What comes to mind when you hear the word meditation? For those unaccustomed to it, meditation refers to “enlightenment.” Some may even use Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, “eat, pray love.” Here’s the thing though, there’s a lot more to meditation than you might think.
In this digital age, you have probably come across several podcasts, or social media influencers express their confidence in the benefits of meditation. Here are some of the main reasons why people meditate
You will experience various sensations during meditation. The main ones being:
Two types of raw emotions are released during meditation, namely, positive and negative. Meditation taps into all those bottled up emotions, in a process known as “ama.” Meditation also accesses emotions stored in our subconscious. If you do cry during or after meditation it’s important to understand the different types of meditation so that you can choose the best type for you.
During this process, you may end up bursting into tears. If this happens to you, there’s no need to get all worked up. Crying after meditation is normal, and everyone from newbies to experienced yogis has cried after meditation.
Think of it in this way, are there times when you received troubling news but never reacted because you were probably in a public place? Then later, if you happen to run into a friend who asked how you were doing, you found yourself bawling your eyes out?
Crying after meditation is a similar response, and it’s a sign that you’ve tapped into a reflective state.
Crying after meditation can be as a result of good and bad experiences or sometimes it just depends on time of day you meditate. An important question to ask yourself is should you meditate in the morning or night?
If you start crying after meditation, the first thing you should do is not try to suppress this emotion. Allow yourself to have all those feels. Crying allows you to get rid of all that toxicity that was seemingly contained.
Note that by releasing these emotions, it saves you from a future outburst that could happen at work or home in front of the kids. Remember that even though these negative emotions seem overwhelming, nothing is permanent.
Also, once you release all these emotions, you’ll be happy to know that your future meditation sessions will result in healing, peace of mind as well as contentment.
There’s only one instance where crying after meditation isn’t a good thing, which is when you are suffering from significant mental health issues. People suffering from anxiety and depression require professional help and shouldn’t use meditation as a solution.
As mentioned earlier, meditation could result in an overspill of emotions, and for people with mental health issues, these emotions might be too much to handle. Flashbacks could lead to trauma as well as panic.
Finally, I hope that by reading this article, you now know what to expect during meditation. Even better would be that you are no longer afraid to experience the full effects of meditation and are ready to get Zen.