GUEST POST: 5 Ways Meditation Can Change Your Life

What if I told you there was a tool available that has been proven to help regulate digestion, relieve pain and bloating, soothe IBD and IBS, reduce anxiety and depression, all while improving self-esteem, overall happiness, stress-resilience, and perceived ability to meet life’s demands meanwhile strengthening intuition, creativity, and spirituality?

Now what if I told you it was freely available to you and everyone always?

Allow me to introduce you to meditation and breath-work, the tool that saved me and continues to save me time and time again.

Hi, I’m Sam MacFarlane, the girl behind @spoonful_of_sam where I share *spoonfuls* of easy to ~digest~ content on the different ingredients I believe are necessary in the recipe to living well. After years of personal physical and mental health struggles, everything from undiagnosed chronic illness to IBS to hormone issues to anxiety to anorexia, I’ve learned that in order to truly be well we must heal our mind AND body. Healing is a mental AND a physical journey. So if you like getting nerdy and going deep, we are sure to be great friends.

I’ve become so passionate about the mind-body connection it’s now what I focus on in my work as a Mind-Body Specialist where I encourage those on a healing journey to incorporate what I believe to be the missing piece of most health & healing journeys— the inner work. I define the inner work as meditation, breath work, mindset, and emotional/spiritual healing. As a Certified Meditation & Breath Work coach, I teach my clients, primarily with women in the chronic illness space, how their minds truly affect their body. 

Here are just a few ways the mind and body are connected as well as how meditation & breath work can help.

1. Consistent daily meditation for 6 weeks physiological changes your brain and the way you perceive the world
   Have you ever wondered why some people will cry over the beauty of a sunset or are able to luxuriate in the taste of a good cup of coffee for an hour? How about the people who prefer deep soul wrenching conversations over small talk? All of these can be tied back to brain activity and are influenced by meditation. Studies show 6 weeks of consistent daily meditation leads to increased activity in the sensory corticles of the brain which is responsible for your intake of the world around you (aka the beauty of last night’s sunset) and the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for your ability to process complex emotions and concepts (aka why some people can spend hours in a coffee shop after yoga chatting philosophy). A great technique to start with is a body scan, simply scan through your body head to toes and check in with the sensations of every area. Can you release a little tension from your neck and shoulders right now?

2. It is *impossible* to heal while stressed out.
   The sympathetic nervous system is part of our autonomic nervous system which controls all involuntary actions of the body, from digestion to heart rate to sexual arousal. The sympathetic is our survival response also known as fight or flight while parasympathetic is our relaxation mode also known as rest and digest. When we are stuck in the sympathetic, which many of us are due to the chronic stress of today’s world (led alone the stress of living with a chronic illness), the body de-prioritizes certain processes like digestion, hormone function, and you guessed it— healing. This is NOT because your body hates you, it’s quite the opposite. The body is so smart it knows times of danger are not good times to, for example, have a baby. Instead it shifts that energy to the priority— getting away from danger such as a bear chasing you. Therefore healing also takes the back burner as there is no time for cell renewal while you are running away from said bear. All this to say, you can have the most “perfect” diet and take all the supplements but if you don’t take a look at your stress, your body physiologically cannot heal. Thankfully, just 5 minutes of equal ratio breathing can shift us into parasympathetic— simply inhale for 5 counts, hold for 5, exhale through the nose for 5, and hold at the bottom for 5 and repeat until the time is up.

3. The body is always listening.
   The body is always listening. When you say “I hate my body”, your body hears it. When you say “My body loves me and is doing the best it can right now” it hears that too. And it responds accordingly to both. On a physiological level, thoughts create feelings which trigger different chemical signals throughout the body. Some chemicals are alkalizing and support health like those triggered by gratitude, love, and joy. Some chemicals are acidic and lead to disease like those triggered by anger, lack, and resentment. How we think and how we feel creates our state of being. The body (and the quantum field) respond to who we are being. If you are being someone who lives in fear and lack you will experience more fear and lack. If you are being someone who is victimized by their chronic illness, you will always feel victimized and awful physically. How would it feel to tell your body it is safe and you love it? Can you take 2 minutes to repeat that mantra to yourself everyday?

4. Neurons that fire together, wire together.
   “Neurons that fire together, wire together”-Hebb’s law, a rule within physics and neuroscience, that relates to how 2 things become subconsciously linked in our minds. For example, if every time you go to work you get yelled at by your boss and experience stress, your body will begin to associate work with stress. So even on the days your boss doesn’t yell and nothing stressful happens, your body will still physically feel stressed because the neurons associated with work are now connected with the neurons associated with stress and the 2 “fire” together. Another example, if every time you sit down to a meal, you think about how much pain the food might cause you, your brain will begin to automatically associate food with pain so even safe foods begin to bother you or bring on feelings of fear. Many people with chronic illnesses struggle with PTSD like triggers because of this. In our meditation practice, we can work to retrain the associations the brain has made to support the life we want to live rather than hold us back.

5. 1 word— Compassion.
   Compassion, for ourselves, our bodies, and others, is one of the greatest gifts meditation can bring us. Compassion is a feeling but it also influences our thoughts and actions. Compassion translates into saying kinder words to ourselves as well as showing ourselves the treatment we deserve— rest, self-care, nourishing foods, healthy relationships, etc. Not to mention vibrationally, the frequency of compassion is around 600 Hz (guilt is 30 Hz for reference) and high vibrations support health and healing.

I truly hope this post inspires you to begin incorporating the inner work, specifically meditation and breath-work, to your chronic illness journey. I hope it empowers you with education on the why behind the work so you can feel supported in how these practices can benefit you physically and mentally. These tools have changed not only my health but my entire life and I know they will do the same for you.

Sending so much love, Xo

Sam || @spoonful_of_sam || spoonfulofsam.com