By Emma Maidment of Flow States Studios
Yoga and meditation teacher Emma Maidment is here to guide us on how to dig deep and rediscover our connection to ourselves through the practice of mediation.
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As humans we crave to know ourselves. Often it takes us around the world on a quest to ‘find ourselves’, or on a journey of trying many different things in order to discover who you are… But I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing to be found, only remembered. The essence of who you are isn’t in the streets of Paris or buried deep in a book, it’s inside of your heart. All you have to do is remember.
Remembering who and what you are beyond the surface layer of the mind is the key to connecting with yourself and your deepest essence. How do we remind ourselves of this? One way is to meditate.
I’ll start by prefacing that there are many styles and techniques of meditation, each with their own intentions and benefits. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be referring to a transcendental style of meditation, meaning a technique that takes you beyond the thinking mind into a place of ‘being’.
Each and every time you sit down to meditate you are accessing the deepest part of yourself, your inner nature, your being-ness. The more regularly you make this connection the stronger it becomes. Ultimately, it’s a beautiful dance of forgetting and remembering. Once the mind gets caught up in the drama and day to day stresses of life you tend to forget and lose the connection to self. Then, when you sit down to meditate, turning your attention from the external to the internal, you are reminded of your true being-ness. The more you meditate, the stronger the reminder and the less likely you are to forget.
Think of it like an ocean. On the surface we have the waves. Sometimes this layer is wild and turbulent. If you put on a snorkel, you’d be able to go just below the surface. Where you can still feel the waves but things feel more subtle, quieter... Then if you ditched the snorkel and put on some scuba diving gear, you’d be able to dive deeper and deeper into the depths of the ocean, ultimately finding a place of stillness. Now, it’s all the same ocean so just because you are in the depths doesn’t mean that the waves don’t exist, you just aren’t placing your attention on them directly. Over time you become able to hold this awareness of the depths (your being) whilst navigating the waves with more ease. This is ultimately a life in flow. A life where you are living in connection with your being-ness as a humanBEING rather than a humanDOING.
The answers you seek are never outside of yourself, they are always within. Sometimes you just need a technique that serves as a reminder.
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Emma Maidment is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer, presenter and co-founder of Flow States Studios, an online yoga, fitness and meditation studio. You can follow her adventures on Instagram @emmamaidment_ or subscribe via emmamaidment.com.
