There was a time when I thought if I could just get mediation “right,” I could feel zen all the time. Since that’s not how meditation works I found myself frustrated and wanting to throw in the towel.
Luckily, I stuck with it and eventually found these benefits as a result of my daily practice. Meditation can:
Help bring peace by allowing the opportunity to view situations from a different perspective.
Change the relationship you have with your feelings.
Offer the space to respond rather than react to challenges.
Meditation doesn’t make you immune to having difficult feelings. They still exist and can still be triggered. I have not stopped feeling sad or angry or overwhelmed or embarrassed because I meditate every day. Through meditation, I have found space between me, the physical body (yes, I know this is a whole discussion in and of itself), and the flurry of thoughts that difficult feelings bring.
Anger Eruptions
One of the most prominent difficult feelings I was seeking to “rid” myself of when I began meditating was anger. Though I worked hard to suppress my anger as a child, I found myself experiencing anger like a volcano as time went on. I would swallow it, bottle it up, and store it until the pressure became too great, and then I would blow.
Before the eruption, I would fuel and feed it through rumination, complaining about the challenge or situation that triggered it, and overall stew in it. Each time I felt wronged, I felt justified in my anger. Growing up in a household where anger was modeled for me as the default emotion, I didn’t know any other way.
The Playlist
I had an angry music playlist that was my go-to — cranked up in the car, singing aka screaming along on the top of my lungs. If you know the song, it may come as no surprise to you that the playlist kicks off with Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff.” If you don't know the song, be forewarned that its lyrics are not kid or work-friendly.
As I began experiencing the space that meditation brings, I used the playlist less until I no longer needed it. It’s not that I was no longer getting angry; it’s that anger didn’t feel like it was erupting from inside of me. I could still feel it, but now my meditation helped provide distance between myself and the feeling. I could tell by sitting with it that I was/am not the anger.
So it came as a big surprise last week when like a volcano getting ready to erupt, I began simmering and steaming, get angry at little things that went awry. I felt like something bigger was at play, and my meditation practice didn’t seem to touch it. I tried to sit with the feelings and found myself up in my head back to the stewing and ruminating place. One day I even went so far as to play the angry music playlist again.
The Sky is Falling
That’s when I knew. It wasn’t just the music playlist I wanted to hear. I was simultaneously listening to another playlist on repeat. My inner voice, the internal chatter in my mind. The one that confirms, “Yes, the sky is falling, protect yourself at all costs.”
It had started back up. It came silently as a thief in the night, stealing my peace of mind, the cushion of space my meditation practice had built up to allow me to respond rather than react. I was perplexed. I was surprised. And I was angry that I was angry.
“Where did this come from?” I thought.
I have put in the time on the mediation cushion.
I have changed.
I am more resilient.
I have evolved.
Wait a minute. Now I had moved from stewing and rumination on the little things that didn’t go well to being upset and judgmental of myself for being having the feelings. The negative self-talk would compound the issue. I was up in my head trying to sort it out and fix it while my body was releasing hormones telling me I was under attack. Feeling threatened, I went into self-protection mode and dedicated all of my resources to fight or flight.
Start With the Body
At that moment, I realized that to shift my state and explore what started it in the first place, I needed to start with my body. I needed to connect with myself to find my way back to the parasympathetic or “rest and digest” state. So I changed the channel - literally, I put on soothing music that focused on love and peace, quite a shift from the anger playlist.
I sang along to activate my vagus nerve and did my best to soak in the tunes. I paid attention to the melody and closed my eyes to help bring a sense of safety back to my autonomic nervous system and my body as a whole. After a few minutes, I could feel my body soften and felt a spontaneous sigh emerge as my nervous system reset itself.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, the whole experience was a lovely reminder of several things:
Meditation is a continuous inward journey, not a destination.
Life will continue to throw curveballs no matter how much I sit in meditation.
Music is powerful on many fronts - it can fuel anger AND it can induce calm.
I have the power to influence my nervous system to help bring my thinking brain back online and it starts with my body.
Have you used music to help you calm down? I’d love to hear your song recommendations as I build my new “Calm and Cool Playlist.”
