Meditation won’t work for you

Meditation won’t work for you.

Being a strong advocate for meditation, why am I telling you it won’t work for you?

Well, my friend – I think we should chat about your mind’s responses to fear/stress first.

Think ‘cave man’. Think about how as a caveman/woman how your biggest focus was to stay alive every day. And this is how your brain’s responses to stress started. You HAD to be on alert in case that sabre-toothed tiger did find you – you had to fight it or run (flight).

Your brain’s stress response was (is) to increase adrenaline and the hormone cortisol. This is through a combination of nerve and hormonal signals; this system prompts your adrenal glands, located (atop your kidneys), to release the surge of hormones.
Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. This helps you get the f*ck out of dodge!

Helpful, hey?

But.

Not that helpful in today’s world when you don’t need to fight or run from fear/stress…because we are essentially safer than ever. Yes, this is great if you need to pull a car off your child in that moment…but our brains still react in this fashion. And it’s going to stop you from wanting to do things like meditation.

Why?

Because when you are in fear/stress/whatever you want to call it – your instinct is to keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open and alert to danger. This instinct does keep you alive, yet it will mean that you will struggle to meditate or even sleep soundly. Your brain is like, ‘F*ck no, this thing is a danger, I’d better keep on high alert.’

You probably already know that the powers of things like meditation are potent and can heal past traumas and give insight and clarity/focus in your life.

But firstly, let’s get you to reduce the stress/fear in your life.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Well, this is the tricky bit. It requires effort on your part. It requires you to notice what you do, how you react and how you deal with these stresses in your life.

It requires you to do the work.

Doing the work will free you from these stress responses and allow your body to react healthily. Therefore there will be less stress on your entire body – you know that stress affects EVERY PART of your body, don’t you? (I am not going into that today as you can do your own research.)

Yep – healthy body, healthy mind.

So, to start off – NOTICE. Notice what you do/say/react/cope with stressful moments. Notice without judgement – knowing that you are human and this is occurring due to a natural response to keep you ALIVE.

In the next blog this week, I’ll explain what you can do next. This week I’ll build you a picture of ‘the road to meditation’. It will get you to the point where you can meditate daily.

But for now? Just NOTICE.

Emma xx