Meditation as Lifestyle Medicine – Breathing practices for Mental Health

There is nowhere to get to, you are already there.

Many of us come to know the areas of adversarial charge, pain, or weakness within ourselves throughout our lifetime.

In Ayurveda, we call these places a kaivagunya, a weakness or deficit within a system in the body that may arise from genetics, trauma, emotional stress, repressed emotions, and/or other factors.

Here are a few common kaivagunyas:

• Tight jaw, Sore shoulders,
• Anxious belly, gut problems,
• Tight chest, heart palpitations,
• Sore lower back, 
• Breathing difficulties, 
• Immune deficiency, 
• Exhaustion, depression and mental confusion
• Traumatic memories, PTSD

These weaknesses are parts of ourselves that, while challenging and easily triggered in times of stress, shock, grief, and loss,  are simply a reminder to let this place within you be your teacher, a call to practice presence. 

Often in our avoidance to feel such discomfort, we move away from ourselves, and instead, we might find comfort in overthinking, in attaching to certain relationships, by overindulging in certain foods, we might tend toward using our phones non-stop, using work to distract us, perhaps even alcohol, exercise, legal or illegal drugs may be our comforting addiction of choice. Yet, no matter what form of “drug” we use to ease our discomfort, in every addiction there is an unconscious refusal to face and move through pain – a disconnection from our Self – every addiction starts and ends in suffering from the want to disconnect from the pain.

When the addiction or avoidance strategies we utilise finally fail to work, and we no longer have any choice except to face the very source of our discomfort, the spiritual transformation truly begins. With time, practice, and connection, we come into ‘being’ as we merge with the source of our suffering, often to really see the original charge is futile. It becomes a small etch on the spaciousness of our being.

This draws me to a practice which I call Spiritual Surgery, practiced in shavasana (corpse pose).

This is not an attempt to seek future freedom, liberation or enlightenment from the pain, rather get truly comfortable with it, even get behind it. The seeking and the search for freedom from your pain will stress you out, and then it will wear you out – as seeking is future-based. And the moment we start seeking or wishing for some salvation in the future, we avoid the present, which is all we truly ever have. The rest is completely unknown.

How to practice your Spiritual Surgery in Shavasana: 

1. Practice no seeking, no searching.
2. Be curious and moves towards and into the Kaivagunya, the energy charge or lack thereof
3. Be self-compassionate and understanding – it is just an energy
4. Avoid overthinking it, over analysing. The mind can not solve this for you and the mind can not change the mind. Change comes from spaciousness within, from being. This will free you of the mind and the mental energy that is reinforcing the charge.
5. Practice feeling and breathing into this space with complete presence 

When you practice, turn towards the pain or the source of the suffering and sit within yourself fully. Bring presence to pain. It is the present moment that dissolves past pain and future pain.

Sitting and facing the reality of this moment dissolves the illusion of future salvation.

What may happen?

1. All our stories dissolve;
2. We lose our compulsions, our want to attach;
3. We stop identifying with thoughts and behaviours;
4. We stop attacking others from our pain;
5. All mind games and addictive clinging ceases;
6. We accept all situations and people fully, without resistance, and with compassion;
7. We lose the need to judge or change others;
8. We experience true compassion, realising we are all the same.

As we stop identifying with psychic, emotional or physical pain in the mind-body – we become the spaciousness or presence underneath the charge. 

I include a meditation here to assist your practice. This “spiritual surgery” and the article below looks at ways we can use the breath to bring presence to many mental ailments …all of which are a little more science-based than the concept of Spiritual Surgery above