“So many of life’s problems stem from too much or too little of something. We spend our lives searching for balance.”
~ Anodea Judith ~
It is true I have spent a great deal of my life trying to achieve the dream weight and falling into the depths of despair as a result of the consistent failures. I didn’t know at the time that what I was really doing was not be true to myself and allowing my young mind to be designed by artificial rules on societal norms. Aside from the aesthetics of beauty, I felt compelled to follow the trends of friends and family. I often found myself feeling out of whack and unbalanced.
At the time I did not have the words for what I was going through internally. I felt as though my parents were pressuring for perfection; friends pressuring for assimilation; and society pushing an unrealistic stance on what was normal for a girl my age.
It took me the better part of a decade to finally realize that I was lost and had no idea on how to find me and live my best life. Well, that is until one day in college when I dared to try my first yoga class. At the end of this first session we completed the class with the final pose, Savasana, or Corpse pose. It was in this moment that I was truly required to clear my mind and relax.
In that moment was my first experience with meditating and I had even realized that I was just scratching the surface. After that class and every session after I felt a resurgence of energy to be productive and I felt at peace. Life was feeling a lot better during those 8 weeks. When that time was up I stopped practicing. No real reason why I stopped, but I quickly started to fall back into the deep embedded feeling of overwhelming angst and frustration. It would take me another year before my stupid brain would find the answer to 1+1= Ah Ha!
When I finally had my delayed Ah Ha moment, I slowly begin to study more into the practice. Even though I had my 8 week yoga class that always ended with Savasana, I had no clue what I was getting myself into, I just knew I felt great afterwards.
In my studies I learned that many nations have had some variation to meditative practice incorporated in everyday life. One thing I learned as an overlapping concept in all factions that many believe that there are seven internal power sources in the body that need to be balanced.
This made perfect sense to me. And it explained so much. I finally started to feel like there was a way to fix the unbalanced feeling I have dealt with for so long.
Before this year I had been using the different meditation practice I learned to keep me in a peaceful state of mind as I tackled all the challenges life had waiting for me. With my decision to take control of my dietary needs and fitness goals I began to look at how meditation could help me to channel my energy more. How could I use this amazing tool to focus my attention on my desired end goal?
For me there were only 2 things I felt imperative to add to my meditation practice.
Incorporate a mantra - “Health is Life!” a phrase that I repeat softly to myself during specific times of meditation
Focusing my thoughts on body positivity - Not in every session but in those I choose where I feel I need to add more mental support.
The results I have experienced with adding these two simple tweaks to my daily practice have been astonishing. I described in a post on how I often would relapse whenever I tried to lose weight or get healthy in any aspect after a while. The difference I can say today is that I feel like I have the control to stay on this path because of these addition.
Kind of kicking myself for not figuring this out a lot sooner, who knows how far I would have come had I actually focused on what I wanted to accomplish rather than just go through the motions.
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