Your Resilience Is Unbounded
“Nature never gives us more than we can handle.”
Some of the benefits of a Vedic meditation practice are more obvious than others. Sleep improvements, feeling more energised and mental clarity are felt immediately, while other benefits are more subtle. One of the greatest gifts of my own daily practice & the wisdom that accompanies it, is the exponential increase in my resilience ~ on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.
Resilience is one of those things that comes into our awareness when presented with an experience we may rather not have had ~ often an overwhelming stress, trauma, challenge or loss. For this reason, the impact of meditation on our resilience is something we may not realise until faced with adversity or met with an immense demand or challenge. I've come to realise how beautiful this really is ~ to come in contact with your own enhanced ability to weather a storm, even when you'd prefer you didn't have to. An evolutionary silver lining, if you will.
In my experience as a meditator and a teacher, I believe there are three key ways that a daily Vedic meditation practice grows our capacity for resilience:
1. A stress-free body is a resilient body.
Every time you get stressed, you use up some of your adaptation energy. Your adaptation energy allows you to meet a demand, challenge or a change of expectations when it comes your way, without getting stressed. The number one thing that tops up your adaptation energy, is rest. This is where Vedic meditation makes a material impact in the lives of those who practice twice per day. This transcending style of meditation is a supremely deep resting technology. Every time you meditate, you top up your rest levels, making you more adaptable to life outside of meditation. With every meditation you make it easier for yourself to adapt to life's twists and turns, because a well-rested body is far less likely to have a stress reaction than an exhausted body.
2. Knowledge eliminates fear.
Like attracts like. Not only does fear weaken your system on a physical level, your conscious and unconscious fear based beliefs often attract that which you fear into your life. Not only that, when you have fear-based stories running on loop in your mind, evidence to counter those stories tends not to be seen or noticed.
Enter Vedic meditation. Not only is this daily practice scientifically demonstrated to reduce stress, the wisdom tradition that accompanies it holds the keys to remind us of how infinite our internal resources really are. One of the primary teachings of the Veda (the body of knowledge from which Vedic meditation comes), is that evolution is the only thing that is ever happening. We are always evolving from less sophisticated states of being, to more sophisticated states. How we evolve, is influenced by the knowledge that we hold. With the knowledge of how life is organised in favour of our own progressive change, we learn to lean into the experiences life presents and lean away from fear and resistance. When you learn Vedic meditation, you not only gain a daily practice, an upgraded perspective on the purpose and meaning of life is available if you choose it.
3. Connection is an antidote to overwhelm.
Human beings are for the most part, social beings. We are meant to commune with one another. The full range of the human experience - from joy and elation to grief and sorrow - is meant to be experienced in connection with one another. For me, there are many ways in which learning Vedic meditation has shaped the connections that I have and the depth of support I am able to access when moving through a challenging time.
The first, are the incredible men and woman I have met through our beautiful global community of meditators. I've met people from many corners of the world who have come to be some of my nearest and dearest. This is a common experience for those who make use of the group meditations and other events that are available to you once you graduate the beginners course in Vedic meditation.
Just as importantly, this practice has shone light on those aspects of my own conditioning that taught me to believe that we should deal with our pain in private and refrain from "burdening" others when we're experiencing heartache, challenge or loss. I know I'm not unique in this, with the rise of the nuclear family and the disconnection from more tribal, connected ways of living, this way of thinking has become the norm for many of us.
Vedic meditation is a technique for gaining greater awareness of the inner workings of the self, and with awareness we can make conscious choices to act differently. For me, this has looked like sharing my true feelings and asking for support when I need it, rather than subscribing to the old belief that I have to do it all alone. As I've allowed myself to be seen and loved by those in my tribe, the ease with which I've navigated challenging times has increased exponentially. This has become of one the greatest gifts of this life changing practice in my own life.
Beautiful cover image via madmarvy on Pinterest.