Meditation for Women?
por Adília Belotti em STUM WORLDAtualizado em 07/12/2004 11:45:39
Translated by Leandro Guerra Martins - [email protected]
Final revision by Françoise Killick - [email protected]
Sometimes, I have the feeling my meditation lacks something. Emptiness, emptiness, freeing oneself from emotions, stress, thoughts and concerns. In a word, freeing oneself from oneself. Some days, diving in this quiet emptiness makes my soul feel the coolness and quietness of the great cathedrals. But, some others, I feel myself dangerously attracted by the idea of melting into real world. Running, for example, up to the limit of my legs and my lungs, would seem to be the faster way to calm down my soul. Why is that?
My dear friend Walther told me that in the ashram of Sri Aurobindo, in India, meditation is not half-an-hour per-day activity: "Yoga is turning all the moments of your day into meditation moments", he says. Is it impossible? However...
I remember the funny sensation I had in a supermarket when I felt it is indeed possible to meditate whilst running errands. I remember some other occasions when peace arose from action, from doing something or just being in the world, gardening or making a cake... Precious moments in which you feel that in fact we were there, entire, complete, full of smells, colors, sounds. For some moments, caught by the magic of the instant which the zen Buddhists associate to illumination itself.
As I am definitively convinced that coincidences do not exist, I happily opened a book that had just arrived by mail at the following page: "Many times, traditional methods of meditation do not work. If you have suffered a lot, for example, and still have not cured your pain, physical stillness can be intolerable because when your body calms down, you perceive the presence of the monsters of the anger, the resentment or the fear beating furiously at the doors of your sub-conscience. The reaction can be running away or fighting, what would make adrenaline inundate your body. You would then feel more anxious, angry or agitated (...). In these cases, the best think to do is to make any mechanical and repetitive movement that would keep your body busy while you are "doing nothing".
The author of “The Joy Diet”, Martha Beck, lists a series of activities that help you to meditate in movement: running, walking, swimming, skating or - even - driving, beyond martial arts, of course. And boxing!
Another alternative that I find very useful and that has already helped me many times is to stay in "nature's lap": just sitting and contemplating a fire or the waves of the ocean or the movement of the water or the dance of the wind... Stay still observing the Universe at work has an immediate effect on the soul!
But my search for forms of alternative meditations for frequently impossible "seat and do not think" lead me farther and brought to my hands an article of a magazine in which a teacher of yoga and American dances taught special techniques of meditation for women!!!! The author, Camille Maurine, says: "Meditations centered on the feminine side of individuals are practiced not to avoid men or substitute traditional practices. These techniques only bring the feminine energy, sensuality and emotions in the contemplative equation".
I was happy and surprised. In certain ways, it was like getting home. Trying techniques that invite you to dance with your eyes closed, at the rhythm of a music that comes from inside yourself, meditating with your hand on your heart chakra, were delicate surprises for me. It would perhaps be excessively simple to say that these practices of feminine meditation focus on emotion. After all, it is said that the heart chakra is the bridge between reason and feeling. I do not know... Certainties, affirmations, concepts, everything is half diluted in this dance of the soul with itself.
But keep an eye on Camille Maurine's book, “MEDITATION SECRETS FOR WOMEN: Discovering Your Passion, Pleasure, and Inner Peace“. It has to be translated into Portuguese!! Visit the site link, and accept my free translation of the meditation taught with special affection only for women... (but I doubt men are reluctant to it).
Meditation on the desires of the heart
To be able to deal with the desires of the heart requires courage, security and perseverance - basically resources that we all have. How close are you of the desires of your heart? Which are your yearnings? Reflect and, when you are ready to hear this calling, be prepared to enter in the sacred fire of your heart.
Try to enter your desire. When you allow yourself to feel, what do you perceive? Where is the desire located in your body? Which are the sensations that it provokes? Does an image or figure exist related to this yearning? Try to perceive this image. How does the energy of the image move? How would you feel if you could make these dreams come true?
Meditate on the image and the sensations of energy that it provokes. Dance the movement. Let the yearning open your heart and teach you to live your life in completeness.
If you meditate during a certain time about your body, you will perceive that an imprisoned movement of dance exists inside you. In the beginning, this movement does not mean anything, but it will as soon as you start moving. Allow your passion to disclose itself through the intuitive rhythm that you generate.
Play a music in accordance with your interior rhythm. Start breathing according to the music and the feelings evoked. Feel how dancing becomes a necessity and how it takes control of your whole body. In the beginning, move the part of your body you feel better: the hands, the feet, the hips, the column. Who knows if it is your mouth that needs to let some sound or sigh out! Feel the energy! How free can you be? Try to be wild: knock your feet on the ground, move your body, make great dramatic gestures with your arms. Surrender to your passion! After 10 minutes, diminish the rhythm slowly and get conscious of what is going around you. Keep breathing while you calm down. Savor the sensations that the energy circulating in all your body evokes.
Thank the Universe. And have an excellent and marvelous day!
