In a world where women’s rights are continually being analyzed, considered, switched, and not at all a given, cultivating a spiritual practice is a way to nurture the the body and mind. This can feel like a special gift to yourself that is free. One that you create on your own. A destination all your own: to just be.
In recent days, weeks, and years, I have felt the continual shifts of changing time that has revealed a new landscape of politics and social dynamic which I don’t identify with. These shifts create thoughts and feelings which bring me to my knees sometimes. I didn’t want this landscape for my and your children.
My nieces and nephews don’t deserve to be handed dreams on a broken platter. “No one keeps silver anymore,” my mother-in-law once told me. I now understand why. Life feels as if it has become cheap in societal standards. Maybe it always was.
Gloom and doom aside, I struggle with these kinds of feelings and thoughts as I process with other women friends the state of things as we know it. However, I can’t completely unwind soul inside these ideas.
In yoga, we practice counter-poses. These are poses to counter the stretch of one pose, which brings balance back to the body. With this knowledge, we can apply this practice to balancing the feelings and thoughts of difficult times with meditation.
Why meditation calms the senses.
In yoga, when we withdraw the senses (feelings), we are able to turn attention to our personal soul, fortitude, and resilience. Attending to this brilliance of our personal experience helps us to restore and recharge our soul’s essence. It is hygiene for the spirit. Think of it as brushing your teeth or cleaning your face twice daily.
Adding meditation to the daily routine can create balance that is noticable by others. The summer for me has presented an unreliable schedule, extra activities, special events, and travel. This creates an obstacle in finding time to meditate. My family notices that I haven’t been meditating as regularly as I was about a month ago. I notice that I feel on edge and am sensitive to the news.
However, when my son touches my arm and asks, “Mommy, have you meditated recently?” It feels like an angel reminding me what I need. The elixir of clearing the energy from my mind and body is a deep connection with the greater consciousness. Some mind-body thought leaders believe that the limbic system is directly connected with the limbic system.
The limbic system is the part of our body that synthesizes emotion and memories. If you tend to be nostalgic or ruminate over past experiences, your limbic system is engaged. This system is also responsible for the unconcious processes like the body’s response to stress. This response is directly connected to the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system. When we synthesize emotions and worry the way I have been doing, this has a biological reaction that puts my hormones in danger of being overridden by the hormones: adrenaline and cortisol.
Overthinking and worrying can become “addictive” or habitual in nature because the feelings of adrenaline and cortisol become present when we are in a state of worry about the state of the world. The newsfeed, the scrolling of social media, the venting conversations… these all contribute to feeding the fire of heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, sexual arousal.
In short, we are not thinking consciously because the hormones in the body are overriding our thoughts with feelings of stimulation, panic, and maybe affecting our libido, too.
The respiration affect of the autonomic nervous system may not produce the outcome that you expect. If adrenaline is in the body, that may mean we are breathing more. This is true, but we are breathing more shorter and shallower breaths, which mean we are receiving less oxygen.
Less oxygen leads to poorer blood creation. This impacts our body’s tissues. Now we are analyzing how our ruminations and worries create a poorly nourished body. The matter of our body reflects our body’s health potential.
How do we calm the thoughts with intention?
I share this with you as a lesson in why we need not let the world’s problems get us down. When we find ourselves sad and in a state of worry, it’s time to do the counter pose: meditation.
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”
– Tich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
Meditation is a state of being. The most influential teacher and perhaps why I believe in online learning so much. His lessons shared from Plum Village over the years filled my heart with the lessons I needed to let go. This quote from his book,The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation helped me begin the process of letting go of past traumas. It helped me immensely and I turn to this now at a time when I need to let go of my ideas of the past.
Turning toward the work of dismantling sexist politics, actively participating in social change feels tiring to me. However, I am feeling stronger in re-reading this book and in re-engaging in meditation.
Meditation As An Elixer
As I described before, meditation is a sort of elixir for the mind and body. It is true!
The best part: you don’t have to purchase it. It is cultivated inside of you. Finding the place in your mind and body to just be takes practice. It can begin with a mindfulness practice. Being mindful of your gifts, your beautiful surroundings, the presence of all you need to live being around you… with these examples you can sit or be active and be mindful of the world around you. Continue with being mindful of your internal landscape. Without judgement, notice how you feel. Notice how the feelings are mobile and not at all static.
Being able to notice and observe these things for a while will lead you to that place of being. To just be and allow the body to house your spirit, this is the state of meditation that can connect you with the universe.
The secret to all of this is that the limbic system is becoming calm, the hormones are balancing and the healthy hormones and enzymes for the digestive system begin flowing. These systems in balance allows your spirit to connect to the greater consciousness shared in our world and universe. When you can sit in this space, you can begin strengthen your spirit for all that lies around you and ahead of you.
This practice can be accessed by anyone at anytime. You do need to create space for the path to open so you can step upon it and discover your own meditation experience. Sometimes just getting calm enough to see that this is what you want to do can be a chore. In those times a guided meditation can help.
Meditation to Beautify
The outcome of taking this on is a clarity in the eyes. The eyes communicate our feelings above our vocalizations. We can see beauty and clear thought in the eyes that are nourished with deep breaths of oxygen, which come with meditation practice.
We see beauty in the skin and hair with sound breathing and better digested foods from being calm. The mind-body connection is incomplete without our spiritual nature being in balance. Meditation can bring you here.
If you feel like you need help, there are a myriad of in-person groups, books, youtube videos, and apps out there. I even have a meditation app. You can find it at the link below, if you want to be guided into the meditative flow that can lead you to feelings of calm and peaceful movement toward the day’s opportunities and stresses. There are a couple of free guided meditations here:
