MY MEDITATION JOURNEY BEGAN 50 YEARS AGO
In 1970, a naïve teenager took a Transcendental Meditation class not knowing anything about the subject, or even what meditation was, for that matter. Looking back now, I could never have imagined how taking that particular class would eventually lead me to a life-long passion for meditation or the impact it would have on my life. In the ensuing 50 years of practicing meditation since then, it has been a life-changing and essential experience for me. I appreciate my meditation journey and how invaluable and beneficial the practice of meditation has been throughout my entire life. Especially now in the midst of the Covid pandemic, I'm truly thankful I had the tool of meditation to help see me through this challenging and chaotic time.
Fast forward 15 years from that day in 1970 and I am a busy, young working Mom running a business and taking care of my family when the bottom fell out of everything; my husband lost his job and was out of work for over two and a half years! Needless to say, during that "Dark Night of the Soul" period and despite our very best efforts, we literally lost EVERYTHING and had to start all over again on the other side of the country. Helping to keep me sane and functioning in those very challenging days was making time to have a few precious minutes each day for myself to sit quietly and meditate. It made such a huge difference in my life and soon the stress and anxiety began to lift as I found a way to cope with all the chaos, change, loneliness and pain. After that, I continued to meditate on and off for the next several years.
(Thankfully, we survived that experience and those challenging days are long behind us and from that experience my book,
"Awakening To The Wisdom Of Your Soul" was born. You can read all about that time in this spiritual memoir about my
personal journey of Awakening. To read an excerpt of it on Amazon, please click HERE. )
THE JOURNEY DOESN'T END THERE
Then, six years ago while vacationing in Bali I had a serious fall on wet tiles and hurt myself pretty badly. I was given antibiotics, which triggered a dormant autoimmune issue I didn't even know I had. After a long and painful year of extremely slow healing using traditional medical protocols, I realized intuitively that if I was ever going to truly heal my body, I needed to do something different. I needed to make some radical lifestyle changes that involved making my own self-care my very highest priority. It included eating very healthy and very "clean," (lots of water and no sugar, gluten or processed food) and also having a better way to deal with stress, another trigger for autoimmune issues. For me, that meant making meditation part of a regular healthy daily practice, rather than an irregular, "if I can find the extra time" or an "only when I'm anxious or stressed" type of practice.
To be healthy it's not enough to eat veggies and do yoga.
You also must work on healing the stress in your life.
- Karen Salmansohn
The problem for me was, I didn’t really enjoy meditating. I used to struggle with being restless and just wanting to get it over with, when I meditated. (Possibly there've been times you've felt that way about meditation, too?) My breakthrough came when one day I realized, “Maybe it’s not all me and it’s not my fault if meditation is hard and boring? Maybe it’s actually the meditation I'm doing?” So I decided to make some changes to the way I had always been taught how to meditate. I made it into something I would actually want to do and look forward to and enjoy doing, even with a busy, full life. And once again, meditation came to my rescue.
HELPING OTHER WOMEN ON THEIR OWN MEDITATION JOURNEY
So what does my meditation journey have to do with you? Plenty.
We ALL go through some kind of challenging "Dark Night of the Soul" in our lives, at some point in our lives and usually without
any warning. And when we do, hopefully we learn that the pain and challenges we face will turn out to be our greatest gifts if we surrender to them, learn from them, use them and allow them to move us forward. I truly believe in our greatest challenge lies
the secret to living our truest life and purpose.
So after that second experience with the life-changing benefits of meditation and after being a professional life coach for many years, I decided to transition to being a meditation coach/teacher. I also decided to create a meditation practice for other women who might be like me; too busy for or just not enjoying doing traditional meditation as taught by today's meditation teachers.
My mission is simple, changing people's lives for the better, one woman at a time.
I show busy professional women a super-simple way to meditate so they can have a rock-solid daily meditation practice that provides them with an effective way to experience more peace and less stress in their lives. I really love helping women get started on their own journey with meditation and I'd love to help YOU get started, too! I believe if you're on this site you came here for a reason. I also believe it's important to surround yourself with support, for when you're on your own meditation journey and you find you're stuck, blocked or just need a little help to get on or back on track. I’d be delighted to be the one to support you!
Be Well.
Contact me to learn more about coaching with me.