Meditation For People Who Can't Meditate Lecture

People tell me all the time, "I just can't meditate. I can't sit still, I can't focus, I think it's boring." In this lecture I present the idea that this is actually related to trauma, and that we can overcome our trauma response in short bursts of meditation in order to build up to a longer practice. This is a great lecture for anyone who is struggling with sitting in meditation, whether you are a beginner or experience meditator who sometimes just can't seem to focus.

Transcript

So I saw this post a few days ago from someone that I follow on Instagram, TheFemGenius, And it was so thought-provoking to me and it really kind of like switched a light bulb on in my head. And so I'm going to read just a little bit of what she said and then I'm going to go into a little bit about why I found this to be so inspiring and how it kind of shifted my view of trauma and mindfulness. But the first thing I want to say is that I think all of us have had trauma in our lives. Some obviously to a much greater extent than others and our experience of it is very individual. Some of us went through traumas that actually physically threatened our being, Our survival, And some of us have been through traumas that were so emotionally traumatic that it causes a physical response in the body. So I always encourage you to reach out for one-on-one help if you need it, Especially in dealing with trauma. Reach out to a coach or a counselor, Psychiatrist, A mental health professional if you feel like you need help one-on-one. And sometimes that's the best way to start resolving and living past the trauma, Letting go of the trauma, Releasing it, And then moving on. So let me read you just a little bit of what this post was and then I'm going to talk about my reaction to it. So she said, Mindfulness can be triggering to trauma survivors. Your nervous system has protected you by detaching you from your body. And her recommendation to trauma survivors was to try to build mindfulness in small steps. And I thought this was so interesting because I have had so many people say to me, Oh, I just can't meditate. I have such a hard time with meditating. I can't sit still. I, You know, I can't focus. And all of a sudden this, This sort of switch went off in my brain and I was like, Oh, I wonder if that has to do with this trauma response. And I started thinking about it. I went back, I was looking through the, All the 29 episodes of Wind Down Wednesday that we've had so far. And the very first one was about stepping out of fear. So I talk a lot about fear versus love or scarcity versus abundance. But the thing about trauma is that a trauma response is fear on steroids. So we all have these kind of lingering fears or maybe low level fears that, That are sort of always with us in the background. And a lot of times when we're talking about fear, We're talking more about that kind of generalized feeling of fear. And sometimes it'll kind of spike. But trauma is like that fear on steroids. Trauma is sometimes a full on panic response. So we're talking about your heart racing, Hearing buzzing or white noise in your ears so that you're not really understanding, You're not processing information as it comes in. And then sometimes having tunnel vision where you can actually physically, You can't really see your surroundings. So this trauma response causes a physical response in the body. And then we start to develop neural pathways and that trauma response becomes our automatic response to things. And anytime we get triggered by anything, It may be totally unrelated to the specific trauma, Then that trauma response comes back up and we go full into this full on panic. And so what I say sometimes is that fear kicks us out of the body. It takes us out of physical presence, Out of being in our body, It kicks us out of the body. So if fear kicks us out of the body, Trauma launches us out of the body like a rocket because that's a survival mechanism. And that's kind of what she was saying in that post was that if you were just trying to survive, One of the ways we do that is to detach our consciousness from our body. You know, A lot of times when people are talking about going through a super traumatic event, They might even say, I saw myself from outside as though I was no longer in my body. So when someone like me comes along and I'm like, Let's talk about mindfulness, Let's get into our body, That might be very triggering if you have suffered traumas or if you're still kind of in this trauma response and you haven't fully dealt with that, You haven't started building new neural pathways to bring yourself more into ease and more into that parasympathetic or that relaxation response. So that's what I want to talk about a little bit tonight. So one of the things that I took away from this pain event last night that I really loved was Angie who shared the yoga portion. She said, Practice makes progress. So we've all heard that saying practice makes perfect. Practice makes progress. So how do we retrain our brain to get out of that trauma response without getting totally overwhelmed? If I sit here every week and I'm like, Let's do a 20 minute meditation and you can't even sit in silence for two minutes because it starts bringing up that trauma, Then you're not going to be able to sit in 20 minutes of meditation. And I completely understand that. So the idea of small steps is what we're going to talk about tonight. It's uncomfortable to start coming into the present moment for all of us. And even people who are very experienced meditators, You know, When you get really agitated, It's hard to bring yourself into the body. That's why we have so many tools. That's why I try to give you tools to help you in the moment because just telling yourself, Oh, I need to get present if you're overwhelmed or kind of freaking out, That's not going to work. I thought it was interesting that, Like I said at the beginning, And I want to bring this up one more time, I hear from so many people, I can't meditate, I can't sit still. Or they'll say, I'll say, Oh, Did you listen to this meditation that I have? And you know, Maybe it's 10 minutes long or it's 16 or 20 minutes long. Well, I can't make it through the whole thing. So the first thing is, As I always say, Be gentle with yourself. If you can't make it through a whole meditation, Don't beat yourself up about it. We're going to work tonight on some small steps that you can practice that will take much less time. And then eventually, Like any practice, Practice makes progress. You're going to build your way up to being able to sit in a longer meditation. And your triggered trauma response to me right now might be like, Why would I want to do that? This is terrible. This is how we build those new neural pathways. These small steps that allow us to step out of that triggered reaction and into a calm, Intentional response. That starts to retrain the brain. It actually starts to change our brain chemistry so that we can maintain that. Because trauma response is highly unpleasant. Anyone who's ever been kicked into that knows. I mean, That's an understatement. And ultimately, We want to step out of that. And for most of us, The trauma that we're still carrying is something that's no longer occurring for us. So the goal is to spend as much time as possible out of that trauma response and in this calm, Parasympathetic ease response. And even if it's only 30 seconds for the first 10 days you try this, Then maybe it'll get to 60 seconds and then maybe you'll get to two minutes. And what I've noticed in myself, And I think that's what really got me thinking when I read that post and it just kept coming back to me and I was kind of at a loss for what I wanted to talk about tonight. And I really had to drill down into this. So I've talked a lot this year for myself about coming back into my body, About learning to stay in ease. Because it's very easy for me to get triggered as an empath. I can feel other people's energy. I went to get my second COVID shot today, Which is amazing. I'm very grateful for that. But it's a very chaotic experience. You're in this long line of cars and everybody there is a little bit like, Yeah. And I could feel myself start to get into that triggered state. So now I have the tools to come back into my body fully. And even if I can't maintain it, You know, Maybe I did a couple, Maybe I took my big oxytocin breath. We're going to talk about that a little bit. And then I felt better. And then 30 seconds later, It's coming back. And so you just keep practicing that. And then the practice makes progress. And what I have found for myself personally is that the more I meditate, The longer I can stay in ease. So while that first step may be very difficult for you if you're used to this trauma response and the phrase trauma response might not even be familiar to you. But if you're someone who has a hard time sitting down in meditation, You find it uncomfortable physically. That's a lot of times a sign of emotional discomfort. You find that you have a hard time focusing. You find that you have a hard time sitting still. I think that for many of us, That is an indication that we have that trauma response getting triggered. It's not just that meditation is not for me or I can't pay attention or I don't feel like it today. Those are all sort of the defense mechanisms, The defense thoughts our ego has because deeper down we don't want to do that work because it's hard and it's scary and it's what our body is used to. So when you first start making change, It's like, Ah, It's very uncomfortable. And so then when you introduce this fear rocket launch of fear sending you out of your body that is a true trauma response, It's even harder to convince yourself to even try this. So what we're going to do tonight, We're going to do some short segments of short things that you can do at any given moment, Depending on where you are, Because one of them is completely silent. One of them is a chant and then one of them is a mantra, Which you can do in your head or out loud. And we're going to do this a few times. And I know I've kind of gotten away from describing the meditation, But this tonight it feels important to me because I want you to practice this throughout the week in short segments. So we're going to do three deep oxytocin breaths. And I talked a lot about oxytocin breaths last week. That was what our entire, I think it was last week, The episode on ease. Go back and watch that if you want to learn more about the oxytocin breaths. I'm going to explain it briefly as we go tonight, But if you want more information, You can go to the previous episode. So you can take three oxytocin breaths in about a minute, Probably 45 seconds to a minute. If you were really in a panic and you know, Kind of panting, It might be more like 30 seconds because the first one might be very shuddering and you know, As the energy starts to calm, The breath will lengthen. But one of the signs, Physical signs of anxiety is taking really short, Shallow breaths. That's partly why they give people who are in a panic attack a bag. They have you breathe into a bag and then that kind of the CO2 helps you kind of calm that response and stop that hyperventilation. So you can also do that consciously using these oxytocin breaths. So that's something that you can do in 30 seconds to a minute that can start to shift you out of that triggered response so that you have the opportunity to step back into the body and into ease and into the present moment. The other thing I really love is chanting and sound. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this, The primordial chakras practice that I've been doing, The primordial chakra tones practice that I've been doing has been life changing for me. And the thing I love about sound is it doesn't matter what state of mind you're in when you make sound, The vibration of the sound does the energetic work for you. So you don't have to be centered and grounded and you know, In this space of energy that you've built, You could be completely freaked out and the vibration of the sound will bring you back into your body. And of course we can always make sounds, Especially some like sometimes, And I was actually going to do an episode on this and maybe we will, Like you see me sometimes I do this and I do that vocally too if I'm really stressed out or and usually I don't do this in the grocery store because I don't want someone to call the police on me, But I might go, Oh, That's a way of clearing energy and it doesn't require any thought and the vibration of moving that sound brings you back into the body. So we're going to do a very short chant. We've done this before silently and a little bit. I think you've heard me do it out loud. It's Sat Nam, S-A-T-N-A-M and that is a Gurmukhi phrase that comes from Kundalini Yoga and it basically means truth and identity. And the way that I would translate that into this setting, The way I feel that vibration and the reason that I bring this chant, Partly it's very short, But to me that means I am here, I am in my true identity and I am safe. So we're going to do some chanting where we actually do that out loud. You can use that as a mental mantra. And then the last thing we're going to do is a mantra, Which mantra is always the most powerful if you can say it out loud because of that vibration, But you can always repeat any of these things silently. Like if you're in a place where you can't make noise. So we're going to use some just simple mantras like I am safe, It is safe to be present in my body. So we're going to do each of these things three times. We're going to do three breaths and then three Sat Naams and then three affirmations, Essentially mantras. And then I'm going to check back in with you because I want you to notice as we're doing this, Do you feel like you're coming more present in the body? And you may find that you start to get sort of into a place where that triggering is getting worse. So then you can back off a little bit, Take a break for a second, Take a couple more deep breaths. You can get up and walk around the room and then sit back down, Whatever you need to do to keep yourself from getting fully triggered and into that panic state. And my go to for that is breath. That oxytocin breath makes a huge difference. But any of the things that we're practicing tonight you can do on your own. And I encourage you to try this out and try it out for a short period of time to start with and then see if you can lengthen it a little bit and then see if when you come back to these longer meditations, You start finding that you can get into ease a little bit more, That you can get more present. But always, As I say every week, Be gentle with yourself and especially when you're dealing with trauma. You do not need to beat yourself up. Somebody else did that to you. That's kind of what trauma is, Whether it was emotionally or physically or whatever. So step out of that abuser role for yourself. It's so easy for us to be terrible to ourselves. So be gentle with this. If this is triggering and it's too much for you, Then walk away. It's okay. And come back to it when you can. But do come back to it because this is really a life changing practice. And I'm here to say as someone who has been a meditator for over 20 years, Kind of on and off and shorter and longer, But now I have this dedicated practice where at least once a week I do a good 20 minutes of meditation with you, You will come more into ease. You will start to feel more comfortable in meditation and it really will shift your energy. It will shift the way you look at the world. You'll get out of that fear and more into that love response, Out of scarcity and into abundance. It really does make a difference. And the tools that we are using tonight are simple and they're things that you can practice on your own. Let's get into the meditation and I'll still be guiding you. I just wanted to give a little bit of more guidance than I maybe usually do and I wanted to describe because I also recognize that if you're in a trauma response, One of the things that can be really helpful is to know what's happening, To know what's going on. And very briefly, That oxytocin breath is a big deep breath in through the nose. You can put your hands on your belly, Make sure your belly's really pooching out. You don't want to be breathing into the chest like we do when we're anxious. Big deep breath into the belly. Sigh it out with that nice loud noise. Hopefully tonight you can do that softly if you need to in public, But the more noise you make, The more energy that moves and the faster you get into ease. And then if you'd like to, At the bottom, You can do that grounding oomph and that helps bring you into the body even more.