People who love meditation love to tell people how meditation is the answer to pretty much everything.
What these people don’t realize or don’t know or simply ignore is that different brains are, well, different and that difference counts with something like meditation.
As an embodiment artist and teacher, I’ve met and talked to far too many people who feel shamed by their “inability” to meditate.
Of course, the usual definition of meditation by which most people judge themselves is often too narrow and often simply wrong.
Meditation is not, for example, the attempt to eradicate all thinking. Good luck with that. Not possible. (Though you might get moments when it feels this way.)
Meditation is the nonjudgemental observation of the thought process whereby we train ourselves to not get attached to stories. This develops witness mind.
Witness mind can be developed in other ways than simply sitting and counting your breath or whatever of the millions of techniques you’re exploring. And here is where the definition usually gets far too narrow.
You needn’t sit on some specific cushion in some specific posture for some specific number of minutes.
For a long time, for example, the only way I could approach this sort of mind space was through vigorous and joyful movement. I would tell people that it was then that I could sit inside the “eye of the storm,” the storm being the normal overly chaotic state of my (depressed and anxious) mind.
And here’s where a limited understanding of and a shrinking of the idea of meditation actually gets dangerous, and yes, I said dangerous.
Jon Kabat Zinn, MD, and author of the very famous mindfulness book, Wherever you go, there you are, says that to teach meditation to people with PTSD with no body/somatic component is akin to malpractice, because sitting in the filthy nest of our not-well minds can actually make it all so much worse.
Do I ever know this from personal experience! When he said this, I felt so damn relieved. I was not alone.
When I attempted meditation, it simply allowed me to sit and observe all the depressed and anxious thoughts and in that sitting and observing, those thoughts GREW.
I felt like meditation allowed my mind to basically start eating itself with hatred and worry and fear.
But dance and play? That part of my mind, thanks to in-the-moment swimming-in-happy-chemicals, was shut down or at least quieted. I could see above those thoughts for those moments.
I moved enough and taught enough that those chemicals got a bit steadier and my mind got a bit healthier.
But… my mind was still not healthy enough to allow for the absolute stillness and quiet of seated meditation. That was still the danger zone for me, which was a big clue that my depression and anxiety were not just circumstantial but something much more.
Now that I’m well into the wellness created by (FINALLY!) the right anti-depressant (in my case one that not only blocks re-uptake of serotonin but also of dopamine and norepinephrine), I can see that all along my problem was not one of “not doing enough wellness; not taking the right herb; not eating the right diet; etc., ad nauseam.”
Nope. My base issue was a brain that had bad chemistry. Like a diabetic, I had an actual biological issue and it took medical intervention for me to finally see and feel and believe that.
I’ll try in more posts to write more about how different this is, but…
I can now sit in meditation. NO PROBLEM. Hello, healthy brain!
I now CRAVE moments of stillness and quiet.
My movement work is reflecting that in ways I could have never imagined.
See? That’s what I’m talking about. Different brains… meditation only is efficacious if the brain is already in some shape or form “healthy.” Healthy brain chemistry is needed, and sure, eventually, meditation can be a pathway to even MORE healthy brain chemistry. But you need a base to start.