Men's Self Care: Vedic Meditation
Self-care is a big buzzword. It’s basically anything you do for yourself. The best self-care practices are good for your long-term health. I started this series to focus on men, and what we’re doing for ourselves.
My first interview is a guy who recently started Vedic Meditation for his mental health, and going to the gym for his physical health. I wasn’t familiar with this meditation, but I’d heard about it and was curious to learn more.
Dr. Kirk: Hi Paul, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. Let's jump right in. What do you do to stay healthy?
Paul: On the whole, these days, as far as self-care is concerned, I try and hit mind, body, and spirit a couple different ways. I started my physical fitness 6 months ago. My cardio was so piss poor, it was embarrassing. I was in a high-intensity cardio class with pregnant women, and they were putting me to shame. That was a real motivation. I didn’t want to get my ego checked and fall behind. I did that for 5 months, learned some things, and now I do them on my own.
Today, I’m working out a minimum of an hour, 5 days a week. I go to the gym, and I’ll do a quick run on the treadmill, the rowing machine, and then cardio and core exercises on the mat, mixed in with some lifting.
Physical health for me is also watching what I put into my body. I make most of my own food. I do meal preps for the week. I’ve gotten more selective about eating out. It’s a hassle sometimes, but now that I’ve gotten my body a certain way, I feel the effects of a shitty meal.
Dr. Kirk: Sounds like a solid foundation. You mentioned earlier that you’re focusing on mental and spiritual health as well. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Paul: 3 months ago, I started Vedic Meditation. It’s basically 2 meditations a day. 20 minutes in the morning, and 20 minutes sometime around 6 PM. In the morning when I wake up, I hop up, turn off my alarm clock, splash some water on my face, and sit on my bed and do the 20 minutes before I start my day. At 6 PM, if I’m home, I find myself somewhere quiet. If I’m busy, I’ll do it in random places. I’ll sit in my car in a parking lot, or I’ll find an office at work not being used. It’s all about having the discipline to do it.
Meditation refocuses me, and slows things down. It brings me more in touch with the present moment vs thinking about what i have to do in the future. It slows everything down. Our brain processes at insane speeds and you don’t realize the thousands of thoughts you have per second. Meditation brings me back into the present moment, clears away anxieties, and allows me to accept what I can do in the moment. It gives me more energy, because when you go into that resting mindfulness state, it will give you ten times the amount of rest per minute of sleep. I’m actually re-energizing while I’m doing that meditation. I notice actual more energy with increased thought clarity. It’s trippy.
Before I started meditating, it was like I was fighting the current. When I first started Vedic Meditation, it was like I was in this different state. Things started opening up for me. I was able to move with the ebb and flow of life a lot easier. Life started to become easier for one reason or another. When I’m actually in the meditation, I repeat my mantra, and transcend into the 4th dimension. Which is a complete bliss state. Pretty much all thoughts disappear, and describing the 4th dimension is difficult to do, because its experiential. It’s like trying to explain to somebody what flying feels like if you’ve never flown. You can literally transcend from an awakened state into a subconscious state.
Just above the subconscious is a thin layer called the Ritam. When you are meditating, you can hover in that layer and it’s really blissful. I feel energy going through my body, and I’ll come out feeling amazing.
In this meditation, there is no trying. Whatever happens, happens. I don’t always get to that blissful state. But I did get there pretty quickly when I first started the meditation. My 2nd day of Vedic Meditation, I was there. I got blasted. It happened quickly for me. I think that’s common, probably 60% of people get there that soon. One of my buddies just went through the course, and he’s a kid from Boston with no spiritual background, he has his own things about god or a higher power. I asked him on Day 1, and he was like, “it was cool, interesting.” I see him on Day 2, and he was like, “you guys are getting high doing this! Hahaha, it’s fucking awesome!”
Dr. Kirk : So is there any benefit to doing this meditation besides that blissful feeling? I mean, sure, it’s great to feel blissful, but I want to know if there’s something more going on.
Paul: I think there’s a lot of work I’m doing with my subconscious. With this type of meditation, you relieve stresses. There’s a sanskrit word called sanskara. It refers to scars that we’ve endured emotionally throughout life. By dipping into my subconscious, I’m unearthing those scars. After meditating, I have these stress releases. It’s crazy. I’m sleeping, and things come out, I have these stress releases. I’ll have these really vivid dreams of very specific stresses I’ve endured. The first 6 weeks or so of my meditation practice, I was dreaming about drugs or my ex-wife. When these things come out, you’re essentially purifying yourself from these past wounds. Maybe 3 times a night I was waking up with these intense dreams. I was releasing a lot of things from my past that I had buried. Over an extended period of time, with those continued stress releases, you can get back to a state of pureness or oneness. That takes a very long period of time, there’s lots of stuff you need to dig out.
Now that I’ve been doing the meditation for 3 months, it’s a little different. I’m pretty much done working through stuff with my ex-wife. I haven’t been getting into that blissful state as often either. The past 3 weeks I’ve been having what I call “busy meditations”. I get into the physical state of meditating. It’s like sitting on a park bench with your eyes closed, thinking about whatever is going on. You don’t fight thoughts. Whatever you think about, you go with it.
And then I kind of zone out, but my brain is not wandering. I might catch the last 3 seconds of something, but I’m in a dream-like story. I’m not really sure what it is. I don’t know if it’s a past life or something, and I can’t remember the story when I snap out of it. It’s pretty common.
I’m told that when you are having a lot of busy meditations like I’m having right now, you’re clearing out a lot of stresses and thoughts, and making way for a consciousness expansion. Last night there was a completion of a group of people that took the Vedic Meditation class, and I went over to do a group meditation with them. There’s something about meditating with other people. Something about a group that makes it much more powerful. It’s like the collective conscience type of thing. When I did the group one last night, I got the blissful one again. It comes in waves. Whatever is supposed to happen is supposed to happen.
Dr. Kirk: Wow, I mean, this sounds like some pretty headdy stuff. It must be really complicated. I’m guessing there’s like a lot to doing the meditation. Can you give me a brief rundown of what you have to do during those 20 minutes when you’re meditating?
Paul: It’s actually pretty simple. I was given a mantra, and as I’m there with my eyes closed, I have a mantra that I repeat, and if I start to lose it, I repeat my mantra, it keeps me in the meditative state. That’s it.
Dr. Kirk: You’re kidding. What is it about this meditation then that is so profound?
Paul: I honestly don’t know. I’ve thought a lot about that too. Maybe it’s my specific mantra? Maybe the induction ceremony? Maybe the gift that I had to make to my teacher as an energetic exchange? I honestly don’t know. It’s crazy.
When I started doing it, and on Day 2, I got blasted, I’m just smiling in this state of bliss. I’m driving 15 miles per hour below the speed limit. I have no music on. I’m totally blissed out. And on Day 3 or 4, I’m smiling ear to ear. I remember thinking that I’ve got this secret. I’ve got this secret that I know, and I’m out there in public, and hardly any of these people know it. And it was so incredibly simple.
All I did was made an offering to the teacher, the same way they did thousands of years ago. I went through a ceremony. And I was given a mantra. That’s it.
Dr. Kirk: Simple yet profound. I love that kind of stuff. So are you going to continue?
Paul: I’m working up to the next part of the meditation, called rounding. It’s like the advanced level. You combine Vinyasa yoga with Pranayama breathwork. It allows you to access deeper meditations like a picklock. To get into that blissful state more. You’re only supposed to do it 1 or 2 times a week. Like, with the Vedic Meditation, you’re only supposed to do it 2 times a day, 20 minutes each time. If you do it more than that, things get out of control.
My buddy was doing it 30 minutes twice daily, and his back seized up. He had this rapid expansion of his conscious, and his body wasn’t able to catch up. He got all out of whack, he was laid up for 2 weeks.
I don’t see any reason to stop meditating. I’ll continue indefinitely. It’s part of my health routine now. If I were to stop it, it would be because I found something else to replace it.
In regards to my mental and spiritual health, I’ve done therapy. I’ve tried yoga. I’ve read spiritual books and things of that nature. It’s all good in bit and pieces and stuff, but the Vedic meditation is so simple that it doesn’t make any sense. It gave me the answers in an easy manner.
I try and devote at least a couple hours a week to some form of nature, whether its at the beach, the park, the everglades, whatever it might be, getting back in touch with nature. Being in the sun, or the beach at night. It does something for me versus being stuck inside all the time.
Dr. Kirk: You’ve certainly hit the nail on the head. I talk a lot about that in my posts. How important it is to reconnect with nature. It’s a form of spiritual health, that this world badly needs. Is there any advice you have for other guys out there beginning their self-care journey?
Paul: I would recommend other guys to find some balance of some kind. Some kind of routine. A mix of physical health through movement and eating, along with mental health. Like reading a book, taking some quiet time to do something, stuff like that. So many people are lost. We live in a society of big improvements and instant gratification. 99% of the time, they aren’t white light experiences. These are things you have to do over a period of time. And then you slowly start to see results. It’s like the momentum of the ocean. It’s a progressive thing over time. I might sit and read a book today, and be like that’s stupid. But if I read for 3-5 months, I’ll feel more results.
Dr. Kirk: You’re 100% correct. Physical and Mental/Spiritual health are like two sides to the same coin. It’s best to establish practices working on all aspects of your health. It’s easy to focus only on the physical aspect to health, and forget all about the other sides. But realistically, we all have things we could work on with our mental and spiritual health. We should all strive to be the best versions of ourselves.
I think the take home that I got from this interview, is that self-care doesn’t have to be some expensive process like going to get a 60-minute massage every week. It can be something really easy and simple that you implement into your daily practice. Over time, some small changes can have profound results. It’s just a matter of taking that first step.
Thanks Paul!
