{"id":14438,"date":"2018-10-31T14:04:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T19:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tm.org\/blog\/?p=14438"},"modified":"2019-05-12T14:24:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T19:24:59","slug":"it-hit-me-quite-literally-after-endless-months-of-going-to-sleep-wired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/people\/it-hit-me-quite-literally-after-endless-months-of-going-to-sleep-wired\/","title":{"rendered":"“It Hit Me, Quite Literally, After Endless Months Of Going To Sleep Wired\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tara Gardner, a freelance writer and editor covering all things lifestyle for Glam.com<\/a>, recently wrote about her experience learning and practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique. There are so many meditation practices to choose from these days that it\u2019s helpful to hear stories like Tara\u2019s. She takes us from her first impressions of the TM technique, through her instruction, and positive experience afterwards. Below are excerpts from her insightful article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

 
\n\u201cIt hit me, quite literally, after endless months of going to sleep wired, waking up tired, and spending my days drifting through a murky brain fog. I stepped out onto the Chicago streets one morning, absentmindedly looking in the British direction, and got clipped by a car. Something had to give.<\/p>\n

Living in a new city and forging a new career as a freelance editor with a bazillion deadlines, I didn\u2019t really give my head time to acclimatize. I just jumped right in and expected my brain and body to follow behind. To alleviate the low energy, I dosed myself on coffee and copious amounts of Diet Coke, riding the caffeine highs until the crashes became too much. After the car accident, I realized that I needed to find a way to give my head a break from the cranial quicksand of daily life. So, like any editor, I hit the trends \u2014 from cleanses to self-care \u2014 hard. Then, I tried elimination diets. I felt better physically, but the mental cloud still hadn\u2019t cleared. (And, no, it wasn\u2019t jet-lag, as many suggested; I\u2019d been in the U.S. for six months at that point.)<\/p>\n

Back in London, I had done several mindfulness meditation courses. I always felt a little superficially smug about doing them, too \u2014 like you do after you\u2019ve just finished a three-day juice cleanse and everyone in the office is asking you how amazing you feel, but secretly all it made you want to do is eat a bucket of fried chicken. Truth was, I never actually noticed a huge shift in anything. Perhaps I wasn\u2019t doing it properly. Perhaps my brain was immune to it. Perhaps (and most likely) I was sleeping through it. Obviously, mindfulness works for a lot of people, and I\u2019m not saying it isn\u2019t a method worth trying \u2014 we\u2019re all wired differently. In fact, it\u2019s one of the most popular forms of meditation, really hitting the mainstream in recent years thanks to a multitude of apps and YouTube videos.<\/p>\n

But the main sticking point for me was its rigidity. Clear your mind. Clear the thoughts of clearing your mind. Self-observe but don\u2019t think about those observations as you meditate. Focus on your breathing, but don\u2019t think thoughts about your breathing. It all felt too, well, mindful. That said, I did enjoy the fact that it helped me be more present in my daily life, to take a moment, breathe and notice the more mundane daily activities, rather than rushing through every moment thinking about dinner, my next Instagram post, or a fight on The Real Housewives.<\/p>\n

However, this practice didn\u2019t travel with me to Chicago. I readily gave myself excuses, which I mindfully accepted: \u201cI\u2019m too busy teaching my cat to sit to take 12 minutes for meditation,\u201d I would tell myself. It wasn\u2019t until I started getting dragged down the rabbit hole of Twin Peaks season three (episode 8 anyone?) that I found myself looking up David Lynch interviews for clues as to what the heck was actually going on. I stumbled upon a video of him talking about Transcendental Meditation, or TM as it\u2019s commonly called.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" 
\n\u201cUnlike mindfulness or other meditations, it\u2019s not about trying to empty the mind or monitor thoughts. In fact, concentration or trying to control thoughts couldn\u2019t be further from the practice, making it ideal for a brain full of jumping beans like mine. What TM is at its core is getting to a place of deep relaxation, deeper than any other meditation practice, to the point where it doesn\u2019t matter what you\u2019re thinking about or if you\u2019re having thoughts at all.<\/p>\n

With the thick soup of emotions, activities, actions, and lack of sleep that makes up modern life, many of us find ourselves in a constant state of stress \u2014 whether we realize it or not. Our fight or flight responses are jacked up, leaving us in a pickle of confused cortisols and befuddled coping mechanisms, which really just mask the inner noise. This is where TM practice can really help, putting the body into a deep, regular state of relaxation, in which to heal and restore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite aside from stereotypical views of sitting cross-legged or lotus with a straight back and Om position, you\u2019re encouraged to find a comfortable spot to sit and relax into the meditation. Sitting for 20 minutes while repeating the mantra, you\u2019ll find that over time everything just slows down, breathing becomes deep but quiet, and the mantra starts to fade to the back of your mind, while thoughts that were whizzing around at the forefront kind of just drift away.<\/p>\n

\"\" 
\nI can honestly say, it\u2019s a feeling quite like no other. After my first round of Transcendental Meditation mantras, it felt like I woke up out of a trance. The more I started practicing \u2014 with the four-session TM course and then on my own twice a day \u2014 the deeper I was lulled by its resulting calmness. I\u2019ll admit that I was at first daunted by the idea that I\u2019d need to do this twice a day, for 20 minutes each, but once the practice started, it actually became like a treat I\u2019d look forward to, totally the opposite of previous meditations. I mean who wouldn\u2019t want to escape Twitter shouting matches, Facebook political fights, and the constant ping of work emails for a deep, serene journey into the mind cave? Also, all cat-training went out the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStill, it\u2019s not always easy. There are moments when it feels like a Grand Slam final between my thoughts and the Transcendental Meditation mantras, but as long as the mantra is there, effortless and anchoring, good stuff is happening in ways and on levels I might never even be aware of. And, even if it\u2019s not, it\u2019s still like taking a twice daily, luxury brain staycation, which can only be a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full article on Glam.com<\/a>!
\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“With the thick soup of emotions, activities, actions, and lack of sleep that makes up modern life, many of us find ourselves in a constant state of stress \u2014 whether we realize it or not. Our fight or flight responses are jacked up, leaving us in a pickle of confused cortisols and befuddled coping mechanisms, which really just mask the inner noise.” Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":14457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[295,327,32,232,22],"class_list":["post-14438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-meditation","tag-mindfulness","tag-stress","tag-testimonial","tag-transcendental-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14438"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14500,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14438\/revisions\/14500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}