By Donna D’Cruz
How many of you have sought out meditation to deal with your stress? How many of you still practice meditation?
I was born in South India and grew up in Australia. There is something about being born in a place like India, where you have access to a different vein of consciousness—that vein is running through all of us. It is a vein of oneness, where we seek connection, an understanding of a deeper self perhaps, our connection to something greater.
Very simply, meditation means “to reflect upon,” “to look upon.” If there is a purpose at all in meditation, it’s to get still. In our stillness, we start accessing a deeper truth, we begin to understand a little bit more of ourselves, how we fit in with one another, and in a broader sense, the collective consciousness. Meditation is a living, breathing experience. Science suggests that in a meditative space, blood pressure will be reduced, heart rate will come down, and the fight/flight response will be calmed.
The best meditation is the one you do: My dad loves to garden, to lose himself in nature for three hours. For some people meditation is exercising; for others it’s making a film or creating art. Any time where you lose yourself out of the space of the thoughts, the hyperactivity and hyperstimulation that we tend to live in, you are in a meditative, reflective space. A mantra can help you get there. A mantra is like a bridge between the conscious and unconscious minds. The mind loves to have a toy. We use mantras to distract the waking, chatty, monkey mind and quiet it down.
I work a lot with Gen Zs and millennials. There’s a different kind of an awakening going on with the younger generations. It’s about what’s happening with Mother Earth, what’s really going on with climate change. There are over 2,000 apps available on the topic of meditation alone. We’re living in a time where we want to take stock on a very deep level and ask ourselves, “I want to have a radiant existence—what does my inner radiance look like? What does that really feel like?” It’s not really only about looking good. “How do I feel? How do I engage mind, body and spirit?” There’s a much wider pantheon of content, information and experiences that we’re just tapping into. donnadcruz.com