming a "mainstream" with lots of the woo woo falling away as, I hate to say, science catches up has begun to show the mental and physiological benefits of regular meditation.
This is not just for hippies or yogis anymore!
So why do it?
I'm going to share with you my perspective and experiences, and through this I hope that your journey resonates and regular meditation becomes part of your daily ritual.
I've meditated on and off for years and also used self hypnosis quite regularly to depend my meditation practice. Since moving to Australia I stopped doing both - it was mostly from feeling self conscious about it, as I was travelling and living in shared dorms I was concerned what people would think of me. And then I just fell out of the habit of it, I was working, partying and dating that was my life.
Lots of heartbreak, falling for guys too fast, insecurities rising to surface when guys didn't want to date me and loss of good friends after turning into unsuccessful relationships.
After a relationships, which was actually my longest ever at 7/8 months. I was crushed when he ended things after I told him I was falling in love. This coupled with stress in the workplace...my health started to crumble. If you've read my blogs, you'll know that I've suffered from a chronic condition - ulcerative colitis (same family as IBS). For the first time in a long time I was suffering from rather severe symptoms.
Now when I was experencing all of this, I tried to meditate. My mind was constantly buzzing my body was in pain from not being able to stop to heal. I needed desperately to still my mind, to rest, to have a peaceful sleep. And it just wasn't working. I couldn't do it, meditating was too hard, every time I tried my mind would start bringing up all the things I was trying to keep myself busy from thinking about.
Not that long before, whilst I was still with this guy, a friend had told me about Headspace - a guided meditation app. I downloaded it and started. 10 minutes a day for 10 days. It was practical, I has someone to listen to who was telling me what to do and what to do to stay focused, but most importantly what to do when my mind started thinking and doing all the worrying that it was.
I finally did it. The change in my health was almost instant. Calming my mind and reducing the stress allowed my body to be still, repair and start functioning well again.
I continued with the guided daily meditations for a good few months, with the odd skip here and there. Actually when work got stressful again, it was something I stopped doing because "I didn't have time for it". I very quickly realised that was a bad move and got right back on to it again.
I started dating again and continued with my meditation, it was wonderful. To be continuously at peace at the start of every day, to reflect and to working on things that were going on as they came to my awareness. The relationship with next guy I dated didn't last too long, but again it was an emotionally difficult end (it followed a very out of the blue redundancy - lots of shock and frustration from that - another day another blog). And once again I fell out of my meditation practice.
When will I learn right!?!
But as I did before, I went through my cycle and got back on to it, and once again as it had before it helped to still me. I made excuses on days - again 'too busy', 'I'll do it later' and then never get round it it, 'I feel fine today' and so on. but i went back to it and I started to do other meditations that helped deepen my spiritual connection, that were longer.
Where am I now?
I'll be honest, meditation is not a fixed part of my morning or night ritual. However, it IS part of my daily ritual - I do a variety of types of meditations from very short to very long - all incredibly effective and all aid me in maintaining the wellness and balance in my body, mind and spirit.
What does the future hold?
With meditation becoming more "mainstream", even being practiced in forward thinking schools (yes forward thinking, those that have teachers that see benefits in calming and centring a children's minds to be more receptive and kind - I know a lot of mums that want that for their kids! But I digress...), we have a great opportunity to bring more kindness and peace into the world.
That may take this whole article back to "woo woo", but ask yourself, 'if you don't have the balls to do it now, when will you? Yes, that's right I took it there...but it's takes a lot of physical, mental and spiritual strength to sit and meditate.
Imagine if you will that all of the armies and political leaders in our beautiful world started their day with meditation, not prayer, but meditation.
A beautiful quote I read goes 'Prayer is you talking to God, Meditation is you listening' (if you know the author please let me know, I would love to credit them). Whether you believe in God or not, meditating is a practice of connecting to heart, connecting with love and everything that is pure.
My challenge to you
I challenge you to meditate. But here's the hard part, don't do it to win this challenge, do it to be a better version of yourself, to be happier, to be more peace, patient, calm, centred, focused, productive - do it to connect with your family, friends, co-workers, community.
Why? Because that's the prize - when you meditate you win! You all win!
Let me know how you get on, and your thoughts on anything I've written. I love hearing from you.
Go best your best,
Bhav xx