There is so much talk these days about the important of yoga and meditation for a myriad of mental and physical health conditions.
Gp’s prescribing meditation for anxiety and depression and much more. Same with yoga, you have back pain?? Go do yoga ( il come back to this for another blog soon) but the meditation one is important and needs to be broken down a little bit.
How many people have you heard say, I can’t meditate, my brain is too busy, too full etc etc?!? Maybe you are one of them.
If so, just know that it’s not, you’re not alone and that it’s a completely normal thing to feel. Most of the people feeling this are people who, as already mentioned are doing it for anxiety/depression/mental health reasons and already don’t really understand why their headspace is where their headspace is.
Why can’t i shut off?! Why does my mind never let me get a minutes peace?!! I can’t just sit cos my brain is too busy….these are all tropes I’ve heard sooo many times and who know what?!? It’s not their fault, our society has basically enforced this pattern of thinking, this bodily response on us and yet know one has pointed it out to us.
Modern society has evolved and developed so rapidly in the last 150 years that we can’t keep up, our nervous system evolved on the wide open planes of the savanna (well certainly in Africa) and it hasn’t had the ability to suddenly get used to 24/7 news, shopping, smart phones, light in our eyes 20 hours a day, working more hours than resting, exciting/scary/funny tv shows, cunts on the road cutting us up…anything, put anything from the modern world in here and it basically fits to put us into a bodily response of “oh shit”
So what?!? What’s your point wibbs, just fucking get on with why breathing is key to mediation.
Ok,
In yoga (well raja yoga) we have 8 limbs. 8 steps that lead us to unity (after all that’s what yoga means, unity) with ourselves and our world and surroundings, both on the gross and subtle meanings. The first 2 are basically like the 10 commandments, the do’s and ding’s to live a good life (more on these to come)
THEN we have the asana….this is what everyone thinks yoga is, the physical practice, the bending yourself into a pretzel, the sweet ass skinny sexy middle age, white women looking wonderful in the lulu lemon shops window. This part of the practice is suppose to help build a body that’s comfortable sitting. That’s it’s, it’s designed to removed the discomforts and allow you to sit. It’s all just the beginning of the journey, a little prep for what’s to come.
NOW we come to pranayama, or the breathing side of things, notice movement is a prep for the breathing, interesting ay, how many of you go to a yoga class and do 1-2 minutes breathing followed by an hours movement, got that the wrong way round ay. So the idea is that in this fourth limb of the practice, we slow and calm the body and the mind. We use the breath, which is really the ultimate tool we have at our disposal, to calm our nervous system. Unlike any other animal on the planet, we can deliberately take control of our breath to harness different physiological states. THIS is what’s so important
The ability to spend 5-10 minutes focusing on slowing the breath, brings the body back to the savanna, back to a state of equilibrium. It slows the heart rate, lowers the blood pressure, up regulates the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) ans down regulates the sympathetic (fight or flight).
All those things we mentioned earlier (cunts, tv shows, 24/7 everything) keep us permanently trapped in our fight and flight response. This keeps us on high alert, waiting for the tiger/lion/snake/hippo whatever other African animals might wanna eat us. How do you think you can meditate if you don’t prepare for it first?!?
The next 4 limbs of the 8 yogic limbs are then where we begin the mediation journey…but of course as with everything, us westerners just want to skip all the important prep work and just do the 10 Minutes meditation. We just want a quick fix pull, we don’t actually wanna put any work in.
Well I say to you, if that’s the case, don’t worry so much about paying for a meditation app, instead come join me every Wednesday evening 7-7:30pm (quick plug for my online yoga membership 😝🤣😉🤷♂️) and instead of trying to meditate for your mental health, why not try and breathe for it instead.
You might just find that the states you find in the breathwork practice do actually just lead you to a place that meditation then just becomes the natural next step and you do it not for medical/Health reason but more to discover much more about your self fundamentally.
I hope this little overview was of interest, if you are looking for a simple breathing practice To follow until you come join me online every Wednesday (just click here to sign up www.mandukyayoga.com/become-a-member) try just sitting, setting a alarm for 3 minutes, close your eyes and breathe through your nose, just focus on nothing but breathing through your nose for 3 minutes. If you do need something a bit more definite to follow, try breathing in for a count of 3-4 seconds and 5-6 seconds out (adjust these as needed if they are too long just focus on the exhale being longer than the inhale). When the 3 minutes is up see how you feel. Hopefully you will just feel a bit more settled calm and quiet in the head. If so you have found a practice that you can go to as and when your brain gets busy ay.