Knowing Your Unique Needs
As adults we often unfairly expect of ourselves to be need-free, or to have the same needs as others (our real connections or those we observe in the online arena). Many of us will tend to the needs of children or loved ones without question, but when it comes to our own needs we can struggle to connect with and meet them. This is for many incredibly nuanced reasons - from social and familial conditioning, to living in isolation from our villages and tribes, to not knowing where to start as a result of never been taught the value or importance of meeting your individual needs.
My experience is that a regular Vedic meditation practice greatly assists with being able to identify what we need, and feeling able to have that need met. Our feelings and instincts are the signposts that support us in identifying our needs - be them emotional needs, physical needs, spiritual needs or otherwise. When we look to children, we see how feeling and instinct driven we are when we come into the world. Before learning to speak, a child will cry when they start to experience hunger or feel cold. Their unmet need - for sustenance or warmth in this example - elicits an expression of emotion that they do not hold back or filter.
Unfortunately and without placing any blame on parents and caregivers who are always doing their best, expressing our needs honestly can be trained out of us through the course of childhood, to varying degrees. This is a huge topic in itself that we will explore in more depth another time.
Those I’ve taught Vedic meditation will know that I don’t position Vedic meditation as a silver bullet or cure all, to do this would feel disingenuous as it hasn’t been my own experience (though it certainly is for many). One of the ways I do position this gorgeously simple meditation technique is as an easy way to get back to truth of you who really are, and how you really feel.
In my experience as a meditation teacher, trainee psychotherapist and in my own ongoing healing journey, there are two things that keep us separate from our true feelings and our true nature. The first is unprocessed stress and trauma, and the second is our conditioned, fear-based beliefs.
For example, consider a child who was conditioned not to share their true feelings from a young age, through the discovery that their parents didn’t possess the capacity or desire to support them in regulating their emotions. This child might learn not to communicate their needs in order not to upset Mum or Dad and develops a belief system around this: “My emotions aren’t important / In order to be loved I must suppress my needs and emotions.”
So, in order to become intimate with our needs through the language of our feelings and instincts, its necessary to gently and lovingly address the stress, trauma and fear-based beliefs we are holding in our mind-body system. To allow the body to let go of what once served us beautifully in keeping us safe, but is no longer relevant to our continued expansion.
My passion for teaching this simple yet profound meditation technique lies in its ability to peel back layers of stress from the body and to grow our awareness of the happenings of our inner world. I’m yet to find another tool that address the mind-body system in such a cohesive way.
When practicing Vedic meditation, we have the experience of the mind settling down, of thinking getting more subtle and dreamy, until we transcend thought entirely and experience our true nature from within. Unboundedness, pure potentiality, silence and bliss. This is the truth of who we really are, and the beauty is that we don’t have to go anywhere to find it ~ it resides within our own awareness. In this and many other ways, a consistent Vedic meditation practice makes us self-sufficient for our own state of being.
Gradually, as stress dissolves and awareness grows, we strengthen our ability to identify and meet our own changing needs. Without the noise of a stressed body and a mind occupied with fear-based beliefs, there is room for our emotions and instincts to be felt, expressed and acted upon. For additional support to be sought where we can perceive a gap in our awareness of an unconscious pattern or habit. To ask for support in an area of your life you’ve been attempting to do it all yourself. Whatever the case may be, Vedic meditation provides a gateway back to this inner knowing of how to get your needs met by quieting the noise inside.
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