My Meditation 'Why'

To firstly commit to a meditation practice, you need to discover your ‘why’.

Why do you need meditation in your life? Why is this practice to making living better?

When your ‘why’ is strong enough, the practice becomes non-negotiable. This is my ‘why’.

Throughout high school and university I had difficulty taming a busy mind, feelings of overwhelm and stress. Along with bouts of depression, this state of being has appeared in my life from time to time over my life. 

In 2017 I turned 40 in March. Life was incredibly blissful. My eyes were seeing everything in such vibrant colours. I spent 2 weeks in Thailand with my best friend and my birthday celebrations extended for a whole month. 

I also had a trip planned to visit my family on the Sunshine Coast in June. A week before we left I signed a contract to rent a building and open a yoga studio. 

Much of the four week holiday was spent planning and organising all of the renovations and behind the scenes elements of opening a new business. It was an incredibly stressful and overwhelming time. High stress. Many decisions. My perfectionism and over-organising traits were very prominent during this time. 

A successful opening of the studio on August 2nd and amazing, positive feedback was all terrific but I quickly felt the pressure to be an awesome yoga teacher. To deliver incredible classes every single time. Students were telling me how they loved their class and couldn’t wait for the next ‘awesome class’ so I started to worry - what if the next class wasn’t awesome? 

I began suffering from intense anxiety, increased heart rate, indigestion problems, waking each day with panic and soon began to experience regularly numbing down my left arm. 

I wasn’t happy although everything seemed to be going so well. When I was teaching yoga in local halls, the risk never felt so great. I started to worry so much more about class numbers and income. I was snappy, agitated, impatient and wasn’t being the mum or wife that I wanted to be. I was so tired from not sleeping well and feeling the complete opposite of ‘being present’ 

My parents had gifted me with some money for my birthday to put towards a yoga course. I decided to use it in November 2017 to undertake the online Calm Living Mindfulness Meditation course with Michael Daly as I was in need of some tools to help with this increase in anxiety and stress. 

I was so committed to feeling better, I studied like a year twelve student in their final exams. I was desperate. I committed to daily practice. I wanted to feel better. I want my life to be better. 

With the Calm Living program I felt in control of my practice and enjoyed what seemed like lots of variety in meditation. The choice was great. The idea of small moments of calm add up to a lifetime of calm living appealed to me and felt achievable. 

Even the small commitment I was making each day was making me feel better - calmer, more in control of my thoughts, so I committed to a daily practice because I knew I could never go back to the way I had been feeling - so unlike my self, so unbalanced, so distressed, so anxious.

How I had been feeling did not align with how I wanted to parent so I had no other choice but to find my way back home to my true self through meditation. I had dabbled in meditation before but this time I knew I had to make a strong commitment to feel better again. 

Since November 2017 I have meditated almost every morning for some time. I absolutely love, and crave, the silence of life I can touch base with in my mind. Some days the mind is busier than others but with so many tools I can navigate my way to calm relatively quickly. 

It is a daily dose of peace I require to live my life in the happiest and most peaceful way. It helps me to navigate all of the ups and downs I face as a female, parent, partner, business owner and human being. 

Mediation is time to let everything else fall away - the roles, responsibility, worries, doubts - and savour in peacefulness. It grounds me when my thoughts are racing, it gives me clarity when emotions are heightened, it relieves pain held within my body and gifts me silence within a very noisy world. 

I am passionate about sharing meditation because I know that living in a heightened stressful state is not natural, and not a happy or healthy place to be in so much of the time. There is relief from this way of living. There are tools to be able to control how you most want to feel. 

“Joy is our birthright. Misery is our creation”