Dear Diary,
Today I thought about mediation and how many of my clients come into our work without knowing what it really means to meditate. Of course, I know what that’s like, because I have trouble with “that kind” of meditating too. Sit quietly, in complete silence, humming a random sound? Yeah, right.
When I made this video it was with the hope that I could help people learn what I’ve learned, that meditation is simple pondering and connecting with our relativity to the elements around us. It doesn’t have to be quiet. It just has to be helpful.
I remember being a new counselor and being terrified of having to lead mindfulness, feeling like a fraud asking people to do what I couldn’t do myself. It was just one of the many things that was rule following without my heart and soul coming along. It wasn’t until I came across that progressive muscle relaxation exercise when I realized I didn’t know all there was to know about meditation.
But boy, once that realization hit….it was off to the races! Like everything, once I take an interest in it, I slip into research mode to gather knowledge until I am satisfied. When I stepped into the world of guided meditation, sleep music, binaural beats, hypnotism, etc., I won’t lie. I was upset that those weren’t part of my formal education.
After all, isn’t anything that alters your thinking or feeling in a calm way good for you? It’s that damn Eastern vs. Western medicine. Those absolutes that are on the competitive plane. Psychology has to be about research and proving hypotheses. It can’t be a science if there aren’t absolutes. That’s the problem though. Even all that research doesn’t create absolutes, people just accept them as such without thinking bigger picture.
Reality being what it is, it made so much more sense to me that each individual could connect spiritually and with soul to different things and still be doing it “right”. Hell, I STILL have an energetic reaction to some Sevendust coming on my running playlist. I can get right into a zone, a meditative state of running, with that loud yelling music pumping through my ears. But that doesn’t mean everyone will have that reaction, or that they have to in order for it to be a valid meditation tool for me.
I’m truly hoping some people out there are hearing this message, either from me or from other holistic counselors, so they can go on a quest to find their unique and useful forms of meditation. It is such a game changer to be able to reset at nearly any time you want to, whether it’s a 30 minute session or a 30 second breath cycle with intent.
Thank you, Universe, for this download to share.
-V