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Trapped or safe?

Trapped or safe?

Hape Haven
October 13, 2023

We put ourselves in boxes.

Boxes feel safe.

Boxes keep us from having to feel another person’s story.

They make it easy for our brains to sort people into classification systems that will always keep us feeling smaller than we really are.

Boxes grade our minds so we forever believe we are average.

Boxes make it easy for us to exist in a hollow meeting room that will never turn our switch back on.

Boxes keep us sweating on a race track we’re made to feel is limitless until 27,375 days later we reminisce on what it was all for.

Boxes keep a select few rich and leave the rest in the mud searching for fresh water.

Boxes keep us glued to our devices so we never have to speak to our loved ones who sit distantly next to us.

So we never have time to consider there may be a different way, and I am the one who will do it differently.

Boxes keep the carbon-copy system alive.

A system obsessed with its own power.

A system that keeps our minds and hearts locked up in a tower while it feeds off of our magical hair.

I don’t want to live in these definitions anymore:
Female
Heterosexual
Mother
White
Young

We must remember we are not a box. We are fluid.

-Meg

We must remember to love ourselves even when our external world is telling us we are not enough.

I won’t deny this is a very challenging dilemma; being yourself in a world that is constantly trying to tell you to be something else is hard.

Self-love is easy to preach, and hard to practise.

Especially if self-love is not coming from a grounded place. In a stressful situation in particular, it can make you question where you’ve misplaced your bravery or identity. On some occasions, let’s say you manage to piece together a collection of strategies to weather the inner beast, ascending to the top of the pile, gaining a fresh perspective. However, if it’s not true or real, it can often make you feel uncertain about how you’ve arrived there, only for another unexpected external source to suddenly knock you off your precarious perch.

When your self-esteem and self-identity are perched on an unsteady base, and you’re tasked with displaying confidence or fortitude, it can throw you into disarray.

How can you stand on a heap of debris?

Self-love has to come from a deeper place within.

So, let’s get to the good stuff. This week I have a very, very simple but powerful tool with science-backed evidence (below) that you can experiment with over the next seven days.

The idea:

Every morning when you wake up, after you brush your teeth (because I’m assuming you brush your teeth every morning!), you say this to yourself 3 times:

I love myself

I found the most effective way of bringing this into your subconscious is by saying this whilst looking into your own eyes in the mirror, and really look, this is important, you have to mean it. At first, it can feel very silly and what I noticed when I did this is that my body rejected the words. I could feel this tingling in my chest and heaviness in my arms that was not allowing the words to sink in, until the seventh day, it really sunk in. The body sensations faded and I felt the words deep within me.

The scientific evidence:

Systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses have been conducted for both physical and mental conditions. These studies have shown that MBM (mantra-based meditation) is associated with reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, is more effective than usual treatment on reducing trait-anxiety, and can improve mental health and negative affectivity in non-clinical populations.

Study written up here: The impact of transcendental meditation on depressive symptoms and blood pressure in adults with cardiovascular disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Complementary Ther. Med.

The research says that mantra-based meditation (MBM) generally involves the continuous repetition of a word, phrase, or set of syllables (either silently or aloud) with or without religious/spiritual content. The sound of a mantra within meditation has been suggested to act as an effective way to override mental speech, which is a predominant form of consciousness for most people, and to redirect those negative or intrusive automatic thought that cause distress.

While MBM has generally been categorised as a type of focused attention meditation, it has been suggested that the repetition of a sound, word, or sentence makes MBM unique because of its specific voluntary linguistic production.

Next week I’m going to add this to the mantra as well:

I love my life

If we are already living from a place of love, and if we already believe we are living our best life, then we will bring that positive energy and cultivate our highest version of self.

Sending you all much love,

Meagan

@hapehaven