Watch The Ride of My Life Blog/Podcast – S2 – Episode 3

Welcome to The Ride of My Life Podcast – Season 2 – Episode 3!

I’m Caroline Rena, The Travelling Transformational Coach, Writer and Podcaster! I share with you my experiences as I work through the emotions and challenges on my healing journey through the mind, body and spirit. As I develop my awareness and connect with my truth, I hope to connect with you on this journey as well.

I figured today would be a good day to write. I’ve been spreading things out a bit with my blog and podcast, due to the healing work I have been doing over the past few weeks, my Ride Inside Adventure.

I am finding out all kinds of interesting information about myself and my beliefs through my own work and the work I am doing with my clients.

My own work showed me that there is a fine line between taking time out (stillness) and going inside vs movement. I did some research on that to find that we need both; they are equally important.

What I want to consider today is the stillness. Going inside and just being still. What I want to say is that is where we get our answers to life, not necessarily by looking outside of us where some answers can come. We absolutely get inspiration from going within and as a bonus, we get to find out that we have intuition!

So why is it that some of us can’t go inside. Why was it so hard for me?

I am beginning to see what happened and what the struggle was.

What I am discovering is that some of us are able to deal with trauma better than others. Childhood trauma, I believe affects us as children but in a lot of cases, there are those people who don’t get stuck in it and I couldn’t figure out why that was. At some point I can share what that might be about when I figure it out.

Today, though, my intention is to talk about stillness, why it is good and why it is difficult for some people to meditate. Of course, I will be using myself and what I am finding out for myself as inspiration for this.

One of the things I remember reading is from Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich. He talks in detail in there about someone, that name I can’t remember right now, who sat at a table in a dimly lit room for hours with a notepad and a pen. They did nothing but sit and clear their mind as best they could. The result was how they got answers as to problems they sat with in there. I think it was Edison and that is how he got is idea for the lightbulb, but I am not positive.

I just feel that it is so important for us to just stop and get out of the rat race, the computer, the TV and all manner of distraction to come into ourselves. The challenge, at least for me, is that for many years I was too afraid of the darkness and scariness that I thought was inside of me, to go there.

I would not meditate or sit still. I could not do it for that reason and because when I started to attempt a meditation, I would hyperventilate. I was in extreme anxiety.

Now, as most of you know, the most important aspect of meditation is breathing. So how did I get through this?

Well, it took me a long time because I did not know or understand why I couldn’t meditate, I thought there was something wrong with me. The easiest of meditations proved hard for me, so much so, that I wouldn’t even attempt Transcendental Meditation. I actually still haven’t to this day because, well, that ended up just not being for me.

Clear your mind? What the …? As you can imagine, I was frustrated, angry and could not get over the anxiety of it because I desperately wanted to settle my mind.

For me, I found that my mind is a processing mind, so it would not settle down, as much as I tried. Over the years, it has settled more, but it doesn’t go quiet, and I doubt it will. One of my teachers told me I had “Monkey Mind.” Key takeaway here: we all have different designs or makeup so what works for others won’t necessarily work for us.

Anyway, I tried all kinds of ways to meditate. Seated meditation… no… I couldn’t breathe or sit still. Walking meditation in the woods… yes… I could breathe the fresh air and I had things to look at that would keep me from thinking. Then I tried meditating to someone else leading it… no… my mind wandered AND once the meditation was over and everyone else had described what they saw or ah-hah’s that came to them, I got discouraged and mad at myself because I couldn’t get it right.

Crap… it was so hard to find a way, I gave up for a long time.

Then one day, years later, I wanted to try again, and I started researching meditation… again. This time I found out that there are actually as many ways to do mediation as there are people, or so it seemed.

I found a meditation that all I needed to do was to light a candle and stare at the flame and breathe. I figured I could manage that one, so I tried. And it worked!

Then I found my favorite experiment which was OSHO meditation, where we would just go crazy with body movement such as dancing, shaking and randomly moving the body around the room and letting all of the pent-up energy inside go. After about 20 minutes or so of that, we sat down and meditated! I went deeper that I had ever gone before and that was cool. I did not, however, continue on that meditation path.

I actually got into that “zone” that meditators and athletes talk about all the time. Things got quiet and peaceful, and in both cases, I started to relax for the first time in my life. Yay! I did it! I figured it out!

Or did I?

Life took over again for me and it didn’t last. I was constantly on the go and my life and the situations in it were getting harder and harder for me to handle. I was feeling more and more anxious and depressed because of what was going on and I couldn’t slow myself down.

This went on for years until at one point, I believe I had adrenal fatigue although I was never diagnosed with it. I felt awful and for the first time in my life, I went to see an alternative healer. The first was a woman in the Pittsburgh/Uniontown, PA area, by the name of Lillian Ronzio. She is still there running the School of Holistic Health now. She was instrumental in putting me on my path of healing my body. I learned a lot from her. She is where I initially got into the world of the metaphysical and from meeting with her, proceeded to meet all kinds of new people in my life and learning things I was never interested in until that point.

Anyway, back to why I started this.

What I want you to know is that there is no one way to meditate and there is no right way to meditate. And if you are feeling any anxiety around it, I am here to help you through that. No more anxiety about meditation, even though you know it good for you!

Walking through the initial stages of the anxiety of this, all you need to do is breathe. That is the key… breath.

And what I will share with you is again, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to do it, however, you may need to learn to breath the way our bodies are meant to.

From years of the Stress Response, breathing for most humans has become very shallow. That is a normal body way of handling stress. You will need to learn how to breathe more deeply, just like I did.

Then there is the Central Nervous System accompaniment in this. Know that once you learn how to breathe, the rest is automatic. Meditation naturally occurs AND if you don’t like the word “meditation” then use the word relaxation or whatever word you can find that works for you.

I want you to know that it isn’t as hard or anxiety producing as you might think. You will literally fall into it and guess what?

You get to take it as slow as you want and for whatever amount of time you want.

Start with the breathing, keep your eyes open and see where it goes.

Let me know and I hope this helped to bring you to The Ride Inside of You!

 

Come join me in a healing partnership…

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