Every Yogi Needs a Cave to Meditate In
I took a vacation to Zion National Park last week and found a cute little cave to sit in and meditate. Yogis are known to come from caves in the Himalayan mountains. These Yogis would sit alone and meditate using the power of the mountains to increase their consciousness. My small meditation did not move mountains in my consciousness, but I did face my fears.
Me, my best friend and my boyfriend Brandon drove to Zion last week. The first day we hiked Angel’s Landing and I am afraid of heights, but I love facing my fears. Angels Landing is about a 4 mile hike with laborious switchbacks, but the views are worth it. When you get to the top you see Zion Canyons 270-million year old rock layers and a full view of the canyon. The view of the canyon is breathtaking, mostly because I am afraid of heights so it took my breath away.
I really did face my fears and activate my meditative mind on this hike. My knee has been hurting during long hikes and my mind was trying to convince me that this hike was going to be painful. I had so much fear that my knee was going to lock up and I wasn’t going to be able to finish the hike. About an hour into the hike my fear was so loud I couldn’t get my mind to shut up. Back-and-forth my mind was saying, “Your knee is gonna start hurting, you’re not gonna be able to finish this hike, you’re not gonna be able to hike tomorrow.” Then I remembered my teacher saying: you need to turn around and look at the monster in the dark. When you turn around and face the monster (my fear), you will realize it isn’t a monster at all.
That brought me back to the present moment and I started screaming in my head, “So what! Your knee is going to hurt! Oh well! What’s the big deal?! What are you so worried about?! What are you so scared of?! Your knee is going to hurt? Big deal, deal with it!” I literally had to yell at myself for about 30 minutes to get my mind to shut up. I was so worried about my knee that I wasn’t in the present moment and I was missing the beauty around me. I was letting my fear take control of the whole hike. Even a skilled Yogi sometimes forgets that their mind is lying to them.
I continued hiking and made it to the top, but by the end of it my knee hurt pretty bad. Luckily I brought Magnesium Glycinate and SPM’s with me and in the morning my knee was fine and I was able to hike again. The next day we hiked the Narrows which was about 10 miles and this time my mind was more quiet. It’s true if you turn around and yell at the scary monster, it stops stocking you. I saw magnificent rocks in the canyon, I got to walk in the beautiful stream, and I got to be present with my two favorite people in the world.
If it wasn’t for the many years of meditation I wouldn’t have been able to realize that my mind was trying to convince me that I was too weak to finish the hike. But from years of meditating and mindfulness I know that my mind is constantly lying to me. This is what’s known as the negative mind. The negative mind is keeping us safe. My negative mind was telling me don’t do this hike because you might hurt your knee and I need to keep you safe. So I convinced my mind that I would be fine and switched over to the positive mind. Having the intuition to know that this hike was not dangerous and my mind was just trying to keep me safe is known as the neutral mind. It was on this trip that I realized how much my yoga practice helps me off the mat. These are the kinds of situations that require mindfulness.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had to face your fears?
Did you also know that I teach yoga on Tuesday nights on Zoom?
I teach gentle yoga that anyone can do. Email me for the link. Or you can try one of my past classes by going to my website.
