Give yourself a break

With just a few minutes per day of meditation & yoga you are guaranteed to see improvements in how you deal with stress

I find it amazing that it took me over 10 years of yoga practice to really understand why I do Yoga.

I knew I was practicing Yoga because it made me feel amazing and never let me down, but I just knew there was more to it.

When you understand why you do something, it gives you a sense of peace and you adapt your approach to it. It’s like a milestone on your journey.

Like many others, I have tried meditation and had great experiences. I fell off the wagon countless times, stayed on the side road for various lengths of time, but always returned to the train for a ride.

I started meditation in India 9 years ago. I was trained by a Transcendental Meditation master who gave me my mantra which I still use regularly when I meditate today.

My most gratifying meditations were my first ones. I had a few outer body experiences during which I felt my soul being part of the wider world. In one case, I was meditating in a bedroom in India when suddenly the phone rang in the living room and my stepmother picked up the line. We were awaiting guests for dinner. At this moment, my soul was in our guest’s home and I knew that they were making an excuse to not come to dinner. When my meditation ended and I joined my stepmother in the living room she said: “Kertu called, she has a terrible stomach bug and they won’t be coming for dinner.”

I had never met Kertu before, but I knew she had long brown hair and was feeling bad for lying to my stepmother.

After my experiences in India I fell of the meditation wagon for a while. I was living in NYC and had a busy corporate life so despite the fact that it felt amazing to meditate, I didn’t manage to stick to my meditation practice and just kept on with my yoga one instead.

I had various ad hoc meditation experiences after that. The emergence of meditation apps renewed my passion for it. I still love using the Insight timer to meditate and bring some peace into my life.

When I took my AcroVinyassa training in Bali last year, my awesome teachers recommended the course of Jonny Pollard from 1GiantMind. I fell in love with his course and have enjoyed the journey ever since.

I am now consistent with my daily practice. I fall off the meditation train less and less. It would be foolish to go back to a life where I don’t give myself a daily break. It doesn’t take that much to meditate and although it wasn’t always easy to sit down, I now really enjoy when it’s meditation o’clock and time to close my eyes. That’s because I have experienced so many benefits resulting from this practice in my life with eyes open.

To name just a few benefits: less conflict, more love, fewer overreactions and the ability to look beyond the mundanity of daily life. We tend to forget that our mind is our most important asset. It’s the window through which we perceive the world and create our own version of the world. The mind needs a vacation beyond good sleep to deal with the stress of everyday life. We give so much time to everything else, when in reality just 5 minutes of meditation to start your day represents less than 1% of your time, and so it is a good investment to allocate that time to your most important asset. Your mind.

I know my soul and Yoga journey are infinite, but I feel closer today to understanding why I practice yoga. No one requires 10 years of yoga practice (or any yoga practice at all for that matter) to get on the meditation track, but for me it took me exactly that. The practice of yoga is a great way to go if none of the meditation apps or experiences are working for you right now. After all, the only goal of yoga is self-realisation and meditation does just that: it creates a great sense of self-awareness to your mind while restoring your body from stress.