Tag: meditation

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Dazed and Confused 

This month made the Flyer editor try meditation. (Photo: Pop Nukoonrat | Dreamstime.com)

January has been a rough year, huh? United States citizens, torn apart like never before, have been inundated with a ridiculous array of presidential orders and policy changes dumped on us in an absolute whirlwind of nonsense in a matter of days. An emboldened and strange billionaire troll — who’s pulling political strings even beyond our scope of understanding — is not-so-subtly showing his true colors in front of the entire world. And, still, half of the folks we share this country with can’t agree that he and the guy who promised to “Make America Great Again” have more than a couple screws loose — and do not have our best interests in mind. 

Lucky for you, I know that you’ve heard enough about this. You’ve processed or are still processing — maybe dissociating? Heh. Whatever the case may be, I’d bet we’re all more than a little dazed and confused in the dust of what’s happened since Inauguration Day — and under the looming worry of what’s to come.

So one thing I’ve done in recent weeks is meditate. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being an excellent meditator and 1 being the worst, I’m at zero. Maybe even -2. I am absolutely no good at quieting my anxious mind. But meditation is called “a practice,” so I’m practicing. I have some random app on my phone that had been sending me notification nudges to meditate every day for months. I, of course, ignored those notifications because who has time for that? Honestly, I ignore most of the notifications I receive. They never stop coming, and I can’t keep up. Those reminders to drink water or weigh myself today or log a journal entry— well, they’ll have to wait. At least until after I respond to a few dozen emails and contact the post office about why my package hasn’t been scanned in three weeks and call my insurance about charging me for medication that was previously covered. There’s always a big, long to-do list, right? But, if I understand all this correctly, that’s why meditation — if you can get there — is important. 

There are all sorts of videos on YouTube you can access, playlists on Spotify, and probably a million other free meditation resources online. I’ve started with short, 5- or 10- minute guided meditations. It’s often frustrating because I can’t for the life of me see the meadow or the stream or the sunny sky they’re guiding me to see with my mind’s eye. There’s no staircase and no open window. And I spend an awful lot of time telling myself that I need to stop thinking. Thinking about thinking is not meditating. The point is not to think, right? Or to get past the thinking you and directly to the heart of consciousness? I really don’t know because I’ve never done it. But some people swear it does wonders for their love and appreciation of life, letting go of worry, increasing creativity, and on and on. Dive within, yes?

I guess for now, it’s good to at least put 10 minutes aside to lie with eyes closed even if I’m thinking about not thinking. I can certainly think of worse things to do and worse things to think about. And hey, meditation might be woo-woo to you. You don’t have to do it! I’m willing to try just about anything that’ll help me find some peace and purpose. Both are incredibly important, especially now when things feel so out of control. Take a 10 from the chatter and fear.

Amid the dust and the rubble, we may not be able to see the stream or the meadow or the shining sun, but they’re there, somewhere … in the stillness, beyond the dark. No matter what, don’t stop looking. 

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Fun Stuff Metaphysical Connection

Metaphysical Connection: Meditation

Photo: Thomas Nordwest | Creative cCommons | Wikimedia Commons

There is a lot of talk in metaphysical circles about meditation. Meditation is an important part of a spiritual path, regardless of what label you use for your path. It is something I find myself recommending for many of the questions people ask me. It’s not the only answer to most questions, but it is an important part of finding those answers.

It is believed that meditating can help us lead happier and healthier lives, even if we do not take the spiritual aspects of meditation into consideration. Meditating is believed to help people sleep better, reduce stress, improve memory and focus, reduce depression and anxiety, help people feel happier overall, and boost immunity.

Typically, in spiritual and metaphysical circles, when we talk about meditation, we are using it as a mindfulness practice, a devotional practice, and/or as a way to receive messages from the universe. However, meditation can be a difficult skill to cultivate. And it’s not like riding a bike, where once you’ve learned how to do it, you can effortlessly repeat it. With meditation, sometimes things go well and sometimes you cannot turn off your monkey mind, as it’s often called.

We tend to think of meditation as sitting quietly, legs crossed with our eyes closed, listening for messages or being peaceful. And this is a great meditation technique. It is the form we see in movies or on TV, but Hollywood doesn’t explain that the people who meditate well in this way have usually spent a lot of time learning how to do so. It is not a form of meditation that many people can jump into easily when they begin the journey. If you have tried this form of meditation and it worked well for you, that’s awesome. If sitting quietly and listening for messages and not holding onto your thoughts is a little daunting for you, there are other ways of meditating.

My favorite is movement meditation. This is a great technique for those of us who struggle to quiet our minds or sit still. Movement meditation is where you perform movements with your body that do not require your attention and allow your mind to focus on your intention. Many people, me included, have found that when they are sitting still their mind is going a million miles an hour in 20 different directions. However, when we move or give our bodies something to do, our minds quiet down. Movement meditation is something you may be familiar with if you practice yoga or tai chi, but it is something we all can do. Taking a walk, dancing, or even cleaning your home can be a meditative experience if you let it. While your body is doing these repetitive movements, try to focus on what you want to manifest, the questions you would like answers to, your spirit guide that you’d like to talk to, or whatever else you need.

You can also try a focus attention meditation. With this, you are going to focus your attention on an object. You can choose anything to be your focus point, from a crystal on your altar to a scrying mirror or gazing ball to the art on your walls. Get into a comfortable position and look at your focus object. Pay attention to the thoughts or experiences you have while looking at your focus item. Some people may even begin to close their eyes at some point in the meditation and try to visualize the object in their mind. Focus attention meditation involves focusing on something intently as a way of staying in the moment and quieting your inner dialogue.

Repeating mantras or affirmations can also be a form of meditation. And those who might need a little outside help with their meditations can look online for guided meditations. These are scripted experiences that can help you reach a certain goal such as calmness, relaxation, sleep, or a deeper spiritual goal like finding a spirit guide.

I highly encourage everyone to find a meditation technique that works for them. Meditation is an important tool in our self-care and healing toolbox.

Emily Guenther is a co-owner of The Broom Closet metaphysical shop. She is a Memphis native, professional tarot reader, ordained Pagan clergy, and dog mom.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Matt Petty’s Sound Baths Are a Vibe

Photo: Abigail Morici Matt Petty alongside his plant assistant.

“This is my assistant Ivy,” Matt Petty tells me as he massages the leaves of his pothos plant. Ivy is connected to a Bluetooth speaker that hums an ethereal tune, producing an otherworldly atmosphere, ripe for Petty’s practice of sound therapy. “The Bluetooth transmitter turns the energy of the plant into sound,” Petty explains. “It works with the electricity that’s moving through the water in the plant.” 

Ivy is just one of the instruments in the room with us, along with quartz crystal singing bowls, a rain stick, gongs, and chimes. “All of these instruments are very resonant,” Petty says. “So when you play them, it sort of amplifies what’s already in the atmosphere. These are all sound healing instruments.”

Before learning these instruments, Petty was classically trained on the trombone. “When I was in college, one thing that I would do that would help my musicianship as a trombone player was yoga. Maybe that was kind of how I started deepening into that kind of [meditative] practice.” After his schooling, he taught music theory and ear training, where musicians learn to identify pitches, chords, and melodies solely by hearing. 

“I really had to find a way to teach people how to listen,” he adds. “There was a TED Talk video I saw from this deaf percussionist, Evelyn Glennie. And she just talks about being a deaf musician, and how everybody thinks music just goes in through your ears. And that’s sort of how we are trained to be musicians, but actually, the way that she learned how to be the musician that she is, is through how to feel the instrument through using your body. I always felt really inspired by that. It helped me understand how people were thinking about sound and how they were psychologically processing it.”

But it wouldn’t be until after the pandemic when he would find sound therapy. “When the pandemic started, it was sort of like all of the gigs just kind of ended,” he says. “It really felt like my music career, like, ended at that point, at least for a long time. And so, one day I found out about this New Year’s Eve meditation, and I ended up going. And it was the first time I’d ever experienced a sound healing kind of meditation. It shifted everything for me. My life changed after that.” At last, Petty knew how transformative listening to music with one’s whole body in a meditative state could be, and the relief it could offer.

Now, Petty leads weekly sound baths at The Broom Closet, so others can feel that kind of peace that very first sound bath offered him. “It’s like a group meditation that’s guided by sound,” he says. “The way I usually do them is I just play the instruments, and I sort of guide people in a meditation. … Your mind may go into a dreamlike state, but the music is sort of nudging you along. And the body just innately knows what to do and can move into these really deep places of healing and transformation.”

In addition to the weekly sound baths, Petty also offers a monthly “Vibes from the Vines: The Sentient Sound of Plants in Memphis,” where attendees can try their own hand at playing the various instruments in a unique sound therapy session. Space is limited for each session, so keep up with Petty’s offerings on The Broom Closet’s Facebook.  

Celestial Sound Bath, The Broom Closet, Mondays, 6:30 p.m., $20.

Vibes from the Vines: The Sentient Sound of Plants in Memphis, The Broom Closet, Monday, July 31, 7 p.m., $20.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Gong Meditation at Delta Groove

CREDIT: Laura Lee Madigan

Gong meditation is a form of sound therapy, dating as far back as 16,000 B.C., that uses a series of vibrations and sounds to induce a relaxed state in the listener.

Aaron Glazer, who leads this Thursday’s gong bath at Delta Groove Yoga, says benefits are subjective and vary from person to person.

“It can range from a very relaxing experience to completely allowing the mind to let go,” he says. “So what happens is the vibrations of the gong are not linear, and it’s not really something that the mind is used to following and keeping track of. So it forces you to let go. And it allows the intelligence of the body to be able to heal, whether you have a certain intention or if you leave it open-ended for whatever needs to happen in the body. And it’s just kind of trusting in the processes that are able to happen when we get out of our own way.”

Laura Lee Madigan

Looking for a way to quiet the mind? Try this — bang a gong, get it on, and a bang a gong.

To help guide users through meditation, Glazer uses mallets with varying levels of softness to create different soundscapes that can simulate whale sounds, deep space, or angels singing.

“The gong sounds from the front of the room, but sometimes you can’t even really tell where the sound is coming from,” Glazer says.

When asked if this effect was to disorient the listener, Glazer replies, “I think ‘reorient’ would be a better word for it.”

Gong Bath with Aaron Glazer, Delta Groove Yoga, Thursday, August 22nd, 8:30-9:30 p.m., $20.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

McMeditation

CREDIT: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi By Global Good News via Wikimedia Commons

In these trying times, when half the nation seems to have gone insane, everyone not in a coma seems to be searching for a way to relax. Some choose vigorous exercise, which can end in pain and regret. Others might enjoy listening to soothing music, if any exists, or keeping a journal, which is like seeing a shrink without the appointment, bill, or condescension.

Rather than elevate my blood pressure by discussing the idiots and assholes that populate our current administration, I thought I might offer a balm for the troubled mind and discuss my experience with meditation. All I knew about the subject was that the Beatles had become interested in Transcendental Meditation (registered copyright, but since I don’t have that symbol on my keyboard, I’ll use an asterisk), or TM*,  from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1967.

The Maharishi, known at the time as the “giggling guru” for his numerous television appearances, developed TM* in India in 1956, but after meeting the Beatles in London, he began making an enterprise of it. When the Beatles and their wives, along with the Farrow sisters (for whom John Lennon wrote “Dear Prudence”), visited the Maharishi in his ashram in India, the mystical glow faded after the Holy Man hit on Mia Farrow. The band walked away disillusioned. Although the discipline of meditation dates back 5,000 years, the Maharishi’s meditation technique caught fire in those halcyon days of spiritual discovery, guaranteeing effortless inner peace, at a price. In 1968, the Maharishi began training TM* teachers from his new global headquarters in Seelisberg, Switzerland, and sent them forth to pacify the world.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi By Global Good News via Wikimedia Commons

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

When I was in the midst of my tortuous decade trying to write country songs in Nashville, I reached the point that if I heard one more song celebrating poverty and ignorance, I was going to lose it. I was in desperate need of stress relief, and TM* was literally the only game in town. Encouraged by a friend who had even moved his family up to Boone, North Carolina to live in a TM* community, I signed up for a course. I knew nothing of meditation or its Eastern origins, and unlike the wizened sage you now witness before you, I had everything to learn. I don’t think I’d even had dinner in an Indian restaurant. My particular impression of Hinduism was a religion with multitudes of goofy-looking gods and goddesses with animal characteristics standing in awkward positions. Since TM* is rooted in the Hindu faith, I approached my lessons with some apprehension. The six-day course cost $250 and could only be taught by a certified TM* instructor, in my case a soft-spoken young man flush with serenity.

The meditation classes were easy enough, based on a repetitive phrase that centered the mind. Practicing for 20 minutes, twice a day, was prescribed to ease stress and anxiety. The big payoff, or mystic goody, was the mantra, a sacred incantation chosen exclusively for you, based on your personal interview with the teacher. For initiation day, I was instructed to bring a clean handkerchief, flowers, some fruit, and naturally, the course fee. A makeshift alter was erected with a peach crate and a bedsheet. On the wall above was a creepy photo of an old, white-bearded man, who was the Maharishi’s guru. I was admonished to never utter my mantra aloud, lest I tarnish it and strip it of its power. The Maharishi said, “Using just any mantra can be dangerous. Mantras commonly found in books can cause a person to withdraw from life.” When the big moment finally came, I was asked to bow before the guru’s photo and receive my mantra.

I initially balked at bowing before anybody but I figured I’d come this far, so I lowered my head. I was hoping for something cool, like “Shanti,” but the teacher leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Hrring.” Since it was chosen especially for me, who was I to disagree? I chose a comfortable chair in my bedroom and began to practice. Focusing squarely on the third eye, I began to silently recite, “Hrring,  Hering, Herring.” I just spent $250 so I could recite a word that sounded like Jewish smoked fish. I told my teacher that my mantra was making me laugh and could I please have another, but I was assured that this was mine and to work with it.

Some time later, I received a call from my old friend Mac, who said, “I heard you took TM*; what’s your mantra?” I was appalled, “I can’t tell you my mantra. I was sworn to secrecy.” Mac said, “If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” I reluctanty agreed saying, “Mine’s Hrring.” Mac burst into laughter. “What’s so funny?” I asked. He replied, “Mine is Shrring.”

I came to realize that there are a multitude of ways to meditate and the Maharishi had turned TM* into a for-profit, international franchise, much like Weight Watchers — or psychiatry. TM* was quick to reassure its customers that their fees covered not only the initial training, but a lifetime follow-up, like a Kenmore warranty. Even financing is available. In 1984, Omni magazine published an article by “disaffected TM* teachers” listing 16 mantras used by the organization, contradicting the fable that the result was dependent on a trained teacher’s choice. A 2007 study found that details of training and knowledge for TM* teachers are kept private and potential franchisees are required to sign a “loyalty-oath employment contract.” Fortunately, effective meditation doesn’t require the $960 currently being charged for TM* classes.

By the time of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s death in 2008, TM* had become an empire worth an estimated $4 billion, including the Maharishi International University, now The Maharishi University of Management on 381 acres in Fairfield, Iowa. The compound in North Carolina called Heavenly Mountain unfortunately went bust. Built as a TM* community in 1998 for 40 million dollars, the site sold at auction in 2012 for $3.9 million and is now the Art of Living Retreat Center, offering weight loss, detox, yoga, and meditation for an all-inclusive fee. Just YouTube “meditation,” and you don’t have to pay for it. Meditation really works, but it takes the sort of consistent self-discipline that I utterly lack. Which reminds me, there’s a Xanax prescription that I need to refill.

Randy Haspel writes the Recycled Hippies Blog.