Are all meditations good?

Are all meditations good meditations?

It is a false assumption many people have that all meditations are supposed to be deep and relaxing. Some meditations have that lovely, cosy feeling which is indicative of “going deep,” whereas some feel shallow, irritating or downright rage-inducing. These less-enjoyable kinds of meditations are caused by stress release. 

When we meditate, our bodies rest very deeply, even deeper than sleep. When this happens, the stress stored in our tissues stimulates the mind causing thoughts. These thoughts will have the flavour of whatever type of stress is being released be it heartbreak, fatigue or anger. A similar purification process happens when we sleep, which is why we dream, or in the case of a great deal of the body releasing stress, we end up having nightmares or may wake up entirely. 

The interesting thing about meditations, that have a lot of stress release, is that while it can feel in the mind like you are stressing out, the body is at rest and absent of stress chemistry. So it is best not to judge how you feel during meditation but examine how different you feel outside of meditation. 

Don’t pay attention to negative thoughts in meditation

The mind doesn’t like when it doesn’t have a reason to attach to a body sensation, so if there’s not a clear reason you’re feeling something, it will make one up. For example, the body may be releasing some old anger from a breakup that happened years ago during your meditation, but the mind experiences the unstressing without knowing the context so agitated thoughts come up about something else, something like how your husband did not pick up laundry on time again. This stress is on its way out, simply let it go. It’s mental garbage, so don’t go picking through the trash. These stress release thoughts don’t need analysing and putting more attention on them after meditation can put stress right back in your system. 

What to do if this keeps happening?

Meditation works in waves. You will vacillate between going deeper and more shallow within a single meditation. Also, you will have a few meditations that are stress releasing which make way for having a few deep ones. The depth then stirs up new stress to release and the pattern happens again. 

However, if you are finding that you are having frequent uncomfortable, irritable or angry meditations, that is a sign of heavy stress release and can be alleviated by doing certain types of Pranayam exercises beforehand.

Doing elaborate breathing exercises can be extremely helpful to calm down the nerves and for the process of the stress from your physical body to commence at a much slower rate. Attending a group meditation can also help as the group all bending the field at once can pull you deeper. Meditation and group activities dedicated towards healing, releasing, and energy work, is immensely powerful. 

I find it when I’m personally experiencing an agitated meditation, I try to laugh at myself or my problems a little. There’s something funny about an angry meditator, and it helps keep me from taking myself and my meditation practice too seriously. 

The most important thing to understand is that meditation is not just about sitting in a quiet space, cross legged, while trying to “control” the mind. Meditation is flowing. Meditation is movement. This flow and movement is both external and internal. You may decide to meditate by sitting down, and breathing, or chanting, and eventually you will feel strong waves of energy flow through your body. Or, you may decide to do a brisk walk on the sidewalk of a main road, feeling the same energy flow through your body. 

The bottom line is that the practice of mediation is neither good or bad. The important thing is to allow your physical, mental and emotional body to release its stress and to re-energise through the universal energy that can be caused to flow through the human body both internally and externally by meditating.

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