Turning Inward

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In my mid-thirties, I went through a particularly difficult personal and professional time. It is hard enough to deal with one aspect of your life in turmoil, but almost impossible when all aspects of your life are in turmoil. So I began looking outside for anything I could think of to find some help and hope. In my quest, I stumbled upon Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and while I loved to read about her eating her way through Italy and finding love again in Indonesia, what resonated with me most was her meditation in India. How could something so simple be so effective?

That set me on a decade long journey of meditating, learning how and why, leaving it from frustration and then circling back with understanding and appreciation. Most of us in the veterinary field are high functioning and high achieving work horses. Our minds don’t rest except when we sleep and the thought of sitting down to “clear our minds” seems daunting and frankly, not helpful. 

Since I have been on the path of becoming a meditation instructor, time and time again I tell someone what I am doing and they almost always tell me how they tried to meditate once but could not quiet their minds. So they gave up. This was actually my experience. I would sit down to meditate and get overwhelmed with frustration. One minute in, I was shopping for groceries or thinking about dinner plans. The next moment I was working mentally on a case. I then started counting my breaths to try to prevent the thoughts – but all the while staying in my head.

In the summer of 2023, I got the opportunity to go spend a week with Deepak Chopra on the Big Island of Hawaii. The retreat was a week filled with meditation, yoga and lectures on consciousness. It was a life changing event as I learned to use his tool of Primordial Sound Meditation to get out of my head and into silence where at long last my brain could rest in awareness. In sleep, we rest in dullness. 

So what can resting in awareness do for us? Studies reveal it peels away stress, removes toxins, helps restore our adrenal glands, and over time has a biological and physiological impact on our bodies. It can actually change us mentally and physically. Also I have found that with meditation I can send a question out to the universe and when it’s the right time, I will get the answer that I need. It beats the hell out of trying day in and day out to get that square peg to fit into a round hole. 

Looking back on my work life, I would often come home more exhausted than ever from trying desperately to get something or someone to bend the way I wanted. We certainly tend to do this as business owners. Over time, we feel like we know best and it’s easier if everyone just falls into place. Yikes! That proved successful in wearing me out and pissing off my employees. 

So a huge myth buster about meditation is that you should be able to sit right down on a mat and clear your mind. That is nonsense and we all fail. The thoughts that arise are actually feelings of stress that need to be released. So it is counterproductive to fight against the thoughts that arise. Just the opposite, in fact, be delighted by them for a moment and then let them go. Delight in the fact that you are releasing stress, one thought at a time. And in between those thoughts there is a brief moment of complete stillness, so brief that you will not recognize it, called The Gap. And in this moment of complete stillness holds infinite possibilities and the powers of healing. 

So, for me, Primordial Sound Meditation was the answer. The mantra that is provided is a word with no meaning, just vibrational significance. So when you recite the mantra to yourself during meditation, there is no meaning associated with the word and therefore nothing for you to think about. It is a repetitive sound that helps us turn inward.  

Meditation is about finding out who we truly are, not who we think we are. It is about getting in touch with our souls. While we think of ourselves as veterinarians, mothers, husbands, sisters and brothers, those are just labels. Meditation is a way to go inward to silence, however brief, to help deal with the chaotic world. It is a way to peel off the stress. And every time you sit down to meditate, when you rise you take some of that silence with you into the world. But life is crazy, so you must go back time and time again to bring that silence over and over into your life and watch your limitless possibilities unfold. 

While this practice was originally associated with religion, it never has to be. It should traverse all religions to all humans looking for peace and stability. Join me on YouTube as I begin to lead you on a few guided meditations that I hope you will love. And please subscribe to my blog as I continue to write about meditation and the difficulties we face in the veterinary community. 

With love and hope, 

Dr. Erin Holder