§ We came to this world to LIVE OUT LOUD!
The Power of Meditation
I want to share with you a very personal story about the power of meditation!
It was painful yet I felt strangely at peace.
A couple of weeks before my grandmother died, I left my family and young children and flew from South America to Chicago. Even though my grandmother was stable and completely lucid, I had a gut feeling that it was important to see her.
As I was talking to her in my mother’s living room, my grandmother suddenly complained of shortness of breath. I called an ambulance and she was rushed to the hospital.
I slept in my grandmother’s hospital room all week.
I held my grandmother’s hand as nurses poked and prodded her while she begged them to just leave her in peace. I ran interference and sent the nurses away.
I talked to the endless stream of specialists who stopped by my grandmother’s room. I had to send many of them away too. My grandmother was a cardiologist and loved her calling but she was done fighting and didn’t want any more medical treatments. She just wanted to spend her last days in peace.
And yet, strangely through it all, I was at peace.
It was with a heavy heart that I got on a plane to Colombia asking my mom to promise me that she would tell me when it was time for me to fly back out.
I spoke to my grandma on the phone every day until one day two weeks later, I received a frantic call from my mom,“Come. I don’t think she has much time left.”
I got on the next plane and was there by the following morning. I took a taxi to my parents’ house. I rushed into my grandmother’s bedroom.
And yet, I was strangely at peace.
I was grieving too but I was strangely at peace.
This is the power of meditation.
Even though I have meditated most of my adult life, I went through a year where I meditated up to two hours a day.
I started the heavy duty meditating about six months before my grandmother died. I’m 100% sure that this is why I was at peace no matter what was going on around me.
I have to confess that as I have started to work more over the past couple of years, my meditation practice has dwindled to 20-30 minutes per day.
But it feels really great to know that if and when I need it, meditation is there to get me through the toughest of times… not only to survive but to have inner peace.
What about you? Do you meditate? How do you cultivate inner peace?
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need any further info at natalie@nataliematushenko.com.
Happy Tuesday!
Natalie
Dear Natalie,
Your text is touching me deeply! I can so fully understand, what impact meditation had and has in your life!
When I was pregnant with my second daughter, I started taking yoga lessons in a pregnacy course, and continued after the birth. Since that – almost eighteen years now – I learned a lot about the yoga philosophy, the ‘yoga way’ of being and what a difference it makes to become still at some point. I am so thankful to be in that more or less constant group of women and very thankful for my yoga teacher as she shares with us her wisdom over time. It is only few years, that meditation became “famous” or a trend… and only then I realized, that I practiced it since 2002!
To become still, to give ourselves time to feel what we feel and become aware of what we think and are – those are the gifts one can get from meditation practice!
Thanks Dimitra for sharing your experience! There are so many gifts to long term meditation and yoga practice… it’s priceless!
Hi Natalie,
I am so touched to read your story of your grandmother. I know how important it is to have elders in family to love, guide and correct you in life.
I can feel the absence of all this as non of my grandparents were there for me and now my mom too has become one strange living being, who only complains time in and out for the messes in her life and keeps curse my dead father for the mess in their relationship.
I have grown up in a broken family, hence I want to try to do everything that I can to raise my kids well
I mediate everyday but I want to learn to make it more intense so I can connect to myself and universe.
Thanks Kavvita for sharing your experience! I know you’re working so hard to improve yourself and your life so you’re bound to raise your kids well. You may want to try out Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations. They will give you a chance to go deep.