This is Part 3 of the Wacky Dai Guide To Meditation – some personal stories to help you see how meditation can help you and inspire you to get started.
In the previous instalment of this guide to meditation, I discussed the research evidence which supports the effectiveness of meditation. In this article I look at some personal stories of how meditation can help people, including how it changed my life and why I regard it as the most important self-care tool.
A Turning Point
I’d lost count of the number of relapses I’d had with my illness. Yet another one seemed neither here nor there. Except this one was different. This was the turning point of my life. The moment when I made a decision. I had to start meditating.
Like A Sledgehammer
I’d had my first spell of M.E. or Chronic Fatigue in 1995 when it laid me low for a few months. When I recovered I put it to the back of my mind and got on with life. However, it seemed for years afterwards that whenever I got a minor infection, it left me feeling incredibly fatigued. I missed work a lot as a result.
It was in 2004 that it came back, just 18 months after making the decision to be a stay-at-home dad. It hit me like a sledgehammer and I carried on getting worse till I was bed-bound. By 2008, thanks to a treatment programme via the NHS, I thought I was fully better. The treatment partly focussed on a gradual increase in activity levels and on the role of adrenalin in the illness.
Basically, and they couldn’t say why exactly, an increase in adrenalin seemed to make patients worse. So, “avoid stress and excitement as much as possible,” they suggested. Easier said than done, you might say, especially with two young children.
However, I noted what they’d said and I began to see a pattern.
Boom and Bust
Chronic Fatigue is strongly characterised by boom and bust. You feel better and do too much and then the next day you’re on your back again. That’s the physical aspect to it. What was also happening to me was that I had a very low tolerance to an increase in adrenalin. Any little bit of excitement or stress would make me feel considerably worse. As I paced myself better the tolerance increased slightly. However, major setbacks were never far away.
What I realised after many of these episodes was that they were all related to stress. It might have been something in the family: one of the children being ill or problems at school. If I experienced a few weeks of stress, my body would pack up again and fatigue would consume me once more. I came to the conclusion that no matter how well I paced myself physically, I couldn’t avoid stress in my life. So what could I do?
Emptying My Bucket
The answer came towards the end of 2015 when, after quite a long period of feeling relatively well, problems in the wider family surfaced. After a few weeks, I relapsed again. I was at my wit’s end but knew there was one thing which could perhaps help me to empty my bucketload of stress.1 Something which I’d tried once before but hadn’t stuck with it. Meditation.
Just a few weeks before I’d read about a woman who successfully attempted a 30 day challenge to meditate every day. Since I like a challenge, I thought that might be a way for me to start a daily habit. Well, not only did I master the 30 day challenge, I also went on to do a 100 day challenge and four years later, I’m still meditating.
No More Relapses
The interesting thing for me though (and the thing that changed my life) was that, although I was still unwell, I began to get better from then on. For the first time in 20 years of Chronic Fatigue I never experienced another relapse. My recovery from then was characterised by slow, continuous improvement till now, when I can consider myself (I hope) fully recovered.
Meditation has transformed my life, there’s no question about it. I wasn’t trying any other intervention at the time which could have helped me in the same way. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done and it has completely turned my life round.
However, it goes without saying that meditation has helped many more people than just me.
Leaving Panic Behind
Many meditators are so changed by their experiences that they decide to share their knowledge with others. Seth Perler is one such person. His introduction to meditation came after suffering from anxiety and panic attacks after he’d woken from a coma. The experience left him afraid that he was going to suffocate and die. After trying other interventions without success, he decided to learn how to meditate. It was “transformative” for him and, not only has he left the panic attacks behind, he now works with children and young people introducing them to meditation. One young person he worked with stopped experiencing stomach pain for the first time in ten years during a meditation.2
Revolutionise Your Life
Christopher from Jan Juc in Australia shared his experience on his website of how he used meditation to overcome depression and give himself clarity and mental power. He became calmer and more focussed to help him on a journey of personal and professional development. “The practise of meditation completely revolutionised the way I view life, and the way I live my life,” he said.3
“Immense” is the word that Marie uses on the same website to describe the impact meditation is having on her life. She attributes her new positive view of the world to meditation and even that she is less susceptible to physical illness as a result.4
There are so many stories of how meditation has helped people cope with trauma, with physical illnesses such as Parkinson’s Disease and also to bring calmness, focus and self-awareness into their lives. Meditation is not a panacea but listening to the positive effects which so many people have experienced and were referred to in Part 3, then you can be inspired that it can help you too.
Whether
- family breakup
- career crisis
- financial problems or
- business worries
meditation can help. It may not work the first time you try it but persevere and reap the benefits which history has shown can ensue.
Summary
Reliable estimates of how many people practise meditation around the world are hard to come by. However, this study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated that over 14% of the American population had meditated in 2017.5
Such widespread experience shows there’s nothing scary about it. It’s easy to do and as you’ve seen from these stories, it could help you hugely.
I hope you feel inspired to try meditation, whether through an app, a paid programme or just following the suggestions in the next article in this series on how to follow a meditation habit. Whichever route you take, the most important thing is – just do it.
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.
Buddha
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Photo by Simon Matzinger
- I’ve always been able to relate to the analogy of stress being like a bucket of water. It fills up sometimes without you noticing. Then one day it starts to overflow and that is when it hits you. I realised that my bucket had been overflowing for a long time and not only did I need to stop it seeping out, I needed to find a way to empty it as much as possible.
- Read about Seth here.
- Read Christopher’s Story here.
- Read more about Marie’s meditation journey here.
- NCHS Data Brief 2018