The Transformative Power of Meditation and Yoga
By: Paul Marsh
Tags: Happiness, Fitness, Yoga, Advice, Meditation

These two ancient art forms can radically improve the quality of your life and your overall happiness.

Anupam Mahapatra via Unsplash

What if I told you that yoga and meditation may be the missing link between your ability to maximize your daily output — all while remaining positive and upbeat — and any feelings of fatigue or lethargy you still experience? If you’re skeptical, I completely understand. Up until somewhat recently, I was myself. Growing up in a household with my adoptive parents, like most young people, I was subject to their parental influence.

They impressed their beliefs on me, my biological siblings, and their two biological children. One such belief was that meditation and yoga are bad things, practices that were akin to voodoo and witchcraft. Through sedulous means, they did their due diligence to ensure that we were utterly terrified of these two practices.

Adoptive parents aside, religion was the other component that kept me from embracing meditation and yoga. The churches I went to, specifically the churches I attended while a resident of the state of Arkansas, were more old-school in nature in spite of attempts to modernize themselves. The leaders preached messages that still contained “fire and brimstone” elements, which never failed to overly convict the members of the congregation of their misdeeds, no matter how trivial. Of course I was included.

I don’t remember which church it was at, but one such message expressly forbade meditation and yoga, classifying them as dark arts and things to be avoided at all costs. In hindsight, I realize that those leaders were more charismatic than spiritual, exploiting their God-given skillset for personal — and usually pecuniary — purposes. More on this in subsequent articles.

All of this led to an overwhelming sense of discomfort when I was informed about how transformative both of these practices can be. How can these two art forms enrich my life if everything I’ve ever heard about them seems negative? I fought myself for months, vacillating between wanting to try them out and wanting to abstain completely. Then, one day, I asked myself a million-dollar question: “Would you be opposed to trying them if you hadn’t heard all the negative things you did?” My honest answer was no, so I decided to give them a go, but not without overcoming the last hurdle in my way — the infamous male ego.

Initially, in my eyes, there was nothing too off-putting about meditation, but there was little I could call manly about yoga. It struck me as dainty, something that should be enjoyed by men who are more effeminate than most, women, and/or those who don’t care for the opinions of others when it comes to their overall health and well-being. I wasn’t in any of those camps, though I now jovially consider myself part of that last group. At the onset, I was too concerned about losing part of my masculinity to forms of self-care that didn’t require me to use anything but my body weight, unorthodox postures, and my mind.

“There’s no way this can be good for my health” I’d often think, paralyzed by my ego every time I attempted to get in a quick introductory session. In reality, I was really allowing the words of others to affect how I perceived yoga and meditation. It took some time, but I eventually got over the hump, now living a life chalk-full of morning and evening weekend yoga sessions and meditation twice a day. What changed? Aside from my perceptions, I began to personally experience just how powerful both are individually and combined.