Meditation plays an important role when it comes to making a change of habits. Hence, it’s particularly helpful to include meditation as a part of your daily routines if you want to transition into a vegan lifestyle. If you don’t know HOW to meditate or WHAT is meditation, this article introduces you to 5 simple meditation practices that support your vegan lifestyle transition.
How Does Meditation Support Your Vegan Lifestyle Transition?
Changing your lifestyle can be challenging, especially if you lived a very different lifestyle in contrast to your newfound goal. Introducing new habits to your body requires a change in thoughts, beliefs, and feelings (energy and frequency). Though it can be shifted easily, changing habits usually takes some time because you are replacing old programming and teaching your body to learn new patterns. Transitioning into a vegan lifestyle can be difficult if you tend to doubt yourself and overthink. However, our brain is way more powerful than we thought, and When we incorporate meditation (changing internally) along with physical change (changing externally), we can EXPEDITE the transitional process.
Meditation. Meditation allows you to have time and space with YOU and beyond, so you can CREATE and smoothly transition into the new version of you who’s living the vegan lifestyle you desire. If you’ve never tried meditation, this article is a good place to start.
If you don’t know how to start, below are 5 simple meditation practices to get you started, so you can live a joyful, delicious, and vibrant vegan lifestyle in no time!
1. Know that you ALREADY KNOW “how” to meditate.
You are probably thinking “I am here to learn the how, but you are telling me that I already know?” Well, yes … you do! Our reality reflects back what we think and believe, so if you keep saying “I don’t know this or that”, then WHATEVER YOU DESCRIBE becomes your reality.
The REAL REASON you couldn’t begin wasn’t that you didn’t know but because you were afraid of “doing something wrong.” Fear, doubts, and hesitations are the reasons why many people cannot even begin anything.
You can’t fail. There’s NOTHING to fail. All you need to do is give yourself time and space, close your eyes and start.
I recommend doing it BEFORE you go to sleep and right AFTER you wake up as our brains go into a different wave during these times that’s easier for us to connect with our subconscious mind!
AVOID falling asleep with your phone or reaching out to your phone first thing when you wake up.
Make this “Me Time” into a daily habit first. Give yourself 10 minutes each day. Once you begin, you’ll know what it’s all about.
2. Become an observer of your thoughts.
When you think about meditation, you may be picturing Tibetan monks sitting still on a rock in the Himalayas for hours. You tried for a minute, and you have all these random thoughts flooding in, and sitting still is the hardest thing! When you look at the clock, it’s only been 5 minutes since you began.
“I can never get there.” You think to yourself, and you “define” this as you are doing something wrong, you don’t know how to do it, or you can’t do it, and you immediately give up.
However, this is THE BEGINNING of meditation because you start to realize how many distracting thoughts you have! These are thoughts that run in the background when you go about with your life, and when you deliberately cease all movements, the noises (thoughts) suddenly become apparent. You realize most of these thoughts are contradictory and do NOT align with the vegan lifestyle you wish to live.
Check out our article on 8 Hidden Beliefs Why Vegan Diet isn’t Working (And How to Fix It) to learn more about how to shift your beliefs effortlessly to live your new vegan lifestyle.
What you have to do NOW is to become an observer of your own thoughts. If you caught yourself getting lost in a train of random thoughts or focusing on a specific circumstance too much, RELEASE it and watch it like a cloud floating by.
3. Choose one thing to give your attention to – something pleasant and be present for it.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to get into meditation or a meditative state of mind – Still meditation and moving meditation. Whichever you choose to do, it’s ALL about being present. Your focal point becomes your point of attraction. How you feel about where or what you give your attention creates an energetic strand. The more you focus on a specific feeling or thought, you draw more of it. Therefore, why not focusing on something pleasant?
If you find it difficult to sit with your thoughts, choose to focus on the sound of birds or any white noise in your immediate surroundings. The more frequently you deliberately choose your focus (practice), the easier it becomes.
You can also meditate when you are on the move, which basically means being present to everything you are doing without unconsciously diverting your attention. Yoga is a form of meditation. Running, washing dishes, driving, house cleaning … anything you can give your full attention to is a way of meditation.
You become present when you fully immerse yourself in a single action, whether it’s internal (still) or external (moving). When you are simply being – Be in the moment, you begin to disconnect yourself from unconscious thoughts that don’t serve you.
4. Connect with your body and pay attention to how it feels without judgment.
To change your lifestyle is to change your present reality and what your body is currently used to. We react to the change differently based on our former lifestyle, underlying thoughts, and beliefs. Since adopting a vegan lifestyle has so much to do with our physical body, it is important to connect with how our body feels to avoid potential health issues.
We tend to think that our mind is only our brain, but the truth is your entire body is your subconscious mind. Whatever you think, believe, see, hear, eat, drink, smell all become a part of your body’s memory (sinking into the subconscious), and when you introduce new habits that are different from before, “frictions” happen.
These frictions can feel uncomfortable. They show up in how you feel emotionally, which can potentially create an energetic block in your physical body. When you meditate, pay attention to the sound of your breaths and FEEL the energy moving through your body. If you feel stuckness in certain parts of your body, imagine and feel the energy moving through.
Remember that your subconscious mind (body) is NOT concerned with the truth or false of your feeling. Simply observe without judging or labeling it with any meaning.
“Your feelings create the pattern from which your world is fashioned, and a change of feeling is a change of pattern.”
Neville Goddard – Resurrection (1944)
5. Visualize & FEEL as if you ALREADY live a vibrant, delicious vegan lifestyle.
You might have heard of building a vision board or dream board – Visualization is a popular law of attraction or manifestation technique, and the technique in itself IS a form of meditation. If you are a visual person, then using visualization in your meditation might come naturally for you.
The purpose of visualization is to invoke certain sensations, feelings, or emotions within you, and the sensation becomes your frequency. Visualization is basically a snapshot of your thoughts. Your frequency is the combination of what you are thinking plus your general feelings about your desired outcome.
Whether it’s visualizing “all animals all living happily and freely” or seeing you and your family sitting together enjoy delicious vegan dinner – When we focus on the snapshot of our desired outcome, “we teach our body emotionally what your future would feel like ahead of the actual experience.” (Dr. Joe Dispenza)
How would you feel when you are already the person who is already living that vibrant vegan lifestyle?
“The elevated emotions of love, joy, gratitude, inspiration, compassion, and freedom could signal new genes to make healthy proteins affecting [y]our body’s structure and function.”
Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza
Even if you cannot feel a particular emotion coming with the vision at the beginning, that’s okay. Simply repeat the scenes over and over in your meditation. Eventually, you will start feeling it!
6. Feel into your feelings and redirect yourself to what feels good.
Give yourself time and space to slow down and be in touch with your body is essential. When we neglect our feelings instead of being conscious about them, we begin to suppress and the energy gets stuck in our bodies.
Being honest with how our physical body and emotional body feel allows us to Consciously Redirect ourselves to better feeling thoughts. Since our thoughts, emotions, and feelings feed off each other, our emotions and feelings become good indicators of our vibrations.
When discomfort arises, simply observe WITHOUT attaching any stories or thoughts to it. There’s also no need to fight, push, or run from them. Redirect yourself to the feelings of calmness, relief, relaxation, peace, joy, love, and satisfaction.
Meditation helps you stabilize your emotions, which means stabilizing your frequency and reclaim control in life, so you can move forward to the vegan lifestyle you desire to live more effectively.
7. Appreciation and Gratitude
If you are having a hard time making adjustments in your new vegan lifestyle or feeling challenged by friends and family who are skeptical about your lifestyle change, focus on WHAT IS ALREADY WORKING NOW.
Appreciation and gratitude powerful tools that can help you come back to your flow and zen, and they work wonders. It helps to shift your perspective, see your current circumstances with new eyes, and taps you into a state of blissfulness. The best part is you can do it anywhere and anytime.
“I am eating more vegetables and no more dairy.”
“I already threw away all animal products at my house, and that’s progress!”
“My partner and/or kids love the vegan dishes I tried cooking for the family tonight!”
etc. etc.
Appreciate the change you already made now helps build positive momentum. Choose to see how everything is already working out for you.
If you are unable to shift your view specifically, get off the subject and be thankful about general things in life. Maybe it’s having a sunny day, maybe it’s seeing a baby’s smile on the street, or maybe you got that deal on your favorite vegan cheese!
If you are feeling depressed or anxious that you are unable to see things differently, that you cannot find appreciation and gratitude in your present life, then start small. You still wake up each morning, you have a roof over you, and you have a phone that connects to the internet and led you to this article are already blessings!
What you observe in your external world is a reflection of your internal world. Offering appreciation and gratitude is a way to work “in” our vibration, return ourselves to our purest state of mind
Final Note
Meditation is a versatile tool. You don’t practice meditation to become good at meditation. You practice meditation to help you deepen your connection with your inner universe. As within, so without – Not only what we physically put into our bodies (become) matter, what we put into our mind also become matter. Become selective about what you let in – not just with food but also your thoughts and feelings is a practice.
To practice is to repeat, and persistence is the key. Practicing meditation is NOT about what you achieve but the journey. It’s about the joy of becoming the new you! To practice is to make an action habitual and to let the habit become natural to you.
Because you deserve a good feeling, because you deserve a new life, and because living in alignment and harmony within ourselves and with our surroundings brings us fulfillment.
