Mindfullness Meditation. For Everyone?
Do we all need mindfulness meditation? Or do some of us just need time and resources?
I am a highly skeptical person, especially when it comes to health fads and anyone trying to sell something. However, I also know that Mindfulness and medication are not actually new, and if they can be considered a fad, it is a slow growing one that seems to be coming to its head. Meditation has been practiced for at least centuries in some form or another, and the various representations of it is a big piece of what we need to understand about it.
A few weeks ago I had posted elsewhere that I didn’t find my experience with Mindfulness Meditation fun and many other people seemed to agree. But I did get a negative comment that “dealing with your baggage was not supposed to be fun”. That is probably right in the context of prescribed mindfulness done through a therapy session for specific purposes in order to “heal”. But that is not want the majority of pop culture writers or those trying to sell a form of it want for us.
Dealing with baggage was not what mindfulness meditation was advertised as at least to me. It’s not what mindfulness meditation to many people have been educated about. Why would anybody voluntarily spend minutes to hours of their days and weeks sitting alone in one spot and letting their baggage flow through them in and out without a solution on the other side.
Therapy done by professionals with training, certification only obtained through years of study and proctored testing, licensing, and professional standards can and should be promoting practices like mindfulness and others when appropriate and in the context of a provider patient relationship. This kind of mindfulness probably isn’t fun. It probably does take time to accomplish, work on the part of the patient and provider, and some dollars especially if not covered by insurance. But this scenario is not what I was talking about. This scenario is not part of the wellness, yoga, mindfulness lifestyle promoted in the spaces outside of therapy couches and offices.
The spaces like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are not patient and provider spaces. They are the influencer space. The space that equates value to level of influence. The space where things like mindfulness are promoted as if it is the Ozempic of mental health, the supplement for performance you can take while ignoring every other healthy lifestyle choice. All is well if we can spend more of our time being in a quiet, peaceful place and let our thoughts pass in and out of us without judgement, while the real causes of our anxiety and depression and anger live on.
This piece is also not going to be a run down of the history of mindfulness, listed benefits of it, types of it, who teaches it, where to find it, how much to pay for it, or of the current practices. This piece will be about the inequity of it.
Every meditation class or session, whether it be mindfulness or yoga, or something similar that I have endured, it always starts at the top and request that the person secure close to an hour of time, a silent room, a comfortable position or room enough for one, and a mindset that allows them to pay attention to themselves. All these things are not possible together for many people. It does a disservice to those who want to personalize and monetize the benefits of meditation to start at the top of requirements than to start at the bottom.
Instead of talking about 45 minutes sessions on a yoga mat lying in the prone position in a quiet room, all by yourself, how about starting with two minutes in the seat of your car as you’ve pulled into your parking space or garage, after you’ve turned off the car but before you’ve gotten out of it and into the house. How about 15 minutes sitting on a park bench watching your kids play in the playground where your dog running through the dog park. What about starting with 30 seconds standing in line at the grocery store waiting for the person in front of you to get done with their groceries, paying by check. We should be able to start with a simple steps, people are not being taught to feel proud of themselves by moving one step closer to our goals.
This is why I ask if some of us just need time and resources. Why meditated to help our adaptation to stress if we can remove the stress entirely? This will not be possible for some, but for others it can be.
Let me end with this, though, if one curious about a wellness practice, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, they should definitely give it a try. If it works for you, that’s great. If you feel that you are not sacrificing one thing that was a stress reliever just to try this other thing, perfect. If you feel that doing something new like this gives you more positives than negatives, super. But no one should feel like they’re trading out one pleasant piece of their life just to try something unknown to them. If your stress reliever is already healthy, stick with it.
Think twice about spending any money on a maybe, especially if it is something not provided by a trained and licensed professional who doesn’t really know you.
If the cause your stress is something that is hard to get rid of because the consequences might be too great, seek out another form of support. You can’t meditate yourself out of a dangerous situation or lifestyle.
The things I truly believe in that make people happier and healthier I know have to come to them in their due time, when the person is ready, and in small steps. A lot of times for things to change towards the better, to improve, even to balance out, it takes just as much time as it took for the problem to get started and flourish. And if we think about it that way, a lot of our own problems, a lot of the problems in society, had a starting point that was months or years before the symptoms began. Sometimes decades. And then the problem flourished until ignoring it wasn’t an option. Now we have to grapple with solutions that are going to take more time then we can ever plan for. Especially for a lasting change.
If we are to advocate for meditation, mindfulness, etc. as tools are even keys to even just mental health, we have to look at the sustainability of it. How many people who started with these practices long ago, have kept up with it? Are there any societal factors that prevent many more people from taking on these practices? If we compare the mindfulness and meditation practices to our common knowledge of what healthy eating is, we know that there’s many societal factors that are getting in the way of the majority of people eating a “healthy” diet. We all know what to do, and we’re trying to understand how, but the real sustainability of it to may be due to societal change and not necessarily personal change.
For a spicier version of this post you can find me on Substack.