It's Show Time! Go Vote. Go Meditate.

Greetings from election season!

If this greeting makes you a little itchy, then you're probably like me, wanting to hide from the television, phone, and internet. Between the ads, the surveys, social media opinions, and current events it's easy to feel as though the world has gone mad!

The simple absorption of what is happening around us is profoundly influences our energy and therefore, our mood and our ability to act with compassion. You may not be directly affected by the latest mass shooting. You may even be disengaging from uncomfortably heated political discussions. Yet, we are nonetheless feeling the release of collective anger and fear.

So how do we come into balance? How do we counteract something that feels so much larger than ourselves? Something that is seemingly out of our control?

There are the obvious choices of turning off televisions, computers, and phones. Other obvious options include yoga or other forms of physical exercise. But in my opinion, the best way we can get balance for ourselves, and subsequently each other, is through meditation.

It's interesting that despite a widespread acknowledgement of the benefits of yoga and mindfulness that meditation still remains an elusive practice. I'm not sure if this is because people think there's some magic to it or if the idea of "doing it right" is the equivalent of a Buddhist monk sitting for hours in the same seated posture. Regardless, meditation is the crucial antidote to what may feel like chaos in the human community.

Meditation works first by grounding us back into our bodies and into the physical plane. Once we root ourselves in this way, we physically relax, giving the mind the opportunity to observe itself. This "clearing the way" then creates the space necessary for us to open up our hearts, feeling our way into things like forgiveness, acceptance, and love.

If you sit and notice your body as it experiences forgiveness, love, and compassion there is both a lightening and an expansion. This expansiveness is not something that comes towards us but from us. And the more we can emanate this lightness and love from us, the more we can give it to others.

In a political world that is feeding on our fears and anxieties, what could feel better than being able to give lightness to others? The bigger question though is, how can we first give it to ourselves?

#2018 #election #meditate #vote #wonky #yoga