THE POWER OF MEDITATION: HOW MY PRACTICE CHANGED MY LIFE

“The thing about meditation is you become more and more you” - David Lynch

In my first post, My 30th Birthday Wish, I wrote about my earliest and most authentic introduction to a deep meditation practice, which began after returning from a month-long trip backpacking through Europe.

Before leaving for Europe, my mom told me she learned about a meditation practice on the Howard Stern show that he and other celebrities used to cope with stress and anxiety. It was called Transcendental Meditation. 

My mom found a certified teacher near her home, where I stayed for the rest of the summer, and asked me if I wanted to learn.

I had practiced yoga throughout college and committed during my first year in graduate school that summer before my travels. I told my mom I would love to learn as I thought it would be akin to my yoga practice.

As open-minded as  I was, I found the learning process somewhat hokie. The woman I was learning from played videos on a VHS tape to teach me the technique and performed - what, at the time, I felt - was a strange ceremony before we began. I would return to her home for a couple of weeks, and when we would practice together, she would often fall asleep.

I was skeptical.

But, after returning home to start my second year of graduate school, I would practice twenty minutes twice a day (on and off) for about six months. 

I remember that period as one of the happiest times in my life - I was practicing yoga daily, meditating, and met my husband, with whom I spent weekends biking and camping and evenings cooking and walking the trail by his apartment. It was a special time - I fell in love, knew I had found my life partner, and felt very at peace with myself.

However, I fell away from the practice after starting my first full-time job (which was a mistake, as life only became more stressful). My life continued to progress positively, but that peacefulness I felt after that summer was soon gone.

When I stopped practicing Transcendental Meditation, I practiced yoga and followed guided meditations. However, when I became pregnant six years after that summer, those practices were not sufficient for my ability to cope with an uncomfortable pregnancy and life’s stressors. 

I looked back on the past years and realized that the last time I felt my absolute best was when I had started my transcendental meditation practice. I knew I needed to recommit.

One evening during my second trimester, I remembered that once you learn Transcendental Meditation through a certified teacher, you have access to teachers, information, and programs for life. I logged into the organization’s website with my old account and located a teacher in my area.

This time, I felt less skeptical.

The teacher I found was a retired neurosurgeon who had an extensive background in peer-reviewed research that demonstrated how meditation (specifically, transcendental meditation) affects the brain and the positive outcomes related to those effects.

I began to practice again, and those feelings of peacefulness and contentment returned. This time, however, the practice transformed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined. 

My meditation practice carried me through the second and third trimesters of my first pregnancy, allowing me to cope with health issues and reframe my approach to life, including my relationships with others, my job, and myself. 

It set me free from stress and striving and opened the door for peace and joy in the present moment.

My world went from black and white to color.

When I sit in my backyard to practice, my breath automatically syncs with the sway of the trees. 

Alice Walker, American novelist and author of The Color Purple, explains the feeling that comes with her transcendental meditation practice as taking her back to the way that she “naturally was as a child growing up in the country, rarely seeing people.” She writes: “I was in that state of oneness with creation, and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.” 

I understand Alice Walker’s experience perfectly. She means to truly understand the human experience is to awaken to the truth that we are not separate from the rest of the world as we know it. True peace comes from a place of acceptance of that world and what it is.

I promise Transcendental Meditation will bring you that peace.

TO EXPERIENCE IS TO BELIEVE: THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION

Although my experience with meditation is deeply spiritual, the practice has benefits beyond spirituality. 

For skeptics, like I once was, the transcendental meditation website cites hundreds of peer-reviewed (literally, nearly 200)  articles that support the benefits of transcendental meditation in overcoming:

Anxiety,
Depression,
Insomnia, 
PTSD, and 
Addiction. 

The TM website also cites articles that outline how transcendental meditation supports brain function, cardiovascular health, the immune system, and overall well-being.

If you don’t believe me, go to the website. But also, if you don’t want to read hundreds of lengthy scientific articles, just consider what I am telling you in this post.

Although I favor transcendental meditation over all other forms of meditation, many meditation practices I have learned throughout my journey are also highly beneficial in supporting overall health and well-being. 

Most of these meditation practices are incredibly simple and easy to integrate into one’s life. With a strong commitment, any or all of the benefits I listed above are possible.

The most common misconception about meditation is that one’s mind (or life) is too busy to focus enough to practice.

I wholeheartedly believe that this is not true. 

I also think that many people already have meditative practices integrated into their life that give them a sense of well-being, even if they never thought about these practices as meditation. Some include:

Knitting
Playing music
Dancing
Biking
Running
Yoga
Painting
Reading
Writing.

I consider any activity that allows for a sense of focus that comes with ease and lets the mind unwind from the rigidness of day-to-day life meditation.

Even if you already have a practice that feels meditative - adding the techniques I am going to share will only strengthen your ability and enjoyment of what you do.

I hope you keep reading and consider integrating these meditation practices into your life.

MEDITATION COMES IN MANY FORMS: AN OVERVIEW

“Find what feels good” - Adriene Mishler.

If you haven’t done much yoga and are looking for a place to start, Yoga With Adriene on YouTube is where it’s at. 

Adriene’s teaching is approachable and fun, and her overall message is to find what feels good for you and forget the rest.

I think the same applies to finding a meditation practice. There are different avenues to enter into a meditative state and reap the benefits. It is about finding what works for you.

What follows is my understanding of six different meditation techniques ending with an explanation of the simplicity of transcendence and a visual to help explain how it works. 

VISUALIZATION: My understanding of the visualization technique comes from my work with my somatic therapist, yoga practitioners, and reiki healers. It is also popular on Insight Timer, Head Space, and Calm apps.

In a visualization technique, the practitioner leads another individual by guiding them to imagine things, including tranquil scenes, colors, numbers, spiritual visions, and scenarios of self-acceptance and love.

Although some feel visualization is difficult, it is important to remember that all it takes is an open mind and your imagination. We all use our imagination daily to plan our futures or return to past experiences.

The visualization technique aids in well-being because the mind and the body do not know the difference between what is real and what isn’t. What we imagine becomes our reality, and if we regularly practice imagining situations in which we feel good, we will start to feel good outside of our meditation practice.

BODY SCAN: This technique is used frequently during a yoga practice by a guide but can also be accessed on your own once well practiced.

The technique involves moving your awareness through different parts of your body to see what that part of the body is feeling and then relaxing with whatever feelings you observe. As my yoga teachers say, soften and surrender to what is. 

Many of us can become so busy in our everyday lives that we do not take the time to ask ourselves how we feel and what our bodies tell us they need. Although, at first, this practice can be challenging by bringing awareness to sensations we might not enjoy, it allows for better self-care and a more intimate relationship with ourselves over time.

NOTING: I learned the noting technique through the app Head Space. It resembles the cognitive behavioral therapy I have learned and practiced with psychologists. 

Noting is about being mindful and aware of your thoughts. 

Similar to ignoring our bodies to push forward with the tasks of everyday life, many of us ignore our thoughts, too.

Like a body scan, noting can be difficult because it forces us to confront negative patterns of thinking and uncomfortable feelings that we often want to avoid. 

However, it teaches us that instead of becoming engulfed in the feeling or thought, we can work to identify it for what it is, note it, and move on. Identifying thoughts and feelings for what they are allows for greater peace of mind and a deep understanding of the power of metacognitive thinking.

The noting technique is simple: when you notice your mind wandering, overthinking, doubting, or your feelings becoming overwhelming, you simply note it and return to the present moment.

BREATHWORK: Breathwork is at the core of any strong yoga practice. What is important to understand about yoga is that the physical or aesthetic manifestation of the poses doesn’t matter if you’re not one with your breath. Advanced yoga teachers will tell you that the purpose of the postures is to bring one into absolute stillness with their breath.

Sitting in meditation with breathwork is as simple as placing a hand on your belly or chest and following each in-breath and out-breath. Like noting, if your mind starts to wander, you gently and non-judgmentally return to your breath.

Breathwork is one of the easiest meditation practices to integrate into everyday life. It is easy to pause and breathe in a moment of overwhelm or when one needs a break. 

MOVEMENT MEDITATION: I think movement meditation is a technique that almost everyone will be familiar with, whether or not they have thought of their movement practice as meditation. 

Some of the most obvious examples of movement meditation are yoga, walking, running, and biking. But as I mentioned earlier in this post, I believe any repetitive movement synchronous with breath and taking a soft focus is meditative. 

If all the other meditation practices I have described sound overwhelming, beginning with mindfully walking or some easy yoga is a great way to start a regular meditation practice. 

TRANSCENDENCE: So what is transcendental meditation, then?

It is as simple as repeating a mantra with no discrete meaning for 20 minutes and then stopping the mantra to rest for a few before returning to your day. 

Repeating a mantra takes little concentration and allows thoughts to easily come and go as the mind effortlessly moves towards stillness.

Before practicing Transcendental Meditation, you must learn from a certified teacher. Unfortunately, I have found that there aren’t many people talking about the practice, nor is there much quick and easily digestible information about it available.

So that is where I come in.

Suppose you have any familiarity with psychology and the human brain. In that case, an easy way to understand the practice is that the mantra allows one’s mind to travel from conscious thoughts to a deep sense of rest and pure conscious awareness.

Pure conscious awareness is a state in which one is free from thoughts and entirely in sync with the present moment.

If this description of transcendence confuses you, I have recreated the visual my first teacher used to teach me below:

I sincerely wish that more people would come to find this practice. I often think about how people argue that there isn’t enough time with school, work, family, and friends to dedicate to this practice. I think about all the time we spend on social media absorbing content from others’ lives without learning to be present with our own.

For those who might wonder if this meditation practice would interfere with any religious beliefs, it doesn’t. This scientifically proven technique benefits the mind and body. 

However, if you are spiritual like me, it is also highly beneficial for the spirit. 

I recently listened to a podcast that perfectly described the relationship between religion and meditation:  Prayer is talking with God, and meditation is listening. 

HOLISTIC LIVING: WHY MY MEDITATION PRACTICE IS ESSENTIAL FOR MY HEALTH

For a long time, I attempted to find wellness by forcing myself to eat a particular way or exercise when I did not want to. I thought there was a “right” way to be healthy; it was hard for me.

I have since understood that when you don’t want to do something, it creates resistance, and resistance creates resentment.

We should not resist taking care of our well-being.

My meditation practice elicits a sense of calm and groundedness that helps me to move toward a life that embraces healthy habits with ease.

In that quiet stillness where I sit for 20 minutes twice a day, I find acceptance of what is and a deep sense of peace living in the present moment. 

When I am okay with being in the present moment, the rest naturally falls into place.

To me, holistic health is not just yoga, clean eating, and alternative medicine - it is a way of living that acknowledges and cares for all parts of me. 

My meditation practice allows me to accept myself as I am. When I accept and love myself, I make choices that serve me - and that sometimes means practicing yoga and eating clean.  Other times, it means eating pizza and taking Fireball shots with my friends.

Reading this post, I hope you understand that meditation is not difficult and that integrating it into your everyday life is simple.

This practice is not about forcing oneself into uncomfortable states but becoming comfortable with allowing what is. 

I invite you to try one of these practices.

Set aside 10 minutes in the morning or the evening.

Put on some comfy clothes and drink a glass of water.

Sit in a comfortable position that allows you to be alert.

Begin.

I promise if you commit, it will change your life, too.

There are also many apps that you can download on your phone to help guide you and provide more information and teachings, such as the three I mentioned (Head Space, Insight Timer, and Calm).

I plan to write a future post reviewing these apps and how I use them daily.

Additionally, if you are interested in learning TM you can find a teacher near you by using this link: https://us.wwv.tm.org

More soon,

AJ