Let us start with our journey which started post-March 25th, the day the lockdown began. Before this, we were decently happy, had a lot of out-worldly distractions, were pursuing some or the other hobby and keeping ourselves busy.
A month down the line of the lockdown, and we started feeling anxious. The enjoyment of working from home or spending time with the family seemed too much. Multiple chores needed to be done. The housemaids weren’t coming; the cook wasn’t there, the bosses had forgotten about the 9 to 7 pm work time. The line between work and life had almost disappeared, and it was just our life going on.
The kind of life we hadn’t thought of having. There was too much work to do and the hours were only so many! Recreation was something that we had forgotten altogether, and it seemed as if there was nothing more to the day than to slog throughout.
Pressure had started building up, and anxiety attacks broke in. The performance suffered. Even more so for the working ladies who now had to do at least twice the amount of work at the same time. We thought we were coping up or trying to cope up. Some of us attempted meditation for mindfulness too. But did it work? Should it have worked? Or is there more to meditation to achieve mindfulness than to start some Aum chat music and close the eyes?
Meditation for Mindfulness- The Underlying Principle
We usually take up meditation as a practice. However, meditation is something that needs to be learnt over time. It isn’t wrong, but it isn’t correct either. Meditation is a discipline, and it has to come from within. It works best when you have a realisation of your self. That is the goal of meditation for mindfulness, after all.
You need to come to terms with what you are. You need to understand your emotions and why you react the way you do. That does not mean that you have to force yourself into being positive or emotionally healthy. It just means that you need to strike a balance between the yin and yang, the positive and the negative. Once you hit the balance, that is when you become a true yogi and attain mindfulness. In such a scenario, you do not have to sit with your eyes closed to meditate; your life becomes a meditation inflow.
It isn’t your heart or your brain, which leads your decisions then. Instead, it is a balanced “You” that takes the decisions.
However, understanding your self isn’t so easy. Using mindfulness for meditation is one thing, but self-realisation is something which is attained when meditating becomes a lifestyle.
How does one achieve that then? More importantly, what is the benefit of it? In the next section, we will talk about it.
Understanding Self Realisation
It isn’t uncommon for most of us to be happy at most of the time and then suddenly realise that we feel empty inside. Such realisation usually happens when we spend time with ourselves or in other words when we sit alone. A lot of us think that that is us overthinking about stuff. However, that is not necessarily true.
It is very common for humans to compartmentalise their emotions, putting the negative ones in the back of their mind. However, the subconscious is always at play, and it does not know the ways of the human spirit.
Thus, the subconscious mind tries to send these memories back to your conscious. Your inner being is a fighter, and it wants to tend to all the matters right then. It does not believe in procrastinating. It is, however, you heart that tries and fights these back and pushes the negativity away.
The problem, however, lies in the fact that these fragments of negativity stay there and attack you now and then. These hidden fears, when they cumulate too much become what we call- anxiety or panic attacks. If we do not counter them later, they grow into depression or other mental health issues. The practice of meditation for mindfulness is aimed at resolving these.
The Path to Self Realisation
For one, it is a simple thing- believe in your inner voice, the gut feeling! It isn’t a random emotion generating out of the current stimulus. Instead, it is the total of multiple things that you have experienced or seen over time. A lot of our readers belong to the domain of technology and even otherwise. Still, we are sure that you guys must have read about Artificial Intelligence or Big Data Analytics.
You need to understand that your brain is way more advanced than that. It processes a lot of information on a daily basis. A lot of times, it is just the things that you see and registers subconsciously without even knowing it.
In Science, we are taught that the brain works involuntarily, i.e. it is working all the time without really getting tired. It is like a supercomputer, only 100 times more advanced than that. So, if you can trust the formula of that excel sheet so much, should you not trust your gut for a change?
Attaining Self Realisation
We need to understand that we know ourselves the best. This again is one of the most primary tenets of self-realisation. Each one of us is unique and has a unique life path made out of our own choices. Our brains have thus been conditioned to think and process the data accordingly. Our internal systems can sense the particular stimuli faster than anyone else because they have known our surroundings. Thus, while there is some importance given to a “second opinion”, your gut instinct will be way more accurate for you.
Believe in yourself. The faith that you will thus have will only empower your strengths. It will breed positivity for you, which will further affect the energy surrounding you.
At Hith Yoga, we have had many students over time who came to us while they were battling, anxiety, depression and self-doubt. For that, we worked with them on helping them attain the power of self-realisation. This was achieved through our practice of meditation for mindfulness.
Conclusion
In the new scenario, with most of us being locked into our homes with restricted human interactions, we found that the problems such as anxiety, depression and self-doubt had started resurfacing again. A significant reason for this was that there were hardly any distractions. Most of us were spending a lot of time with ourselves, conversing with our inner selves. A path that no matter how beneficial or right it is is never easy to tread on.
With multiple requests underway, we started with our Meditation 101 workshop. We would like to thank you all for the overwhelming response and the positive feedback that we received for it.
We will be having another session for it on 3rd September. Those of you who are willing to join may please visit this link for the detailed information on the session.
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