My Meditation Journey
I started meditating in 1997 when my then spouse challenged me to sit still for 5 minutes. I had attempted meditation several times previously but didn’t stick with it. If you saw the movie, “Eat, Pray, Love” you may remember the moment Julia Roberts’ character is sitting in meditation and watching the clock take what feels like an hour to move one minute. My experience was the same that day in 1997 on the edge of my bed. I reflected that if something were that challenging for me, maybe I should practice it. After all, that was my philosophy as a personal fitness trainer and group fitness instructor at The Peninsula Spa. The guys who were always lifting weights needed some flexibility training, even though stretching didn’t come naturally. The ladies who were addicted to cardio would benefit from some strength training and days off for regeneration. I remembered the practice of taking my own advice and decided to do what was very challenging (sitting still with a quiet mind).
Around that same time, I was doing Barbara Brennan healing work with Joan MacIntosh and studying acting with Robyn C. Lee, both of whom encouraged me to commit to a sitting practice. These inspiring ladies held me by the hand as I moved towards becoming present in my bodymind. Meditation slowed me down so that I became aware of the thoughts I had inside my head that were not actually mine, revealing who I might be underneath all that chatter. This embodiment was the entryway for Robyn’s “In the Moment” acting classes that allowed us to be awake to our impulses that the character and scene were eliciting.
The more I learned about the nervous system in my CranioSacral Therapy studies, the more my meditation practice became essential to promote what I thought was Parasympathetic tone, give me insights into my actions, reactions and relationships, as well as to prepare my instrument for optimal performances on stage. Even though having my son and becoming separated created a challenge to have a consistent sitting practice, I still managed to meditate most days, even if my only time to practice was when nursing.
My son turned 4 at the same time that Kadampa Meditation Center began their children’s meditation class for ages 4 and up. I was so grateful to have my son content in the downstairs children’s temple while I got to hear the dharma talk and practice meditation with other adults upstairs. I went religiously, so to speak, unless prevented by illness or tantrums, and later, Sunday morning Little League games. (Some people have said that baseball is a church.)
COVID interrupted my attending KMC in person, but I continued to attend virtually. I had to force myself to practice, just as I was pushing myself to do everything else after a whiplash/concussion event at the end of 2018. Prior to the injury, I always felt transformed after meditating: soft, expansive, compassionate. Post-injury, however, my meditations often left me in tears. At KMC, they teach that “through meditation, we can cultivate authentic happiness, and actualize our greatest potential, and help others do the same.” So, my inability to change my state, feel happy again, have a peaceful mind, and be out of pain left me feeling like a failure every time I meditated, and I had no idea why.
But God, or Buddha, or life itself is good, and I was given information about The Fajardo Method of Holistic Biomechanics (FMHB). In Spring of 2020, I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, so had plenty of time to do the FMHB classes. As I began to heal from the injury through The Fajardo Method, my structure developed integrity that I had never known before. In Somatics, we call this balanced state of elastic tension and compression “tensegrity”. By doing the observation practice called “Two Points of Awareness” which we use in FMHB, my body was reorganizing itself into a tensegrity structure all on its own. Now that I finally had some stability in my structure, I didn’t want to partake in activities that dissolved it. I noticed that when I meditated my lungs would start to deflate, my spine would start to curl and I would start to sloooooooow doooooown. Since the injury had put me into a stage of the stress response akin to hibernation where the body conserves energy, I was not eager to practice a technique that reinforced a state in my nervous system where my physiology slowed. I was already recovering from a hypo-trending thyroid and many other conditions post-injury, and was quite relieved to have my myofascial system getting tonified, my hormones and neurotransmitters being produced again, and enough vitality to get out of bed!
Since many of us are in active stages of Fight or Flight, we experience what Dr. Herbert Benson called, “The Relaxation Response” as a relieving contrast to our ordinary pace. The problem is, that slow, loose, expansive, blissful place is not Parasympathetic. The relaxation response induces hypometabolic physiology. Blood pressure drops, tissues slacken, respiration slows down, heart rate slows, thyroid slows, digestion slows, thinking slows - that’s why we are less reactive. We are less aware of what is happening!
Ironically, I have an absence of stressful thinking now that I have stopped meditating. My mental neutrality is from The Fajardo Method technique of Two Points of Awareness updating my location in my environment. Awareness of where our structure is in the environment happens to be the very information the Nervous System needs in order to know that we are safe and shift us towards Parasympathetic. Meditation generally deprives our brain of sensory stimuli pertaining to our location. Our Nervous System, failing to locate our bodies in the environment as we go inside, track our breath or dissolve into the oneness, moves us towards dissociation (and the neurochemical composition that accompanies that disconnection). I am aware that FMHB philosophy is going against most trauma healing and mindfulness instruction currently offered, especially since I am trained in both. And yet, it was the only method that brought me out of the stress response and promoted change in every aspect of my body and my life. There are many different styles of meditation, and some may be beneficial depending on that individual’s nervous system. For me, FMHB has become not only my movement practice but also my mindfulness practice, my therapy, my trauma healing, and my bodywork. Who doesn’t like one-stop shopping!
To learn more about how you can begin living more in the now with The Fajardo Method, see the Working with Me section.