Is meditation right for you?

If you’re not a regular meditator, you may be wondering how to get started. Or, you may have tried meditation in the past and felt unsuccessful. A common perception of meditation is that one needs to sit quietly and remove all thoughts from the mind. For experienced meditators, this stage may come after what is likely many years of concentration and training of the mind. For a person who has experienced trauma it may not be appropriate to sit quietly, left to ruminate on past traumatic events or anticipate another one.

Instead, a guided meditation or a mindfulness practice might be more suitable. A guided meditation will help create imagery or bring to mind a set of feelings or intentions. A mindfulness practice might prompt you to cultivate sensory awareness. Listening to a repetitive sound can be soothing and a way to tune into one of the five senses. Tethering the mind to an image, the senses, or a repetitive sound may be more productive, safe, grounding, and effective than silence. 

If meditation hasn’t resonated with you in the past, it may just mean that you haven’t found the right method yet. There are many resources online and possibly within your community. Rather than just sitting and trying to quiet the barrage of thoughts in your mind, you may find that a different approach leads to a new way to reap the mental health benefits experienced by so many meditators. I use Insight Timer, and whether you use the web or app, it can be a helpful tool for beginners and experienced meditators alike. There are free, guided meditations for a variety of situations.

What do I do? Typically, I use the timer and have several presets loaded with bells at regular intervals to help return or maintain my attention to my meditation. Keeping a consistent practice is generally recommended, but if I’m traveling and in a place with distractions or if I have something weighing on my mind, I’ll pull up a guided meditation or use a timer with ambient om sounds to keep my mind focused. 

Give one of those a try, or head over to fiveelementnature.com/yoga to find my recorded classes that start with breathing and a short meditation. If you want to read more about meditation for trauma survivors, check out this article.