What Is Meditation For Women?
Women’s meditation needs are very different from the traditional methods
used for centuries by men in monasteries. - Dr. Christiane Northrup
To answer that question we’re going to look at 2 different basic types of meditation: traditional meditation designed for monks in the ancient world and modern meditation designed for busy women in
the present-day world.
The first type is the old monastic style of meditation, developed over 2,500 years ago by men and originally created for people who live a reclusive lifestyle. It’s a style of meditation that was designed as a contemplative practice. For thousands of years people practiced hermitic meditation where a guru or a monk, went to his cave or a mountain top and like a hermit, meditated for several hours each day. Meditation was a tool that was used to support their monastic and sacrificial lifestyle and to help them to fulfil the different vows they took of poverty, chastity, etc..
Even today, many people still try to practice some form of monastic meditation, where you’re patiently enduring discomfort as you sit for long periods of time in an uncomfortable, pretzel-like position, trying to completely empty your mind or stop your mind from thinking. I think the reason why women today struggle so much with meditation, is because we’re still trying to do the first type of meditation, traditional meditation, that’s better suited for reclusive monks, than it is for busy professionals, Moms or Millennials.
We women fall into the second category of regular, busy people who need an alternative approach to meditation. Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” reminds us that, “Women’s meditation needs are very different from the traditional methods used for centuries by men in monasteries.”
We are living in a time when the challenge of meditation is it needs to be adapted to integrate into 21st century living and to the needs of our lifestyles and schedules, not the other way around. So the practice of meditation with its emphasis on tradition had to evolve and it did evolve to be a non-religious and more secular practice. It needs to support and sustain today's busy women who just want to have a way to get rid of stress and quickly relax and nourish themselves, rather than numbing themselves, which is what many women have been doing.
The old rigid rules, with an emphasis on structured and lengthy time frames, formal posture and intense disciple just don’t work for us anymore, especially not for busy women like the type of clients I serve who are busy working mothers, millennials, businesswomen and entrepreneurs. And we don’t live isolated in caves anymore, we live in the modern world, filled with constant interruptions and interactions. We can’t be a hermit meditating all day long - we have busy lives to live!
So I decided to create a meditation practice for other women who might be like me; too busy for and also not enjoying doing traditional meditation that’s been designed thousands of years ago, for men, by men. I wanted to demystify meditation; to update it and make it less mysterious, archaic and monastic and make it more accessible, practical and simple. I wanted to help women learn how to meditate by creating a practice for them that was simple, easy and able to be done in short, bite-sized meditations. It needed to be effortless,
yet highly effective and provide all the great benefits of longer meditation, without the usual restlessness, boredom and frustration.
I also wanted a practice that once women learned how to do it, it was self-sustaining and they didn’t need to rely on me, or anyone else, in order to do it. It requires no focused concentration and no struggling to clear the mind. Above all, it had to be busy-woman friendly and meet the needs of contemporary women living in this modern, secular world. I created a meditation that I believe is very well-suited for today's busy women's lifestyles and schedules and although this program is simple - it is also extremely powerful.
Check out Busy Woman's Meditation in a FREE Less is More Session and see for yourself how meditation for women can make a big difference in your life!
Women’s meditation needs are very different from the traditional methods
used for centuries by men in monasteries. - Dr. Christiane Northrup
To answer that question we’re going to look at 2 different basic types of meditation: traditional meditation designed for monks in the ancient world and modern meditation designed for busy women in
the present-day world.
The first type is the old monastic style of meditation, developed over 2,500 years ago by men and originally created for people who live a reclusive lifestyle. It’s a style of meditation that was designed as a contemplative practice. For thousands of years people practiced hermitic meditation where a guru or a monk, went to his cave or a mountain top and like a hermit, meditated for several hours each day. Meditation was a tool that was used to support their monastic and sacrificial lifestyle and to help them to fulfil the different vows they took of poverty, chastity, etc..
Even today, many people still try to practice some form of monastic meditation, where you’re patiently enduring discomfort as you sit for long periods of time in an uncomfortable, pretzel-like position, trying to completely empty your mind or stop your mind from thinking. I think the reason why women today struggle so much with meditation, is because we’re still trying to do the first type of meditation, traditional meditation, that’s better suited for reclusive monks, than it is for busy professionals, Moms or Millennials.
We women fall into the second category of regular, busy people who need an alternative approach to meditation. Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” reminds us that, “Women’s meditation needs are very different from the traditional methods used for centuries by men in monasteries.”
We are living in a time when the challenge of meditation is it needs to be adapted to integrate into 21st century living and to the needs of our lifestyles and schedules, not the other way around. So the practice of meditation with its emphasis on tradition had to evolve and it did evolve to be a non-religious and more secular practice. It needs to support and sustain today's busy women who just want to have a way to get rid of stress and quickly relax and nourish themselves, rather than numbing themselves, which is what many women have been doing.
The old rigid rules, with an emphasis on structured and lengthy time frames, formal posture and intense disciple just don’t work for us anymore, especially not for busy women like the type of clients I serve who are busy working mothers, millennials, businesswomen and entrepreneurs. And we don’t live isolated in caves anymore, we live in the modern world, filled with constant interruptions and interactions. We can’t be a hermit meditating all day long - we have busy lives to live!
So I decided to create a meditation practice for other women who might be like me; too busy for and also not enjoying doing traditional meditation that’s been designed thousands of years ago, for men, by men. I wanted to demystify meditation; to update it and make it less mysterious, archaic and monastic and make it more accessible, practical and simple. I wanted to help women learn how to meditate by creating a practice for them that was simple, easy and able to be done in short, bite-sized meditations. It needed to be effortless,
yet highly effective and provide all the great benefits of longer meditation, without the usual restlessness, boredom and frustration.
I also wanted a practice that once women learned how to do it, it was self-sustaining and they didn’t need to rely on me, or anyone else, in order to do it. It requires no focused concentration and no struggling to clear the mind. Above all, it had to be busy-woman friendly and meet the needs of contemporary women living in this modern, secular world. I created a meditation that I believe is very well-suited for today's busy women's lifestyles and schedules and although this program is simple - it is also extremely powerful.
Check out Busy Woman's Meditation in a FREE Less is More Session and see for yourself how meditation for women can make a big difference in your life!
