What’s your crash course to teach someone how to meditate?
First off, everyone thinks they’re bad at meditation. And I say, “That is normal.” We are all bad at meditation. We are not designed to be good at meditation. So once that fear is dispelled, people are like OK - and I tell them my story usually about how important meditation is for me. After the first month of meditating every day for 10 minutes, my sleep got drastically better. I went from waking up every night and my mind was racing - and I couldn’t control my thoughts. I call it mommy brain sometimes. I now sleep for 8 hours straight and I wake up feeling completely rested. And it’s made a huge difference in my mental well being.
How has it made a difference in the lives of your patients?
I had one patient who lowered her blood pressure from meditating 10 minutes a day without medicine.
It’s made a huge difference in the lives of my clients, making them stick with it is the hard part. But once they realize how it makes them feel, it’s easier to stick with.
I struggle to tell people how long they need to meditate to see the results. You can’t just do it once to feel a difference.
What I tell people as a physical therapist, it’s easy to relate this to muscles. Say you can work out one day a week, but you are not going to get the same results as working out 5 days a week. If you want to meditate one day a week, that’s great - it’ll help you. But if you meditate every day, that’s going to help you tremendously more - it’s like working a muscle, you’re strengthening your brain.
So when your patients look at you, someone who is very progressive and well-educated in many modalities - they must think you have all the answers, and that really hasn’t been the case for you, has it?
No, it hasn’t. And you’re right, people really do expect me to be perfect. And that’s part of my problem too, I expect me to be perfect. I’ve tried everything – and I’ve still struggled with migraines for 20 years.
Could you tell me about what that journey has been like for you?
Throughout the years, I’ve been to so many specialists, so many neurologists, and I’ve gotten so many scans. I’ve gotten acupuncture. I’ve gone to physical therapy for myself several times. I’ve made a ton of nutritional changes – I don’t eat gluten, I don’t eat dairy. I’ve done food sensitivity testing. I’ve seen functional medicine doctors. Tried every single medicine for migraines that there is. I’ve had sleep tests, biofunctional release. I’ve done yoga and meditation, obviously. And all these things would help usually, but temporarily. And after about a month, my migraines would come back, and at their worst, they would last about a month.
I’d get in this cycle of pain and worry that I couldn’t get out of -- and it was Curable that got me out of it.
[this is an excerpt only - for full response, listen to the podcast at the link above]
