Should I be meditating?

The job post that thousands responded to

Do we all need to be meditating?

I believe it’s the most important practice that we can do. In my experience, it’s the one thing that has the deepest affect on my every day life. It enhances the way I show up in the world every day. It brings me guidance, flow and allows me to connect with my inner knowing.

Everyone’s experience of meditation will be different. It’s an internal experience; so yours will be different to mine and it can only be experienced to be fully understood. What I can do is describe my experience, how I got into it and what it does for me. It might encourage you to start; or it might not. [Enter Bob Marley].

Something clicked for me in an unlikely scenario. During my travelling in Indonesia, I was sitting at a beach bar on one of the islands. A group of Indonesian surfers were singing Bob Marley music. One guy had an amazing voice and he was singing Redemption Song. For the first time, I listened carefully to every word of that song.

The lyric “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind” hit my inner being with a vibrating ting. It suddenly made sense to me. I imprison myself with my thoughts; with my limiting beliefs; with what I think is expected of me and with the standards of society that I have allowed imprint on my mind.

I imprison myself with repetitive thoughts about past scenarios and behaviour; and with how I think other people see me. I imprison myself with the things I think I couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to do. I was allowing bars to stand in front of me and what I really want to do in my life. Who made these bars? Me. Who can find the key and open the door? Me. I realised at that beach bar that I can emancipate myself from mental slavery and do and be anything that I wanted. I could be completely free.

I knew instinctively and from things that I had read, that the answer was meditation. The method to become master over my mind instead of letting my mind master me. I began a mission in Asia and I sought out places I could learn meditation.

The first stop was extreme. Without any proper meditation experience, I registered with a Vipassana centre in Southern Malaysia to spend ten days in silence, meditating for ten hours each day. I wanted to dive straight into the deep end. It’s hard to say how the silent meditation impacted me but this somewhat juvenile story is one that sticks out for me.

There was a guy that I had met in Indonesia before going to the centre. He said he’d be in touch, and I turned off my phone for Vipassana. I was out of wifi for a few days after leaving the centre so when I finally connected after two weeks of no phone, I was looking forward to seeing a message (from him). But there was no message.

I know. Shock, horror. Some of you may be reading this and think oh dear, this one needs to cool it. But this was me, age 32 (I wish I could say 16 there, but yes 32) and my response would usually have been feelings of hurt and rejection. I would have immediately gone into assessment mode and analysed everything about the situation. After ten days of meditating, I had more control over my mind. I felt the disappointment and the uneasy feeling in my body, but my mind remained still.

I watched this feeling simmer through my body and remained totally calm. I was just interested and focusing on the sensations and I could literally feel them bubble through my body. I was letting it pass through me without attaching thought and emotion to the feeling. I was not reacting. And I forgot about this man after a couple of days and got on with living this great life.

Everyone can relate to this. Just replace “guy who is not interested” with something that might stir you. Actions by your boss in work, customer, boyfriend or parent. Technology not working. Missed the train. It’s all the same; an outside stimulus that is looking for our reaction.

Every moment of every day we are being stirred to react. Learning to detach doesn’t mean we become unfeeling or flat. It just means that we experience the external event and let it pass through us. We don’t analyse, wish it was different, wonder if you did something wrong, match past stories to what happened, and create beliefs or judgements about the scenario. Meditation teaches us to experience what is happening right at this moment, and then move on to the next. And in this way life can become a meditation.

Next stop was Wat Pa Tam Wua Forest Monastery in northern Thailand. I bought white linen clothes in the market that we had to wear every day in the monastery. I arrived by bus to the forest planning to stay for just a few days and ended up staying two weeks. Here I practised a different, less intense form of meditation. Sunrise walking meditation, breath meditation and body scanning. Similar but different to the Vipassana in Malaysia. Same, same but different.

Over the last four years I’ve dabbled in other extreme meditation. I went to India where I lived in an ashram for two weeks. Ten days in an ashram in France. Three days of silence in a Vipassana centre in Drogheda. Each time, I would come out feeling so refreshed and clear, but was still not meditating every day. Creating a daily practice has been the hardest part of my meditation journey. I had to discipline myself and now finally have a routine that works; one that I have practised consistently this year.

I meditate for 20 minutes every morning. Sometimes twice a day, and sometimes for half an hour. But always (bar some mad weekends or when I’m away with people) 20 minutes. After weeks and months of doing this, I feel my mind at peace. Not all the time; of course, and I am still well able to react badly to situations. But every day after my meditation I am in peace. Every day I meditate I am teaching myself to experience each moment of life instead of making life a series of habitual reactions.

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I created the Free Your Mind Course to help anyone who wants to begin a meditation practice but doesn’t know where to start. This course is a collection of the tools that I have learnt on this journey and from my own daily meditation practice. It will help you start to free YOUR mind from the limits you put on yourself. You will start to get to know yourself better, feel more calm and from this place learn to create a life on your terms. Learn More.

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For those interested in the meditation places I went to and might want to go someday when we are out of the pandemic - I’ve listed details below. Vipassana courses can be found on www.dhamma.org. The centres I visited were in Malaysia, Johor Saleng Eco Village. In Ireland, there is a centre in Drogheda also found on dhamma.org. Wat Pa Tam Wua Forest Monastery is accessed from Chiang Mai in Thailand. I just turned up, but there may be registration online. The ashram in India is called Sivananda Yoga Ashram in Neyyer Dam, Kerala. In France, it was also a Sivananda ashram and it is located just outside Paris in the Loire Valley. www.sivananda.org.