My mental practice (meditation, breathwork) is really beginning to click and it’s melting my brain with its efficacy and utter simplicity.
Let me explain.
When we meditate, we strengthen our ability to manage our own physiological responses. What Yogis try to do manually, pharma does artificially. And not even as well. It makes me a little angry... I feel I was robbed of a very important coping tool for the majority of my life. Why are we not taught how to find this medicine within ourselves?!
I wonder; is it because the techniques are from a culture we don’t fully understand? Is there a shortage of role models and teachers for us Westerners? A little of all of it? It’s true that Americans have only recently had access to these teachings. Yoga didn’t come to the US until 1947 so if you’re in the States; unless you are the grandchild of Indra Devi or immigrants, your Grandma probably wasn’t big into yoga like the Indian Grannies.
Meditation and breathwork just isn’t part of our culture and unfortunately the byproduct is that we go our whole lives thinking something is wrong with us and we need drugs because we aren’t “happy”. Our privatized healthcare system certainly isn’t going to shine a light on treatments that don't make them money. Regardless as to the cause, our ignorance of these incredibly powerful tools has resulted in our being disconnected from our core selves which then causes us to look for bliss in all the wrong places.
Understanding how important a mental practice is, I cannot understand why it isn’t a priority for every human being. I am confident in saying that learning and exercising the inner workings of the mind through meditation is more fundamental than even reading.
We’re not too lazy or ignorant to do the work… we simply aren’t taught how important and transformative it can be. If we’re lucky, we stumble across these practices and philosophies and have the curiosity to pursue answers. But because the practice is working within our minds; by a long shot a place we don’t yet fully understand, it is mysterious and therefore intimidating but this ignorance is not our fault! We shouldn’t feel inferior because we don’t understand. As my friend DT used to say, “I don’t know what I don’t know.” Our ignorance is a failure of Western society, not of us as individuals. We simply weren’t taught. Myself included.
I’ve been alive half of the total time I will be alive and it’s only now I have truly directed my focus inward to investigate. I’m part of our broken system too. Being introduced to this as a child would have saved me decades of anguish .. and run ins with death himself. It would’ve saved my family tremendous pain. Lovers and friends too.
It’s not an easy thing to wake up to the suffering I have caused myself and others but I am lucky because in that awareness, there is the acknowledgment that I have caused enough suffering and my path forward is more illuminated.
