Growing pains.
When I was a little kid on the school basketball team, I used to have a lot of knee pain.
My knees would get swollen and pulse with pain every time I took a step. I had to wear these neoprene compression sleeves over each knee and ice my knees after practice and games.
I had something called Osgood-Schlatter disease, which affects adolescent children during growth spurts. It’s fairly common and resolves on its own once the bones stop growing.
At the time, it felt like a curse, and a handicap, and something that was holding me back from my potential.
But today, I’ve gained a broad enough perspective to see that it was a necessary byproduct of rapid growth.
I can see now that I’m much better off having gone through it and becoming a full-size adult than I would have been had I stayed that size forever.
Sometimes (most times) growth is painful—if not physically, than mentally or emotionally.
And sometimes that pain doesn’t feel like growth at all.
When we’re so zoomed in on it, it just feels like pain.
But on the other side of pain is always growth.
And no growth is possible without at least a little discomfort.
Vedic Meditation is usually easy, effortless and blissful.
But sometimes, in allowing the body to rest so deeply, we release stresses that are particularly deeply held, and sometimes there are some brief, temporary sensations associated with those releases—usually in the form of thoughts or restlessness.
That’s how we know it’s working. (If it’s Vedic Meditation we’re practicing—if it’s not, there’s a good chance we’re just sitting there thinking thoughts.)
This is one of the many reasons why a proper and gainful meditation practice requires personal instruction from a qualified teacher. Because otherwise, we’d think we were doing something wrong, or it wasn’t working, and we’d retreat back to our old ways, never realizing the real growth that lie just around the bend.
That’s what a real meditation practice is all about—not feeling nice for 20 minutes, but feeling nice during the other 23 hours in the day, when we’re living our lives. And the way we evolve our lives is to release stress in meditation.
Thankfully, all we need to do is sit comfortably in a chair, close our eyes and let the stresses wash away.
As for the inevitable growing pains we’ll face in our lives as we evolve, we’re going to move through them one way or another, so we may as well do it gracefully—but how?
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday July 14 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or use the below links to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your calendar.
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