Was it curiosity? …an intuitive knowing?
I'm not quite sure what it was that initially pulled me to meditation.
As a child, I would completely trance out for periods of time …in another world …until my mom would yell at me — “Ben! Stop daydreaming!”
That natural ability to drop into altered states disappeared by the time I reached my teens. But there was always this gnawing sense that something was missing — something sacred that the mundane life I saw growing up in Texas couldn't offer.
By the time I was fourteen, I started hearing stories about the traditional Native American doctors — the medicine men and women — and thought to myself, “If I'm ever given the opportunity, this is what I will do with my life.”
At seventeen, while still in high school, I made my way to southwestern Oklahoma and found myself living among a community of Kiowa Indians. I spent many nights sitting up in the tipis with the elders during the peyote meetings.
It was in one of those meetings that I first met my mentor, Horace Daukei — one of the last surviving traditional doctors among the Kiowa Tribe.
During my apprenticeship, Horace transmitted portions of his healing gifts to me. He would then send me out on the vision quest to earn the right to work with those gifts.
The vision quest typically involves fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights — without food or water.
Horace is the most gifted healer I have ever encountered. Despite the immense power he possessed, he never criticized or attempted to dissuade me when I expressed interest in meditation and other forms of esoteric practice. Maybe he sensed that I was on to something.
Even without any formal guidance or instruction, meditation came naturally, and I could easily sit for an hour or two. Whenever I practiced, I felt calmer, more grounded, more insightful, and more resourceful.
Descent into the Abyss
My initial experience of meditation felt so nourishing. Even though I wasn't all that consistent, I derived a lot of enjoyment from the practice.
But then, in my mid-twenties, the bottom seemed to fall out from under me.
It was during that time that I found myself forming attachments and getting into brief, yet painful relationships with women — relationships that, in many ways, were reenactments of the traumas of my childhood and adolescence.
The pain I felt in those moments was excruciating. Yet instinctively, I found myself breathing from the middle of all that pain.
As I continued to breathe with my awareness fully immersed in the depths of those emotions, I began to feel the pain breaking open and coming out of my body in waves. As that happened, I could feel this presence flowing from within, along with a growing sense of connectedness to a higher power.
This practice helped me cycle through the pain — to dissolve the unhealthy attachments, to let go of women who were unavailable, disinterested, sometimes abusive, or simply not a good match, and to release the relationships that were not working.
Suspended in the Bardo
Between my mid-twenties and mid-thirties, I cycled through a number of unhealthy and often painful attachments where I was longing to be with someone …but the feelings weren't reciprocated …or through short-lived relationships.
Much of that time, I felt this tremendous longing — sadness, grief, the pain of unrequited love.
There were the false hopes, and then the devastating crash of another relationship blowing apart on me.
During the worst of times, I would breathe from the depths of all that pain. And then I would reassemble myself, get back on my feet, and push on.
But there were also a lot of times when I was suspended in this empty, painful, hurting state of longing.
I wasn’t learning or growing. I wasn’t able to show up to life, fully engaged.
Consequently, I wasn’t living life to the extent I could, and I missed out on a lot of valuable opportunities.
In hindsight, I can see now — because I wasn’t doing much, and at times any practice — I wasn’t healing the traumatic wounds that carried over from my past.
I wasn’t doing the deep-level processing or digesting of my then-lived experiences.
I was, in many ways, trapped in a holding pattern.
Sometimes I feel a sense of regret looking back.
Yet I had no guidance at the time — no one to help me connect the dots.
It was up to me to find my own way …to figure out what didn’t work and what did.
The fact that I was so determined to heal the wounds that were causing so much pain — to find someone that I could truly love and be loved by — motivated me to test out any practice or therapeutic intervention that held promise.
From Emptiness and Longing to Euphoria
Around the time I turned thirty, I started seeing a woman who truly did care for me — so much so that she gave me an ultimatum, telling me she wanted me to move in and start a family.
Even though I cared deeply for her, I felt a great deal of internal resistance — something inside of me was saying no.
Understandably, she broke off the relationship.
She was angry with me, but after some time, we met up again, and it felt like we were beginning to form a friendship.
But around that time, my former girlfriend became involved with a man — very insecure — who said, “If you have to be friends with your ex, I'll leave you.”
Feeling a sense of deadness in my heart, I started breathing with my awareness centered in the middle of my chest during my late-night drives from Santa Fe to Albuquerque.
At first, I didn't feel much of anything.
Then gradually — emptiness, loneliness, longing.
After some time, it felt as though my entire chest cavity was aching.
As I worked my way through those layers, I could feel this profound sense of euphoria flowing from the depths of my being.
Building Resilience and Resourcefulness
As I became more consistent in my practice and was able to sit for longer periods of time, I began to develop an intensive and extensive series of meditation practices to address my own needs, as well as those of the many people I work with.
Combining my meditation practice with the most effective therapeutic interventions facilitated the healing of attachment and other deep emotional wounds.
I became far more resilient and resourceful.
Committed to doing all I can to facilitate healing in the bodies and minds of those I work with, I began to encourage — and teach — these practices to everyone I work with.
That can be challenging, as it can be difficult to get people to engage in any form of consistent practice.
There are reasons for that. Many are working and commuting long hours, managing other responsibilities like raising children, or simply trying to stay afloat amid the pressures of daily life. Add to that the effects of digital media and other technologies that are rewiring their brains, making it even harder to slow down, turn inward, and stay present with their own experience.
It’s also true that many people — even those who say they want to heal — aren’t willing to do the work required to facilitate real healing within their own bodies and minds.
Digesting Our Lived Experiences and Emotional Responses
Our lived experiences — and the emotional responses we have to them — need to be digested so they can be transformed into fuel for growth.
Whatever we fail to digest remains trapped within our bodies in the form of this heavy congestive residue or stagnation. It also forms layers of emotional body armor — which shows up as the tension many of us accumulate in our neck, shoulders, jaw, and other parts of the body.
The vast majority of people have never learned how to work effectively with their emotions.
All those stresses and emotions they’re not processing continue to accumulate in their bodies.
Unprocessed emotions and other accumulated stresses have a numbing effect.
We lose touch with the authentic core that resides within us, along with many of our basic underlying needs.
We lose much of our capacity to show up to other people — and to life itself — because so much of our bandwidth is occupied by all these stresses and conflicted emotions operating outside of our conscious awareness.
Over time, the hurt, anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, and other unprocessed emotions and stresses begin to manifest as some form of pathology within our bodies — and are a contributing factor to digestive and respiratory disorders, and heart disease.
This is why it is so critically important for each of us to take time daily to do the practices I teach — to take your lived experiences and emotional responses and thoroughly digest them.
Start by bringing any person, situation, or concern to the forefront of your awareness.
Notice what you feel in response to it — and where any feelings or bodily sensations arise within your body.
Fully immerse your awareness in the depths of these feelings and bodily sensations, while breathing softly and deeply.
Follow the feelings and sensations as they go through their progression.
Considering the challenges so many of us are facing, the demands placed upon us, and the impact of all these unprocessed emotions and stresses, we need to be working with this practice every day.
Opening the Heart
We're all on our own individual life paths. When I look into the bodies and minds of those who, during their childhood and adolescence, were loved and supported by their parents, who formed secure attachments in their adult lives, and found their place in the world, I can see how they internalized that love — how they were appreciated — and how that enabled them to thrive.
Yet many of us suffered verbal, emotional, physical, and possibly even sexual abuse, or some combination thereof.
We were chosen last for sports teams and bullied in school.
As we grew from adolescents into adults, many of us struggled with attachment issues, suffered rejections, were ghosted, and endured the devastation of painful breakups.
Because we're not digesting our life experiences or the emotions attached to them, much of the sadness, grief, fear of abandonment, the pain of loss, the loneliness, and the longing for someone who doesn't reciprocate — it all remains trapped within our hearts.
And for many, it stays there indefinitely.
Our relationships are more likely to become a series of painful reenactments — repeating the same losses, the same betrayals, the same unmet longings, again and again.
There are two meditations I teach to help heal the wounded heart. Sometimes, I have people bring their awareness to the middle of their chest cavity, where their heart and lungs reside, and center their awareness in the depths of whatever feelings or bodily sensations arise. For those in the middle of a breakup or dealing with other forms of relational torment, it can feel incredibly painful. When those losses have faded into the rearview mirror, the feelings are often dulled.
The important thing here is to bring as much awareness as you can into your heart — and breathe from the depths of any feelings or bodily sensations that arise. If the feelings are intense, they will usually diminish in intensity as you continue breathing into them. If there's a lot of numbing, the feelings and bodily sensations will often become more vivid as you continue breathing into them over the coming days, weeks, and months.
Now some people will tell me they don’t want to feel those feelings. Well, if you don’t, the feelings you’ve numbed yourself to, the ones still trapped in your body, become barriers. They block you from forming deep, meaningful connections. Being numb diminishes your capacity to love and be loved.
One of the greatest advantages of breathing with your awareness centered in your heart and lungs is that it frees up a tremendous amount of bandwidth — expanding your capacity to love others and to truly receive the love they have to share with you. You also become far more present in your interactions.
Meditation to Heal Your Broken Heart
There's another meditation I teach people when they're in the midst of a breakup, have been ghosted, are feeling strung out emotionally, struggling with an abusive partner, or caught up in some other form of relational torment. I start by having them picture that individual — their partner, the person who broke up with them, or the one they're wanting to be with who isn't reciprocating their love.
While holding that individual in their awareness, I have them notice what they're feeling in their bodies — and breathe softly and deeply while fully immersing their awareness in the depths of any feelings or bodily sensations that arise.
Working with this practice enables them to digest the sadness, grief, longing, hurt, and other painful emotions, to gain clarity, and to dissolve unhealthy attachments so they can let go and move on. It also helps to heal the underlying attachment wounds, making it far more likely that they'll attract — and find themselves drawn to — the kinds of individuals they can co-create a truly nourishing bond with.
Instinctual Mind Meditation
After a few months of breathing with my awareness centered within my heart and lungs, I began to wonder what would happen if I shifted my awareness down into my abdomen.
In the beginning, I didn't feel much — just a sense of heaviness, congestion, a little digestive movement.
But as I continued to practice, something began to open.
I could feel all this underlying activity — rumbling, burning, pulsing, tingling — as if my entire digestive system was waking up.
For years, I had been dissociated.
Working with the instinctual mind practice grounded me into my body.
My intuition grew much stronger.
At times, I would feel things before they happened — a subtle knowing that would rise up from deep within.
I started developing this instinctual knowing that manifested as a felt bodily sense of what I needed to be doing, what paths to follow, what to avoid.
As I continued to work with this practice, my sensitivity deepened even further.
I could sense the incongruence in others — hearing what they were saying, yet feeling where they were actually coming from.
Their words might have said one thing, but my body could feel the truth underneath.
Over the years, I’ve taught this practice to many of the people I’ve worked with — especially those dealing with digestive disorders like ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and IBS. Those who consistently do this practice in conjunction with the individual sessions I facilitate heal at a much more accelerated pace.
Breathing softly and deeply while centering our awareness within the abdomen not only helps facilitate healing and improve the function of the digestive organs — it also helps us access the emotions we've trapped there.
The intestines are intimately tied to our emotional reality.
They're where we store much of where grief, fear, anxiety, dread, and survival terror we weren't able to process.
The intestines also carry much of our vulnerability — the parts of us that wonder whether life will nourish or betray us. They also hold onto a lot of the sadness, our unresolved losses, and other emotions we haven’t yet been able to digest.
And woven throughout the entire gut are the traces of unprocessed fear — the deep, animal-level vigilance that kept us alive when the world didn’t feel safe — or truly wasn’t.
When all these emotions remain trapped in your gut and other parts of your body, it keeps you locked in a holding pattern, and that prevents you from truly healing and evolving.
Working with the instinctual mind practice isn't just about healing the body — it’s about reclaiming trust in life itself.
It's about restoring our ability to digest not just food, but experience… to let go of what no longer serves us… and to reconnect with the deep intelligence that’s always been alive within us — even when we couldn't feel it.
Dissolving the Layers of Emotional Body Armor
Unprocessed anger, frustration, anxiety, and the, at times, overwhelming stresses so many of us are living with tend to harden as they accumulate in parts of our bodies — the neck, shoulders, back, abdomen, and jaw — and can become painfully uncomfortable at times.
One afternoon, while riding a commuter train into New York City, I began to center my awareness in the chronic tension I was holding in my upper back, shoulders, and neck. As I continued to center my awareness in the midst of the discomfort, it felt like a layer of armor about an inch thick.
Day after day, as I continued to breathe softly and deeply with my awareness centered in those areas of chronic tension, I gradually felt the muscles in this part of my body beginning to relax.
Months later, when I saw my massage therapist, she stopped for a moment and said, “What did you do here? I usually have to spend an hour or more working on your neck, shoulders, and upper back to get the tension to release. This time I spent fifteen minutes and everything is opening up. Now I have time to work on all these other parts of your body that I usually don't have time for. How did you do this?”
Breathing softly and deeply while centering your awareness in the areas of chronic tension within your body will help to soften and dissolve the layers of emotional body armor. It's important to realize that, rather than a quick fix, this is a process that requires time. You'll get far better results if you combine this practice with deep tissue bodywork and the individual healing sessions I facilitate.
You may notice a significant difference within a few days… but weeks or even months is more realistic. I encourage you to practice for at least thirty minutes to an hour or more at a time — the more time you put into it, the greater the results.
Walking Meditation
Because so many of us were never taught how to work effectively with our emotions, we often find ourselves overwhelmed by them.
Heavier, more painful emotions — sadness, grief, anger, hurt, frustration — don't move all that readily and are therefore more likely to remain trapped within our bodies.
And because many of these emotions have been held within for so long, they tend to putrefy — growing heavier, more stagnant, and are more difficult to work with over time.
When I first teach people who have experienced trauma or are overwhelmed by their emotions to meditate — I often have them start with walking meditation.
When doing the walking meditation, heavier emotions that have been trapped inside the body begin to circulate through the field around it.
The Earth, having its own electromagnetic field, helps to purify these emotions — diffusing their intensity and making them more digestible.
Walking meditation not only diffuses the intensity of painful and overwhelming emotions — it makes them more manageable.
It helps you feel safer, more comfortable, and more at home in your own body.
The Importance of Intensive Daily Practice
The brief overview of the meditations described above is only a small sample of the system of meditation practices I've developed over the years.
Being very intuitive, most of these practices were developed out of necessity — to address my own needs as well as those of the thousands of people I've worked with along the way.
Developing and maintaining a practice in our modern-day world can be especially challenging with all the pressures, demands, and distractions — yet in many ways, we need it now more than ever.
If we're not doing the deep-level processing of our lived experiences and emotional responses, the undigested emotions and stresses continue to accumulate within our bodies.
We feel more stressed out, more reactive — less conscious of the forces operating behind the scenes that drive our thoughts, actions, and even the words coming out of our mouths.
Consequently, we make more mistakes, create more messes, cause more damage, and hurt others more often.
Because we grow numb to ourselves, we lose touch with the authentic core residing deep within us.
And when that connection fades, we're far more likely to get caught up in the algorithms, distracted by noise, and pulled into the dramas playing out in the world around us — dramas that are not serving us.
Over time, the accumulation of stress and undigested emotions accelerates the breakdown of the body — aging us faster, weakening our resilience, and making us more vulnerable to illness and injury.
As we make time for intensive daily practice, we reconnect — and in some instances, establish a connection for the first time — with our authentic core being.
We also begin to activate the innate healing intelligence residing within our bodies and minds.
As we learn to work constructively with our authentic emotional responses, we become more resourceful.
Our intuition grows stronger. And we’re better equipped to come up with creative, workable solutions to the many challenges we’re faced with — both within ourselves and out in the world.
Closing Thoughts…
So many people, possessing such limited internal resources, are not able to fully show up to life.
Through intensive daily practice, you're continually building a stronger internal foundation — along with the crucial resources needed to truly live.
The deeper your roots grow within yourself, the more fully you can rise to meet your life.
While my articles can offer a roadmap — and for some, that may be enough — most people need real guidance to navigate this journey.
I'm available to work with you individually, to help you deepen your connection to yourself, work constructively with your emotions, and build the foundation you need to live from your authentic core.
If you feel called to take the next step, you can reach out to schedule a session or ask any questions you may have. Call or message me at (332) 333-5155.
I look forward to hearing from you.
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