Everywhere you look it seems like mental health experts are preaching on the benefits of meditation. I feel like I hear the term mindfulness on a daily basis from everyone including celebrities, monks (yes, I follow a few monks on Instagram: Jay Shetty is my favorite), neurologists, personal development speakers, authors and even my own friends.
Meditation is one of those things that has piqued my interest for a long time, but I’ve been dragging my feet to actually take the plunge myself. Why? Because I’m sooooooooooo skeptical of this practice.
Do I really believe that all these people are part of one big conspiracy to make the rest of us believe that sitting in silence for a few minutes everyday has the power to change our mental make-up? At my core? Yes, yes, I do.
Do I really believe that all these people are being brainwashed into some kind of New Age fad that is going to be a laughable practice in 10 years? Yes, yes, I do.
Do I really believe that all these people must have some kind of destiny toward enlightenment that the rest of us little people probably aren’t ever going to achieve so it’s better just to leave the meditation practices to the gurus? Yes, yes, I do.
Do I really believe that meditation and yoga and mindfulness and shaman retreats are beneficial to some people but will never work for me? Yes, yes, I do.
I’ll tell you a funny story about the first time I ever got drunk in college. The same kind of skepticism I have now about meditation was the same skepticism I had about alcohol’s effect on the brain back in college.
I thought surely, alcohol couldn’t actually change your motor skills or your vision. Surely, everyone is just pretending to fall all over the place. Surely, everyone is doing exactly what they wish they could do sober, but they’re doing it “drunk” because then they can blame it on the alcohol so to speak. Surely, everyone just acts “drunk” for the attention.
Yeah, it took me one night of more than a few too many shots of tequila to learn that drunkenness was not a conspiracy after all.
I think my skepticism is largely in part because I’m an experiential person. I don’t want you to tell me that skydiving is fun and just take your word for it. I want to experience skydiving for myself and come up with my own opinions. It’s the same reason why I don’t read movie reviews before seeing a movie for myself. It’s the same reason why I don’t recommend books that I’ve never read, even if I have trusted confidants who have told me a book is good. It’s why I can’t write about the usefulness of meditation to treat anxiety and depression unless I’ve gone through it myself.
However, I can’t do this journey alone. One, because I’m not disciplined enough to keep at it without someone to hold me accountable. Two, because this whole meditation thing is so new to me that I don’t even know where to begin researching it let alone putting it into practice.
And that’s what led me to reach out to my friend, Michelle Maha Vidya.
Michelle and I met because one of my good friends in Christiansburg has pretty much adopted me into her family and now I spend most of the major holidays with them camping on the river. Michelle is her cousin.
What I didn’t know until recently is that Michelle is also a registered yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance, has completed hypnosis and past life regression certifications and is a member of the International Association of Counselors and Therapists. Oh and she also has worked with Reiki, Chakra Energy Work, Intuition Development, Meditation, Hypnotherapy and Astrology.
She’s kind of the perfect person to introduce me to this world of mindfulness and has been incredibly gracious with her time to answer my gazillion questions and guide me through the early steps of meditation.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about my initial journey into meditation, Michelle’s own story with depression and anxiety, and of course practical, easy steps to begin your own practice of meditation.
For I believe we are drawn together to create a life we love.
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