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Weekly Wellness Tips
The Power of Stillness
and the Healing Potential of Meditation and Movement |
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Dear Community,
As someone who has faced very challenging mental health issues within my family and within myself in the past, I have found one of my greatest healing tools in my life to be mindfulness and meditation. I was not always a fan of meditation. In fact I practiced yoga for 13 or 14 years before I started meditating regularly. About 3 years ago, while I was traveling, I began a simple morning meditation practice. It transformed my life in a deep way.
Taking 5, and then 10, and now 15 minutes a day where I stop, pause, breathe and pay attention to my inner experience has helped me immensely. It has helped me calm my mind, notice my emotions, and not get too thrashed around on the turbulent waves of life. Like everyone, I still have my difficult days (especially in these uncertain economic times) and still move through a wide variety of emotions, but there is an underlying equanimity and peace that became present in my life once I began meditating daily.
Even if you think you are a 'bad' meditator, you are not. And almost everyone thinks they are a bad meditator at first. Maybe you just haven't found the right style of meditation, or maybe you haven't found the right space, the right teacher or the right app. I wrote meditation off for many years because I didn't realize it doesnt have to be serious. Meditation can be fun, it can be a precious self-compassion practice, it can be a gift you give yourself every morning or for short bursts throughout the day that helps provides a stable mental foundation for your life.
If you haven't found meditation helpful in the past, think about bringing the practice of mindfulness (non judgemental awareness of the present moment) into your daily activities- whether it is running, biking, listening to music, dancing, or making art.
This week's newletter is dedicated to providing tips and tools for beginning a meditation practice and also includes a video on emotional release techniques. Taking care of our mental health is not a luxury, it is essential. It is as important as our physical health. I hope this week we can find the help we need and access the resources that lift us up, remind us we are not alone, and know that we are connected to a greater whole - a collective incredible earth that is shifting and changing all the time. You are loved.
Sincerely,
Emmy Chahal, BA, RYT, Certified Intuitive Energy Massage Practitioner. |
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“Sitting in meditation is nourishment for your spirit and nourishment for your body, as well.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh
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What is Meditation? Why Meditate?
Meditation to me, is accessing a state of calm, relaxed alertness to observe and witness our bodies, minds, and the present moment. Meditation is an aspect of many spiritual practices. Mindfulness meditation has gained momentum in the past decades for its many rich benefits on body and mind. Meditation is also a chance to connect inwards, with your own unique experience of life. Like yoga, it is a chance to reconnect with yourself, your true self beyond thought. 'Mindfulness' is basically meditation as studied by John Kabat-Zinn as a meditation technique that is not associated with a religious, faith, or spiritual background.
Why Meditate? Well, it's a different reason for everyone. Check out this awesome article from Harvard University about some of the researched and proven benefits of mindfulness meditation (many of the benefits are mental and physical health related): https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/
And if you are still a skeptic, check out this article written by three PhD trained researchers from the American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/ce-corner .
In the above article, research found that mindfulness helps with:
- reduced rumination
- stress reduction
- boosts to working memory
- focus
- less emotional reactivity
- more cognitive ability
- greater relationship satisfaction
- and a plethora of other benefits.
What are the risks?
As a trauma informed and trained yoga teacher and meditation guide, it is important to know that meditation can be contraindicated in instances of suicidal depression, or acute mental illness. In these circumstances it can be better to practice with a teacher, focusing on deep breathing, and to go into it very slowly and with a trauma informed perspective.
Sometimes if we have pushed down a lot of emotions, when we stop and pause and breathe, we can feel things more intensely at first and old emotions can surface.
Meditation can sometimes be used as a form of emotional bypassing and not the deep embodied awareness I believe it is meant for, it is definitely helpful to find resonant resources.
I recommend Tara Brach, John Kabat-Zinn, Thich Naht Hahn, and Eckhart Tolle as good teachers to learn more about. There are apps available such as the Insight Meditation App and the Calm App. I have heard good things about them as well as Sam Harris's work, but I have not used them myself. |
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Do you find meditation very difficult?
You're not alone. Try these ideas to make it more fun and enjoyable. When we enjoy doing something, we are more likely to stick to it. A daily practice, or at least a regular meditation practice provides huge benefits for our mind and body, but the pressure to do that can be counterproductive. So go at the pace that suits you.
1) Use sound. Sound meditation helped me a lot at the beginning. Generally, it is best to use instrumental music or music without words when you start meditating, it is also helpful if the music is soothing. You can use solfeggio sounds, classical music, biurnal beats, nature sounds, soft guitar, etc. Whatever you like.
If you are comfortable with sound healing and wish to explore using mantra as a meditation technique - singing and chanting can help create differerent vibrational frequencies in the body. Kundalini yoga chants (Snatam Kaur and Jai-Jagdeesh are two of my favourite musicians/teachers), sanskrit chanting, Taize, tibetan buddhist chanting, gregorian chants, are all examples of beautiful spiritual sound traditions.
You can even just listen to your favourite song with calm alertness, and being entirely and completely present while you listen to it (that is still a form of meditation in my books)!
Here are a few of my favourites sound resources:
- Tibetan Bells 11 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ar9vsmFhJU
- Gayatri Mantra Chanting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlUsoWmso9U
- Ocean Sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHFdClrwBaI
2) Try meditating outside in nature. I know for many of this can be difficult right now, but if you have a plant indoors, a balcony, or after you exercise try meditating outside. Just simply sit down somewhere where you feel safe near a tree, or an aspect of the natural world and spend 4-5 minutes breathing (set a timer on your phone). It's even better to develop a relationship with this place, and return to it many times to breathe and meditate. It will become somewhere you start to habitually associate with being peaceful and quiet and can become a refuge for you.
3) Try meditating with others. Meditating with a friend, your partner, or a group can be very helpful. There are many meditation groups online and around the world.
4) Try listening to a guided meditation. When I began meditating, I would simply turn on Louise Hay's morning meditation on youtube as soon as I woke up in the morning and would let her words calm and soothe as I greeted the new day.
I have created two free short guided meditations - just for you! Scroll down to access them. |
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I made two free short guided meditations just for you!
To access a 5 minute grounding meditation or a 10 minute morning practice meditation- check out my soundcloud audio recordings (it should work for all the Apple users out there now, yay!).
Access my two guided meditations here:
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Emotional Release Techniques Video
- An Embodiment Perspective
I created a short youtube video below with 3 or 4 slightly silly yet effective techniques you can do with me to help you move through some tricky emotions. The video is quite candid and not as polished as I would like, but I am working towards learning about technology and filming - it is really a learning curve for me so bear with me and features my cat Midnight at the end. Better done than perfect, right? Enjoy. I hope it makes you smile (and maybe laugh a little too).
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Poetry Inspiration for the Week
To end this week's newsletter, I would like to share one of my favourite poems written by Mary Oliver. May your week be peaceful, joyful, and grounding. You are important, you are special, you are valued, you are beautiful. You are not alone. Hang in there and just live one day, one hour, or one moment at a time. You got this. We got this. We are in this together. We will come out of it together. Be kind and gentle to yourself. Give yourself the time and permission to explore all your feelings, and to know that none of them are wrong. Sometimes uncertainty can hold great gifts for us if we pause to listen and tune in to our heart's wisdom within.
Wild Geese
| You do not have to be good. |
| You do not have to walk on your knees |
| for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. |
| You only have to let the soft animal of your body |
| love what it loves. |
| Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. |
| Meanwhile the world goes on. |
| Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain |
| are moving across the landscapes, |
| over the prairies and the deep trees, |
| the mountains and the rivers. |
| Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, |
| are heading home again. |
| Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, |
| the world offers itself to your imagination, |
| calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - |
| over and over announcing your place |
| in the family of things. |
- Mary Oliver |
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