I am a lifelong skeptic, nay, cynic, when it comes to Eastern medicine and healing practices. I plead my upbringing; I was birthed and raised by a pair of rigidly positivist western science practitioners. Neither was a 'traditional' science doer; my father was a science journalist, and my mother was a psychiatrist (and yes, before you ask, that's the one with the M.D.). I spent the vast majority of my life to date comfortable with the set of options that Western, U.S.-culture-centric offered me. I was and am so stubborn that the biggest threat to my life and well-being over many decades was eventually remediated by a very hard science Western medical remedy - but one I had been too stubborn to try for over a decade by the time I did it, because I thought it meant admitting to a character failure.
Yeah.
So anyway, I got better. I found my life. I moved forward. I got married. Things were great.
Then the orange fuckwit criminal sex offender got elected, back in 2016, and my faith in the United States' system of government - and, transiently, its people - took a severe hit.
We got through it. Or so we thought.
And here we are again.
All of this has led to a severe degradation in my state of mind, one that affects not only myself, but my wife. (And our cats, but that's a different story). I have been stubbornly (ha? HA? RIGHT?) refusing to go back into any form of mental health treatment, mostly because that wasn't what worked for me after those earlier decades. But I was stuck just 'stuffing' my anxiety and rage, and realized I had no real way of ever releasing it, or just recharging myself anymore. Nothing was working. I was too stuck in the panic attack and rage cycle whenever I thought about the progression of events.
Finally, I decided to do a few hours of research and force myself to try something, however many reasons my traitor brain could come up with for not touching it with a three-meter pole. After internet work, talking to various friends, and reading a couple of books, and then going back to the internet, I reached out to a local school for Vedic meditation here in New York. The instructor met with me for a Zoom call to suss me out and answer my questions, and told me frankly that this was not magic, nor religion, nor something that would change my life overnight - but it was a tool that, for some, could provide an excellent option when used with diligence. He warned me that if my income was <REDACTED> or higher, it would be expensive, because they charged a sliding scale for the course. I thought about it and asked some questions.
(Custo) "So what happens after the several-day course? Do I start progressing to other courses?"
(Instructor) "No. There are no 'other courses to progress to." He paused. "Okay, wait, there is an 'advanced course' but it's completely optional, also just a few days, and we won't even accept you into it until you've been meditating for at least a year regularly. Oh, and we do retreats if you prefer group meditating, but those are just community options."
(Me) "Hm, OK. Does this have any current or past ties to religion?"
(Him) "No. It's based on the Veda, which is an ancient body of knowledge from India on which several things are based, including yoga. But the current techniques we offer are reviewed in various journals. Scientific ones. We can give you references. The point here is that it's much more of a neuroscience, a neurophysical effect, than anything else. The practice encourages the brain to behave in certain ways. We'll talk about what may or may not be going on during meditation in the course."
(Me) "How long does the technique itself take to teach?"
(Him) "Oh, you'll be meditating in the first hour. After that, it will be up to you whether to continue and whether to stick to the recommended frequency. The rest of the days are more about the continuing practice than the technique."
...long story short, I figured fuck it, it's only money, and took the course.
I've been meditating for three weeks now. Twice a day. Twenty minutes each time (barring three or four where I only had seventeen or eighteen minutes to meditate in, and wanted to do it before dinner/going out/evening stuff).
The first weekend, I went back to my home office and looked at my cluttered desk area which I had been lamenting for over eighteen months and which had been triggering exhaustion in me, and ordered some Amazon supplies. When they arrived the next day, I cleaned it up.
As my instructor advised we tell ourselves when things like this happen, write it down, and say to yourself "Maaaaybe it's meditation."
My mood has improved. The underlying problem - anxiety, anger, etc. when thinking about the state of the world - hasn't gone away. Once I trip into that spiral it can still really fuck me up. But my day to day state is calmer, and that calm helps me 'not start spiraling.' Meditation doesn't act as a 'medicine' - it doesn't make me feel better when I do it. It's still actually really hard. But After two weeks I asked my wife if she saw any difference. She shrugged, then looked at my face carefully, and said "Well, you look younger. I think your stress lines are less. And you do seem calmer."
So there's that.
So what is it?
Describing the practice is easy. Twice a day, I sit in a chair (back relatively straight, chin can be bowed, but body should be comfortably straight up). I put my phone in front of me, with a large clock face on it, note the time, and close my eyes. I wait half a minute or so that way and calm down as best I can. Then I begin to recite my mantra.
Oh boy, I can hear some of you saying. 'Mantra'? Whoo, Custo's lost it to the woo-woo.
Yeah, maybe I have.
The mantra is a two-syllable chant. Each person who receives instruction is given their particular mantra, in private, by the instructor. It is a deliberately meaningless pair of syllables. Our instructor explained that yes, there is a specific set of them; yes, there are techniques and rules by which they are assigned, based on things like sex, phase of life, etc. etc. We are strongly, strongly encouraged never to share them, and not to use them in conversation. As he explained it this is not because they are TOP SEKRIT!!1! but because we want to only think them or speak them while meditating, because the point is to use them as a trigger for the brain. A training aid, as it were. When this set of syllables passes by, guess what, brain, you're meditating. And if you use them in conversation, or talk about them, or whatever, it confuses the brain and lessens their efficacy.
Fair enough.
My instructor was a student of Thom Knoles who is famous in the U.S. at least for bringing Vedic meditation back there from India in the 1970s. I'm not going to say much about him; there is a ton of info on the internet if you're curious, and I'm no expert. I'm just here to talk about my experience.
I do not recommend that you meditate. Let me clarify: I am not recommending that you not meditate; I'm just saying, I'm no expert, nor instructor, and I have no idea if the technique would be useful, helpful, or even harmful for you. I know nothing about you or even much about how the technique can and should be applied. I can only tell you what I think; as my instructor told me in class, "I am completely welcoming of your skeptic self, Custo. I just ask you to try not to be a cynic, because cynicism is lazy and closed."
Hm. Okay.
Anyway, I meditate twice a day, for twenty minutes. Once when I wake up. That's easy; I just set my alarm a bit earlier and take care of it before breakfast or leaving the house (or showering). The brain still being somewhat asleep makes it easier, and possibly more effective. Then later in the day, I do so again. At my instructor's recommendation, I've been trying to schedule it right before lunch - both because the lingering calm and focus it sometimes seems to bring are really helpful in the afternoon, and also because as it gets towards dinner, there's a lot of things to do that might get in the way. This is not to say I haven't meditated later at night, once in the passenger seat of our car as my wife drove us home from dinner. But I try to get it out of the way earlier. I have found that using the Apple 'Health' app's medication scheduler on my phone helps, because I already use that to track physical meds. I just added it as another 'capsule of meditation, take twice daily' and voila, reminders.
Has it changed my life? Not per se, not yet. Has it made a noticeable difference? I think so. Do I expect it to make things better? I hope it will, and as my instructor noted, it's kind of like fitness - you won't see really big effects, not until a few months down the road you look back and say HEY WAIT!. I've been there. I know that can work. So yeah, I'm good with putting in the time.