My Experience: Meditate Your Weight

Yesterday I completed the final day’s meditation and journaling for the three-week journey that Tiffany Cruikshank offers in Meditate Your Weight. She’s a doctor who has been using this course with her own patients for years, helping them lose weight, and so she decided to publish it.

Around January, I’d become frustrated with the 5-10 pounds I’d gained over the past couple of years and I didn’t know what to do about it. I eat super healthy (or at least 80/20) and usually worked out 5 times a week. I thought I’d give a go at examining the mental side of things and see if that was my issue, as I suspected it was (because I’m really hard on myself mentally, about most things).

I love reading books like this – and one of Gabby Bernstein’s books that’s a 40 day mental work-out – because it gives me something to look forward to doing every morning. I really enjoyed checking the box of, ‘Yup, done!’ I also, and I HATE to admit this, loved the freedom from my Vedic meditation practice for three weeks. I think I just needed a break. I don’t know why, but I did. Don’t judge me.

Anyways, it’s a 3 week process to go through and unpack your mental baggage that you have about yourself as a person and the image of yourself; to discover what makes you feel good and what gifts you have to offer the world. It sounds cheesy, but it was helpful. The best day is probably day 18, which is the visualization meditation. Where you visualize (duh) yourself at your healthiest. It’s powerful. I felt really good after. I also really enjoyed the daily mantra one day of “My inner glow makes me radiant.” I might get that printed on a bracelet.  Stop it, I know it’s cheesy.

Did I lose any weight, you might be wondering. I lost a couple of pounds, but her message overall is to find your healthiest SELF, not your healthiest weight. She actually recommends throwing your scale out.

So, two thumbs up for this book. It’s good to work on your health mentally just as it is to work on it physically. I celebrated finishing it with a 5k and an iced coffee at my favorite coffee shop. #winning

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When It Gets Tough

I didn’t meditate last weekend, or on Monday. I was exhausted from training, and coming down with the beginnings of a cold, and all I wanted to do was relax. 

I fell off the wagon. I felt lazy. I started to beat myself up but stopped. I started up again on Tuesday and I’ve been consistent. But I need to get back to doing 20 minutes 2x/day. Vedic meditation really works it’s magic when it’s practiced twice a day. 

Even more aggravating though: I noticed that I’m very restless during my morning meditation. Like, more fidgety than usual. (And I fidget a lot, but that’s a story for another post.) I can’t sit still and it’s probably because my future is up in the air. I’m not really sure what I’m doing next. And although I’m not losing sleep over it this time, my mind is just constantly racing with thoughts of WHAT AM I DOING TODAY, etc. 

But as they say, when it’s hardest to sit still, that’s when you need it the most. So sit I will.

MNDFL’s Meditation for Creativity with Emily Fletcher

Last Monday night, J and I went to the MNDFL Meditation in the EV for a meditation on creativity with Broadway veteran and founder of Ziva Meditation, Emily Fletcher (Chicago, A Chorus Line, The Producers, etc). I was intrigued because she was a former Broadway actress and who couldn’t benefit from being more creative? The cast of Small Mouth Sounds had been on the schedule as well (Fletcher is the meditation advisor for the show) but they were unable to make it. Eva Price, one of the producers of the play, attended, though, and talked about the experience of producing the play and trying to develop her own practice. 

We sat down and she first talked about her debilitating anxiety from being a swing in A Chorus Line (she wound up in the fetal position after she went on as Val for the first time) and asked her dressing roommate, who covered 6 roles (compared to her 4), how she stayed so cool and collected. Her dressing roommate introduced her to Vedic meditation (the training I completed in early August, though with a different teacher)  and her life was changed. She eventually spent 3 years training to be a teacher and opened her own studio (Ziva). 

She led us through her “Ziva Meditation,” which was like a body scan + light Vedic meditation + loving kindness meditation. She’s a really good teacher because she’s not too new agey. She knows her audience and qualified a lot of things that she said that she knew some people would be all skeptical about (ex. “as cheesy as it sounds, now visualize yourself sending love to everyone in this room”). 

I thanked her after and introduced myself, as did J, and she was super nice. Later on, I realized my Vedic teacher teaches at her studio sometimes so I might go check out one of his classes there, or one of hers.

As always, it was a really good time. I’m sure we’ll be back soon for another class, and sooner or later J will probably pick up his own practice. If you want to download Emily Fletcher’s free meditation, shoot over to Ziva Meditation and enter your email address and you’ll be able to download it for free!

All You Can Do

I’ve been practicing transcendental meditation (aka vedic meditation) for about 3 weeks now. I’ve been meditating twice daily since January 2013 so finding the time to meditate twice a day is easy and I’m really dedicated to fitting it in every day. i’ve been stealing away to a dark call room at my office for twenty minutes in the afternoon. It’s so nice to recharge. 

But my small roof gathering got in the way of my second meditation on Saturday night and I really beat myself up over it. For, like, two days. But I got over it. Beating myself up over it won’t change my missing the sitting.

Then it almost happened again tonight. The afternoon at work was busy and by the time I got home from the office, I didn’t have enough time to sit before my yoga class.

What to do. it’s generally suggested to do the second meditation between 2pm and 8pm because it’s an energizing meditation and you don’t want to be up all night if you do it at too late an hour. 

So, here’s what I did: I sat and meditated for 7 minutes while I waited for the train to come after yoga and then another 11 minutes once I was on the train. 18 minutes isn’t 20 minutes, but it’s better than nothing.

I’m not beating myself up this time. I got in a lot and I’m happy with it. 

Synchronicity

I completed my Vedic (aka Transcendental) meditation training this week and maybe I’m connecting things that are just coincidences, but after 5 days of practicing TM, I feel like there’s some synchronicity happening.

On Wednesday, I finally booked my plane ticket to Poland. That evening at the training, a couple came and the husband was Polish.

On Thursday, I was on the train home and I saw a dude wearing a Green Day t-shirt from their last world tour. Listed on the back of it was a city in Poland. Green Day had also just released Bang Bang that morning. 

Finally, yesterday I told my cousin that I was leaving for Poland on the 18th of October and she reminded me that the number 18 is a lucky number for Jews. The letters of the Hebrew word “chai” add up to 18 and I have a gold chai that I was given at my baby naming. (I just had to Google all of that, btw, because I am a #badjew.)