3 Misconceptions About Meditation and Yoga

BY SUSAN PIVER AND THE OPEN HEART PROJECT

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And How to Help Your Students Avoid Them

Hello, fellow teacher and seeker.

I’ve been a meditation teacher for over a dec-

ade and, like you, have seen amazing strides made

in bringing ancient practices to modern life. Yay!

However, I’ve seen my own students encounter

the same obstacles over and over. If you are a yoga

teacher, life coach, or therapist, it is likely you have

too.

I hope that the following suggestions and in-

sights into these obstacles will support you to

bring even more goodness to your students, clients,

and the world.

Your feedback means a lot to me, so feel free to

drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Thank you for your work!

Love,

obstacle #1 We often think that means forcing ourselves to feel some-

thing besides what we actually feel. To start where we are is

always most relaxing.

We can have so much more faith than this, in our students,

ourselves, and, most of all, in our practice. Our practice is su-

premely spacious. It is so much bigger than any one particu-

lar thought or school of thoughts.

Sometimes people think that spiritual practice is about feel-

ing only positive or affirming things. Even just the other day,

I was listening to a young Western spiritual teacher who was

offering her followers the potentially useful advice to choose

between love and fear, that every thought was a manifesta-

tion of either one or the other. However, when I began exam-

ining my fear-based thoughts (hopeless, anxious, mean), I

didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to cut them out? Ig-

nore them? Turn them upside down? Whatever I attempted

felt like pretending and I became more and more worried

that my thoughts were somehow going to poison me unless I

could think only good ones. It quickly became claustropho-

bic.

2

In order to practice meditation or yoga, I have to clear the mind of thought.

obstacle #2 It is absolutely true that spiritual practices bring positive

change to your sense of self, relationships and quality of life.

They have also been scientifically shown to make you hap-

pier (by increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex) and re-

lieve stress (by reducing cortisol.)

However, meditation and yoga are so much more than this.

In fact, the greatest benefits are realized when attemptsat self-improvement are abandoned in favor of accepting

yourself. Pema Chodron once said that cultivating gentleness

toward yourself is the single most important aspect of spiri-

tual practice. When you draw attention away from the inner

chatter that is usually grading you for everything on a scale

of one to 10, you make space for another kind of awareness

to arise: your own natural, complete and indestructible wis-

dom.

When we practice, we tune into the truth of who we are

rather than our thoughts about who we are. We see that our

life has an arc, rhyme and pattern. In fact, your life has a life

of its own and you are its guardian, not its master.

4

Spiritual practice is a form of self- improvement.

obstacle #3 It often happens with my meditation students (as also hap-

pened with me), that at some point they say, “The more I

practice, the more raw I become. I’m not becoming more

quote-unquote peaceful, I’m actually becoming more vulner-

able. What the hell is going on here?” Now we get to a little

secret about spiritual practice. It does not make you more

peaceful, if by peaceful we mean unflappable or unper-

turbed or some other kind of state where everything is al-

ways OK.

Rather than creating an inner environment that is akin to a

still pond (which can only remain so if the wind never blows

or a leaf never drops or the temperature never shifts), our

practice drops us into the deepest part of the deepest sea, a

place that sometimes sparkles peacefully and at others roils

as if blown by the winds of hell. It reveals us to be the wave

form that is capable of all such manifestations and that has

no option but to eventually be reabsorbed into stillness. This

is you. THIS is you. This you is so much bigger than having

to choose between each little thought as either for or against

you.

6

Spiritual practice makes you more peaceful.

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