I can full-heartedly say that learning how to meditate and incorporating it into your daily life is worth it. For me personally, it has been life changing.
That said, many struggle to meditate, and even more struggle to realize the benefits of incorporating it as a daily practice and so give it up.
It’s normal to struggle. We are so attuned to the fast-paced, high-stressed, constant distraction way of living that this is what our mind and our ego are used to. This is our baseline norm – and so when we try to meditate, our mind and our ego will resist, simply because we are going outside of our normal patterns.
When we begin to meditate, our mind often doesn’t want to quiet – it is always either reliving the past, worrying about the future, or busy telling unnecessary stories – and this can make meditation very challenging. (Learning to stay present in the “now” is another tool that can help train our mind to stop living in the past or the future.)
Many may also feel that meditation is a waste of precious time you don’t have enough of, or that it will weaken your take-charge ability in your work life, or knock you off your game.
The truth is, that stress, overload, constant engagement with screens, and the fast-paced, never stop moving or doing lifestyles common to so many of us absolutely erode our cognitive abilities – and as someone said, actually “make us stupid.” Fear and anxiety can have the same affect.
Additionally, this impact compounds over time and builds up. So, if we never do anything to rejuvenate our brain and our mental capacity, it will continue to erode over time, and so will our health.
Our brain and nervous system need a break. They need time to rejuvenate and regenerate. One way to help that along, is to incorporate breathwork and meditation into our daily life.
So how to do it?
My own journey into meditation took a long time but it doesn’t have to be that way for you.
My attempts at understanding how to meditate began when I was in college around 24 years ago. I took a course where the instructor would have us lay down on the floor and try to coach us into meditation.
A lot of the time I would fall asleep. When I didn't fall asleep, I found that my ego and mind would resist it. I would feel uncomfortable as I began sinking into that state of relaxation and a spurt of anxiety would pull me out of it. It happened every time, without fail – I didn’t want to give up the control I felt I needed, and it was difficult to surrender to the meditation.
At the end of that course, I had decided that meditation just wasn’t for me.
If only I had understood that thoughts were allowed, and that the only goal was to learn to return our focus to our breath, sound, or mantra as a way to get into a meditative state. If only someone had explained that the uncomfortable feelings I had experienced and my increased heart rate were only my mind resisting the change to what it considered normal.
If I had understood these two things, I believe I would have been able to continue to practice meditation and adopt it into my life back then.
Instead, I turned to running for my “meditation”. Running was my most effective tool for silencing thoughts, and for me it seemed effective – until I got injured in the Army. My injury made running impossible for a long time, and so sadly I lost this tool for “meditation”.
After losing running as an option, when I needed that meditative silence, I would turn to time spent alone in nature, or through losing myself in music.
Yet, when Covid hit in 2020, a time when I was moving towards opening my own nutrition consulting business and also going through a divorce, trails and beaches were closed. It felt like nature was taken away me at a time when I needed it most – it hadn’t yet occurred to me to try meditation – something that can be done anywhere.
Silence and connection to nature is very grounding, and while extremely healing in its own way, it doesn’t replace meditation. I also now understand that running and walking meditation, while something we can use, is not the same as sitting still in meditation.
As I settled into my new life after my divorce, a new job, and an ongoing pandemic, different stressors began to appear in my life. Even after cutting out all nonessential time sucks like TV and social media – I was still overloaded and beginning to feel overwhelmed. The stress and overload began to impact my health.
Finally listening to my intuition, I knew I needed try meditation to help me deal with the stress (it took me long enough to give it another go!).
At first, I tried guided meditation apps, but these never worked for me. They felt more like a distraction. So, I dropped the apps, and decided to simply learn to sit quietly. Not an easy thing for me to do – my mind would highjack each attempt – using it to make sure I was listening to all the nonsense it wanted to discuss, or thought I needed to worry about.
Almost ready to give up on it again, I decided to give it a go with a bit of imagination. Before I did though, I recognized that I had a new goal when it came to meditation. No longer just about helping me deal with stress or doing it as a health benefit, I now wanted to do it so I could go inward, connect to my higher self, connect with the divine, and explore what would come with that.
This shift in perspective and intention changed everything for me with meditation.
One evening, I escaped to my room and grabbed a couple of crystals I felt would help me with the meditation. I sat down on the floor (laying down while meditating doesn’t work), took some cleansing breaths to ground myself in the moment, and closed my eyes.
During this particular experience, I imagined myself plugging in to earth and the web of life – I could see the strands of light in my vision – some brighter and stronger than others. I imagined a light reaching up from the crown of my head towards the divine and plugged in to the spiritual. I sat there and felt the love and light fill me up from head to foot. There were no thoughts except what I was experiencing in that moment. When I came back to a more awakened state and opened my eyes, I found that almost an hour had passed, and it took me a while to return fully to the present. How I felt in that moment – so relaxed, so peaceful – I knew I had finally meditated in a very deep and profound way.
Not all my meditation sessions are like what I described above. Mostly, my meditation sessions are shorter where I use breath, sound, or mantra so my brain can go into a different state where it can relax and rejuvenate. I use meditation to do inner work – a process to help me let go of unwanted thought patterns so I can move towards positive transformation. Finally, I also use meditation to develop connection with spirit.
Over the past year and a half, I have meditated almost every day – at times for 15 minutes, and at times for an hour or more. Meditation has changed my life.
Meditation is our most effective tool for drawing out those thoughts, patterns, and traumas that remain stuck in our subconscious, so our conscious mind can process and finally let them go. An essential process for true holistic healing and wellness.
Meditation is regenerative and rejuvenating for our brain and nervous systems – especially in the culture we live in today.
Meditation is also our most effective tool for getting in touch with our own soul and to spirit, for increasing our awareness, and for awakening our inner healer.
There are proven physical benefits to meditation. Some of the benefit comes from the breathwork often used while meditating, while the rest comes from the meditative state itself.
For me meditation has expanded the power of my intuition, enhanced my ability to stay or easily return to being grounded and centered, and increased the sense of peace I feel. I have found that I have more focus and less stress. I have more time.
What I have learned over the past year and a half, is that meditation is not hard, and we can ALL easily do it. The trick is to not try so hard.
What do I mean by this?
When we go into meditation trying to meditate, we will have a more difficult time actually meditating.
Trying = fighting our thoughts. This is not conducive to a successful meditation.
If we are trying to meditate, we aren’t calming our mind – we are focused on thought.
When we understand that all we need to do is sit comfortably, close our eyes, relax, and then focus on our breath, sound, or a mantra it is easier to do. When thoughts come, all we need to do is let the thought go and return to the breath, the sound, or the mantra, and keep repeating that until the meditation session is over.
There is no such thing as turning off thoughts. Don’t fight them, don’t judge them, and don’t focus on them. Just let them flow in and out, and keep returning to your breath, your sound, or your mantra during your meditation. That’s it. Over time, fewer thoughts will come.
If you initially get that anxious uncomfortable feeling or if your heartrate increases while trying to meditate – understand that it is simply your ego resisting change. It will go away – and you have the power to tell it to.
Do you feel you don’t have the time? The cool thing about meditation, is that the healing it provides for our brain is so restful and energizing (more so than sleep), that you will find you actually have more time because you become more focused and capable while carrying out your daily tasks.
Stress decreases cognitive ability, meditation restores it.
Give it a try!
If you already meditate – awesome! Keep doing it!
If you, like me, have struggled to be able to do it, below are some tips that might help.
Using breath, sound and/or mantra in meditation:
Breath: the type of breathing for meditation is typically a 2x breath, (although a 1x breath will work as well). A 2x breath means that whatever your count is for the breath in, double it for the breath out. So, if you breathe in for 3 seconds, you will release your breath over the count of 6.
This will tell your nervous system to turn off the fight or flight you are likely in (we all often are) and will relax you.
Meditation while focusing on the breath means that your attention is on the breath, and not on your thoughts - so your brain gets to relax. Thoughts will come and we should let them – just don’t focus on them. Let them go and return to focusing on your breathing. The more you practice this, the easier it gets.
The breathing we do in meditation or breathwork is deep and slow. When you breathe in, your chest shouldn’t be the first to move, your diaphragm and abdomen should, and then your chest follows. It takes some getting used to because we have all forgotten how to breathe properly – and we typically breathe too fast and shallow.
Breathe deeply in through your nose letting your diaphragm and abdomen expand, and then your chest. Let the air release out through your mouth. Know that while breathing in you are breathing in life and energy, and when breathing out you are releasing what you no longer need, but what life around you can use.
Sound: we can use a few different types of sound during meditation. Shamanic drumming, singing bowls, the Om sound, Gregorian chants, or music tracks set to a specific frequency such as 432Hz are all options. I’ve used them all and continue to whenever I feel I want one or the other. For me, they each provide a different type of meditative experience. It can be fun to experiment with them and see what resonates with you. You can find all of these on YouTube.
Mantra: This is typically done with Sanskrit words or phrases. Some believe and have experienced that the sound vibrations of this ancient language are said to heal the body through the divine vibrational frequencies that we feel with each syllable – whether they are said aloud or silently in our mind, and not through the meaning of the words.
When using mantras for meditation, we first choose the word or phrase – whatever feels good to you. Then learn how to properly pronounce it.
You may start with saying it out loud, but the goal is to simply repeat it silently in your head while meditating. The speed at which you repeat it inside your head is up to you.
Some examples of easy single word mantras to use before graduating to phrases:
Om (Aum)
Dhyana: dhyA-na (focus)
Shanti (peace)
Swaha (surrender)
Samprati (present moment)
Satchitanada (Sat Chit Ananda)
There are a few soft rules or tips with meditation:
Try to do this in the morning or before your last meal of the day – while relaxing, it can actually be energizing and so for some may not be a good thing to do before bed. That said, if evening is the only time you get to yourself, give it a go, you may find it will work for you that time of day.
Meditate while sitting up – can be on your sofa or a chair with your back supported and head free – but make sure your spine is straight and you can fully relax in that position. Do not meditate while lying down – it doesn’t work well, and more than likely you’ll just fall asleep.
Don’t set alarms. Feel free to check your clock if you need to. Also, save a couple of minutes at the end of the session where you let go of your attention to your breath, sound, or mantra, and let yourself just be. Practicing gratitude in this moment is an excellent way to spend this time.
Understand that you may begin to experience emotions that bubble to the surface – let them. Process them, and then let them go. This is natural. Journal, talk to someone, reach out to us here at True North if you find yourself struggling with this aspect of meditation.
Work up to 30 minutes a day over time. Can be done in two 15-minute sessions (one in the morning and one in the afternoon).
If you are new to meditation, I would encourage you to start with a 5-to-10-minute meditation session and build from there. The most important aspect of adopting a new practice is consistency. So even if you only have 2 minutes on some days – still do it.
If you are a member and have questions on meditation or on what you are experiencing during meditation, you can post your question in the True North Community Forum. This is where you can interact with me for Questions and Answers. You can sign up as a member here: Memberships | True North Experience
If you would like more guidance, then consider scheduling a coaching session.
While I don’t offer a meditation course at this time, I can refer you to other tools and courses that can help.
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