How can we feel held in life? Meditation is one gift that can allow us to notice, with awareness, what is happening inside of ourselves and how we relate to the world.
But how much effort do we put into constantly adjusting, fixing, improving, monitoring, and controlling?
Meditation can teach us to stop trying so hard. We can stop trying to manage every thought, every feeling, every sensation. And in that softening, something unexpected can happen for us if we allow it.
One way is to allow ourselves to feel held: by awareness, spirit, our breath and the earth beneath us. Allowing life to carry us along.
Many of us arrive at meditation after a lifetime of striving to get things right. We have learned to stay vigilant, productive, responsible, and emotionally organized.
Like many of us, you may try to monitor our environment and anticipate the needs of others before your own. You may brace against uncertainty.
When you sit in meditation, you might notice the mind often continues its management role — planning, evaluating, protecting, rehearsing.
Meditation gently reveals how exhausting this can become.
At first, letting go may feel unfamiliar or even unsafe. If we are not managing everything, then who will? If we stop controlling our thoughts, will we be overwhelmed by them? If we stop gripping our emotions, will they consume us?
But meditation invites a radical experiment: what if, for a few moments, nothing needs to be controlled?
Not the thoughts.
Not the emotions.
Not the sensations.
Not the people around us.
Not even the meditation itself.
This is not resignation or passivity. It is trust. It is an engaged presence without judgment.
To be held in meditation means allowing ourselves to rest inside experience exactly as it is. Thoughts may come and go like weather. Emotions may rise and fall like waves. The body may feel tense one moment and soft the next. Instead of tightening against experience, we allow experience to move through us.
We begin to notice something important: awareness itself is not disturbed.
The mind can be busy while awareness remains spacious.
Grief can arise while awareness still holds tenderness.
Fear can move through while something deeper stays grounded and intact.
This changes how we relate to life.
So much suffering comes from the belief that we must control inner experience in order to be okay. We try to suppress sadness, manage anxiety, hold onto pleasure, avoid uncertainty. We often carry the invisible burden of trying to hold everyone and everything together.
Mindfulness and meditation offer other possibilities for healing.
What if life is already moving through us?
What if awareness already knows how to hold experience?
What if we do not need to grip so tightly and can relax into life iwth ease?
When we allow ourselves to feel held, the nervous system begins to soften. The body exhales. The jaw unclenches. The heart slows down. We discover that deep relaxation is not laziness; it is the body remembering safety.
There is immense healing in this.
Often people think meditation is about becoming calm or peaceful all the time. But deeper meditation is not about manufacturing a particular state. It is about learning how to stop fighting reality. Even difficult emotions can be included. Even restlessness can belong. Even uncertainty can be held within awareness.
In this way, meditation becomes less about escaping life and more about allowing life fully. Perhaps you’d like to meditation on Being Held…Try my meditation here
And strangely, when we stop trying to control everything, we often become more present, more compassionate, and more available to others. We listen more deeply. We react less impulsively. We become less rigid and more responsive. Life flows with greater ease because we are no longer pushing against every moment.
Being held in meditation slowly teaches us that perhaps we have always been held in life too. Being held in the presence of life, in mindfulness, as Jon Kabat-Zinn describes it.
Held by breath entering and leaving without our command.
Held by gravity.
Held by the support of the earth.
Held by moments of kindness.
Held by silence.
Held by something larger than the thinking mind can fully understand.
Meditation reminds us that we do not have to carry the entire weight of existence alone.Sometimes the deepest practice is simply this:
to sit,
to breathe,
to soften,
and to let life move through us exactly as we are.
May you be filled with ease and joy.
Please reach out if you’d like to connect further with me for a free discovery session.
Susan
