What does meditation feel like?

The answer to this question varies depending on who you ask, and where they are on their meditation path. In the end, those that have stuck with it reach one common realization regardless of what brought them there: it makes them better at life. By that, I don’t necessarily mean “more successful” in the way society normally defines success. I mean more at ease, more connected, and happier. Which is the truest form of success.    

First, a little history about my practice 

After going to the gym six days a week for years, after I had my first child in 1997, I suddenly felt like a hamster on a treadmill and started wondering if there was something more meaningful out there. The gym certainly bettered my mind and body, but I wanted more, something was missing for me. I started yoga, and yoga got me curious about meditation. Without a meditation teacher, I winged it by sitting on my bed and focusing on “nothing.” My yoga practice, with teacher, was several times a week, and my solo meditation practice was sporadic. 

In 2001, I learned to cook, and with the help of my Ayurvedic chef, I started practicing daily cooking meditation. I’d start with Sun Salutations, then I’d chant and listen to the Gayatri Mantra as I lit beeswax candles and prepared meals for the entire day. This was nourishing in so many ways, and the best gift I could give to myself and my children. Food never tasted better. Meditation, for me at the time, was what Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hahn taught in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness: Wash the dishes to wash the dishes. Eat an orange to eat an orange. Don’t eat the news while eating an orange. I followed that, and I cooked to cook. I trained my mind to focus on the activity I was engaged in and not let my mind wander elsewhere. This was a complete game changer.

In 2005, I met a teacher who introduced me to the Aquarian Sadhana. Sadhana means daily spiritual practice. Aquarian refers to this era where everything is shifting and discernment is everything. This meditation practice consists of a 20 minute chant called Japji, the Song of the Soul, followed by a yoga sequence, followed by seven more mantras that totaled 62 minutes. I started this practice twice a week with the guidance of my teacher. This practice is observed at 4:30 am. The reason for this time is to conquer the mind, and also to leverage the power of circadian rhythm. Still, I know it seems insane. But yoga had already changed my life and I wanted more. I had small kids, so while that seems like a barrier, getting it out of the way early, and before the rest of the world woke up, actually made it easier for me to keep it up daily as well as greet my kids in the morning with vibrant energy. I had to let go of my identification as a night owl and turn into a morning person to do this. This was another game changer. Five months after that, once I got this under my belt, I started doing the Aquarian Sadhana five days a week, at home (sometimes out), for the next 15 years. 

These days, I only do bits of the Aquarian Sadhana, and I meditate for about an hour a day. I don’t skip my meditation, even on those rare nights when I get to bed after midnight, or when I’m sick. The good news is, daily meditation practice, over time, causes you to require less sleep (it’s not as simple as that; diet matters) and activates your body’s natural healing powers. Even in Peru when I was being picked up at 5:30 am for a hike to Vinicunca, I got up earlier to fit in 11 minutes of a breath meditation to prepare my lungs for a hike at 11,000 ft to 15,000 ft altitude. 

Here’s the first thing to know. 

• You have to want to meditate. Not want to want to. There’s a huge difference. If it’s the latter, you won’t show up for it, and you’ll say it doesn’t work. 

• You have to want to change aspects of yourself (not others) to get what you want from life. Let me put it this way: even if you think everyone else is the problem, you have to want to change how you relate to them so that others become less of a problem for you. 

Once you’ve passed those two gateways, here’s what happens.

You’re left sitting there with your thoughts and physical tantrums.

It’s human nature: we don’t really ever stop thinking, and the moment we try to get still, our body will have something to say about it, and we will suddenly remember that we have to make a phone call or something. 

However, you’ll begin to notice that the power of your thoughts to dictate the quality of your day is weakening. Instead, YOU begin to dictate the quality of your day! This could happen as early as Day 1. If it doesn’t, don't worry, you’re not alone. How quickly this happens for you depends on your level of attachment to your thoughts. 

Here’s what you do 

• Pay attention to your breath and posture as you observe your thoughts in the third person. Remember that you are not your thoughts. You are the being that is observing them. 

• When feelings come up, pay attention to where and how you feel them in your body. For instance, when anger comes up, you might feel acidity coursing through your veins, and the energetic jolt that is the rush that anger produces. Rather than getting lost in how someone did a horribly unjust thing that made you angry, focus instead on how your body physically reacts to your emotion. Let the sensations run through and out. 

Here’s what happens next

Over time, emotions that you’ve suppressed for years will begin to dislodge from your tissues, move through your body, and out. This means you’ll feel emotions “out of the blue.” You might start crying or laughing for apparently no reason. You might feel things you didn’t know you felt. Don’t try to investigate where they are coming from. Just enjoy and celebrate the emotions as they move through and out.

You will begin to feel a stillness and calm you’ve never felt. This discipline begins to take over and conquer the monkey mind. You begin to see a different reality, one that is, in fact, more real. I’d say less dramatic, but that isn’t totally true. You’ll see the drama. You just won’t be tugged and pulled in all directions by it. You’ll understand the drama to be what yoga calls maya, or the illusion that the world is as it appears to be, with all of its distractions. 

You don’t have to meditate for an hour. Even 10 minutes a day is good. The key is to do it daily. Better to do 10 minutes a day than an hour once a week. Why? 

Because calm, in this society, requires discipline, and discipline requires daily practice. Calm competes with your daily intake of media as well as the decades of mental grooming that tells you you aren’t enough. Daily practice helps to conquer the negative thoughts, and even the overly positive ones. It gives you grit. It gives you access to your emotions without getting lost in them as if they are your identity. Instead, they become what they were meant to be: your internal GPS that points the way to your most authentic sense of being. 

Even then

… you’ll say you don’t have time. Or you’ll get to your cushion and keep looking at the time, mentally going through your to-dos and sometimes succumbing to them. 

Your daily practice is a relationship like any other. You have your honeymoon period. You have your in-love period, and you’ll have many “I hate this” periods. 

Just show up. 

Pay attention to how your body feels. The most important thing is to show up for yourself the way you want others showing up for you. You’ll move forwards. You’ll move backwards. You’ll move sideways. 

Note: meditation is not sleeping. 

When you sleep, the subconscious mind takes over entirely. Meditation is being fully aware. It’s a conscious state, and it begins to address the unconscious mind, the blind spots that are not available for introspection. It’s within this state of stillness that your unconscious and conscious mind begins to align. It’s this alignment that leads to a more authentic and joyful life.  

The gifts of meditation

Meditation is a skill that translates into all areas of your life. 

• It offers you depth, breadth, and endurance. You see the long game, which makes you patient as f*$k without losing sense of urgency where it matters to you most. 

• You get access to the deeper conversation you are actually having with yourself and with others. 

• It helps you feel, instead of distract from or numb your emotions, which is a good thing. If you can’t feel when you touch something hot, not only will you burn, you can deeply injure yourself if you stay there long enough. 

• You get to understand yourself better by observing how you react to life’s irritations, which means you’re armed with greater power to change your reactions so they don’t further complicate the irritations. When you understand yourself better in this way, you get to better understand others. Compassion becomes a genuine thing. 

• You start to see beauty everywhere. 

Love, Savitree