Too Angry To Meditate- Using Music to Transmute Emotions/Energy.
But you should meditate when you're angry or upset though? It's meant to help right?
There are times when I am frantic, teary, & feel like I am losing control of my emotions. I think to myself I should meditate and it will help, but the calming meditation music just pisses me off, and the moment I shut my eyes and try to still my thoughts they just get louder and louder. I am so angry sometimes, at the world, at everyone, at being alive. I have felt since I was a child that I would do something worth while, I would help people and animals, I would have a positive impact somehow, but life just got in the way, and I was so pissed at that (I am slowly getting past this now).
Try and sit down and meditate when all this is swimming around in your head, if you can manage it then you nailed it. For me, and I suspect a lot of other people, you just hit a brick wall.
Music has always been especially emotive for me. I am a metal head, I love heavy music of all genres. I love all sorts of music really but this is what I mainly listen to. What I started to do was find the heaviest, loudest, shoutiest, craziest music I could enjoy, as I do have a threshold, and I would blast it as loud as I deemed fair for the time of day or night for my neighbours, and just rock the fuck out.
There's a saying by Victor Hugo which hits the nail right on the head for me – 'Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent'.
I head bang and dance around like a lunatic, try my best at screaming along, I can relate to the lyrics a lot of the time but generally I can relate much deeper to the music itself. It is incredibly difficult to put into words, but the music is angry, and I resonate with it, and some sort of release happens. This may not work for everyone, I think many feel this way through strenuous exercise too. Find your outlet, no matter how silly you think it seems, if it helps you let it out and let it go, then do it. Why do we always picture meditation as sitting in the lotus position, with some dreamy music playing, as the correct way we should do it? That form definitely has it's benefits, and I do meditate this way also, but I've realised there are numerous ways to meditate, and I have had some of the biggest shifts in my mindset through engrossing my self in music. No thoughts happen, I just feel, I feel it out until I am tired, then I sit down, and realise I feel a damn sight better than I did 30 minutes ago.
I mediate to metal music sometimes. It works for me.
Here is an example if you're feeling brave!
We are repeatedly told that we should quiet our minds, and be still. The thing is you cant quiet your mind until you let shit go. We are doing it backwards. Not everyone, I know many people will be able to find peace from chaos using the traditional approach, but if you're anything like me then your emotions can be so intense at times. When you're an 'empath' (I again am not overly keen on using that word, but it will have to do) that feels and absorbs things on the level I do, when you're taking in all this unwanted crap, you have got to find a way to let it out.
I had a conversation with another Steemian recently on one of my Empathy blogs, @rok-sivante, I highly reccomend you check out his page, he was talking about transmuting energy for other people & even places. 'Empaths' often do this unknowingly, and have no idea why we feel so shitty.
Who transmutes things for us? There are lots of things I am still learning, and how to recognise when I am working in this way for others and take actions to clean and ground my energies. But sometimes I need to move that energy out of my self, I have found my way of emptying my being from such strong, unwanted, often negative dense energy, I found my transmuting tool- metal music, and really just tuning in and feeling it all out. This applies to everyone too, everyone will feel extremes of their emotions at times and not know what the shit to do with it.
If i find my self in such a state, I have to have one of these sessions and only then can I sit down and meditate the way we all traditionally believe we should be, with some calming music, sitting still, and at this point I can calm my mind, still my thoughts, and this helps me re-balance.
I urge you to find your transmuting method too, no matter how ridiculous you feel, be it splashing paint at a canvas with all your might, beating the crap into a punch bag with a rage you did not think you had, whatever your thing is, don't try and hold such intensity in and mask over it with calmness, it has got to come out. We are getting more and more afraid of 'negative' emotions and are trying harder and harder to suppress them, feeling ashamed of them, like we are not a worthy sane person if we let our selves have an outburst like that. I just don't give a shit anymore about what other people may think about it. Only the last few months I have really been doing this intentionally, and it is helping stupendously when I am feeling total despair.
Yes ideally I would love to reach a point in my life where I do not react to things so strongly, where I can process these energies better. You've all heard about 'enlightened' people who can react to everything with love. I am not there yet, and I have to stop beating my self up about not being there yet.
I really hope this is helpful to someone somewhere. I wish I had read something along these lines years ago! I spent so much time and effort trying to direct my energy into 'thinking positive', and feeling ashamed at how overwhelmed I feel at times. Thinking positive may well work wonders for some people, but we all experience and perceive the world very differently from one another sometimes, and we will each have different needs for dealing with it, mentally, physically and spiritually.
There is not A Single correct way to do anything.
(I really need to tidy these links up, if anyone can link me to some simple instructions please do)
This is one of the amazing things about music, the vibrational frequencies hit the branium and can have some considerable effects on brain patterns, thought s and consciousness.
if we choose to engage in this method, we can find music which can suite almost every mood. it can match and enhance an emotion and help us express it. It can also help us shift our moods to something different. It really is up to us where we want to go :)
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Ahh thank you so much for that upvote! :D
I think music can affect every cell in the body, if you look into the way water reacts to vibration and we are essentially mainly water, i really do feel that it can hugely benefit the brain, mind and body too. I think everyone knows this to some level, as you said, we've all had goosebumps do that song, or that drop, listening to a song that made us cry. I've started using this much more purposefully instead of just thinking im reacting to to the music because i am feeling emotional, rather i am using the music to help me work through such emotions, instead of sitting there frustrating my self because i can't follow all these self help tips which we read about online, and it's working so well i wanted to put it into words and hopefully a few others will start using it for themselves too. :)
Everything in the universe is frequency, molecules vibrating at particular rates, interacting with one another , connected but separate, influencing each others existence.
Ah the infamous self help stuff.... im looking at writing an article about that soon. But basically we have bunch of "gurus" giving us a one size fits all program for completely individual people... its pretty messy out there when it comes to this field.
Truth is the answers we seek are within us, its up to us to uncover them. A real guru will help you find that within yourself, not tell you what you should do with yourself, then get you to buy their book and 20 CD motivational audio disks PLUS the DVD where they outline the 10 scientifically PROVEN techniques of "winners".... lolz.
Honestly its all about finding our own autonomy, congruence of self and shifting our lives toward whatever that may be. Sounds simple but is difficult to do.
well I deal with stress differently. my predominant negative emotion is sadness and when I am sad I listen to melancholic music to feel the full range of my emotion and then climax before returning to my normal state.
Everybody will deal with stress differently, and lots of different kinds of emotions fall under the umbrella of stress. You are having the same experience with music though, a different emotion with a different genre of music, but it really works doesn't it? I've been looking a lot into sound healing recently off the back of this, it's very fascinating how sound/vibration/music can affect us and actually help us.
Your post was manually selected by @edje and rewarded by @illuminati-inc (IINC) with the support of Curie. About IINC: here.
Oh amazing! Thank you so much @edje and to you @illuminati-inc. :D
I had this friend once who was insistent on muscle-testing everything for how it ranked on David R. Hawkins' Scale Of Consciousness - including, as a DJ, music...
I'm pretty sure Hawkins' himself often calibrated heavy metal music as below 200 (negative).
Yet, I've since evolved my perspective on the matter, and found it fascinating that such calibration might not be so static as that - and perhaps, there's some quantum-observation-effect at work by which the listener's consciousness and where they're at at a given time may have just as much of an effect on the calibration as the thing being calibrated itself...
i.e. heavy metal music.
Some people might calibrate it as negative.
Yet, as per your example here - the overall effect turns out to be rather positive, serving as a meditational aid.
Or even if the songs might be about rather dark evil shit, there's still some element of passion hidden in there somewhere, as no one would put in the time and energy to pick up instruments, practice for hours on end, coordinate with other players, and exert all the effort it takes to finally produce such a piece of music for consumption - that is all passion-driven, at some level, which is undoubtedly positive.
Or even anger itself... it's often viewed as negative, and might calibrate as negative... yet, there's only half the picture there. If digging deeper, there's always something positive to be found - perhaps some values of integrity, where boundaries might be disrespected or people taken advantage of, such that the anger is a fully-justified response alerting that something needs to shift in order to restore balance and return to those higher-vibing values of love, respect, etc.
Just some thoughts... 😊
Interesting thoughts indeed! I was not actually aware of this, so something else i want to go off and look into. But i do agree, what may produce a negative score in one person may not work the same way on another person. If i am feeling ok ish the normal meditation approach works for me, and in that moment in time metal music would not be helpful. But often when i am in moments of despair the calm music actually produces a negative response in me and just really grinds on me, and this is where i can process it using metal music, which a lot of the time is not singing about angry or evil things as people think. There is plenty of that, but some metal bands are singing about some really mind opening things. If you can bare it, as it may not be your cup of tea, or even just scan through some lyrics, the band Nevermore- wow, he writes about some super deep mind expanding stuff. He sings , not a screamer so easier on the ears.
Went off on a tangent there, but yea i think what you are saying applies to everything. We as humans invent ways to measure and scale things, but that is swayed by the person who invented that method too, just look at the double slit experiment as the foundation for how we measure and look at everything, it makes you question things.
I think it's the same with 'diet's, veganism has such a huge movement behind it, as does the ketogenic diet, the Mediterranean diet, even a strict carnivore diet, all of these can produce similar health benefits and each camp argue against one another, where as i think it mostly depends on how that diet fits with the individuals consciousness level at the time and whole plethora of other internal and external factors. Having been a vegetarian for 5 years now, trying a strictly carnivore diet would cause carnage on my body most likely because of the mental stressors for me personally this would induce.
Ive been all the way over to vegan too but for various reasons found it more stressful and decided that the proposed health benefits of it will most likely be detrimentally affected by the mental stress this was causing, added financial pressure- no matter what anyone says it's not cheap, cooking separate meals, eating shit food when we dine out, constantly denying my self things i greatly enjoy, ending up starving half the time because my work schedule just did not allow for food prep and you cant just go and grab any vegan food at hand, at least where i live, so i would just end up not eating at all.
So i've gone back to vegetarian and i am much more comfortable with that. Oh but dairy is bad for you etc etc, yes but so is stress, lack of social interaction, and working a 15 hour day on an empty stomach. So eh!
It all comes down to the individual is what ive settled on at the moment no matter what you are looking at or measuring.
P.S I was over the moon to see you had re-steemed my blog on your page. Thank you so much for doing that :D
Check out Hawkins’ book, “Power vs. Force,” as it’s a classic and the best intro to his work and that whole system.
Re: diets... yep. every body has different needs, which can also change day-to-day. The best nutritional regime is always a dynamic one which responds to the body’s dynamic needs. Perhaps meat is fine one day, all veg best the next, and even junk food may have its time and place to be enjoyed when the body can withstand it. Problem is, the majority of people have gotten so disconnected from their bodies, so as to not be able to register its signals and be aware. In any case, we’re all living and learning.
Re: the resteem...
T’was a great topic, which I felt there may be some of my followers who may benefit from the exposure to those perspectives - so why not... :-)
The book has been added to my wish list! Thanks!
Ah, what a coincidence... I was just listening to this band, as I read your post:
Great writing.
PS: I found you after @nonsowrites featured you in his entry for The Pay It Forward Contest
Oh i had no idea he did that! I have just been over to thank him, thanks for letting me know. Not familiar with this band, will check them out now :D
I like this band because it reminds me of the earliest albums of Theatre of Tragedy.
I do not understand the lyrics of the song and I am not into heavy metal but I understand everyone of us has our own way of dealing with our emotions. Regardless of how we do it, the important thing is that we do not step on others and make them as our releasing valve.
Regarding the links, the format is this:
The first one within the brackets will be the one that will be shown on your post. Those within the parenthesis is the link.
Like this one for your first image:
Image Source 1
I came across your article through @nonsowrites who featured it on his post as an entry to Pay It Forward Curation Contest. The contest is open to everyone so you are welcome to join.
Haha I don't think I understood the lyrics in this song until after the 20th time i heard it! Yes definitely everyone will have their own way to deal with things, but if you dont you can either take things out on someone else as you said, or if you're like me hold it all in until your head feel's like it's going to explode.
Ah thankyou so much for the help with the links, i will admit just looking at that I am still totally confused, but i will have a play around with my next blog with your instructions and see how i get on :)
I intend to get involved with the pay it forward contest, it's a really good idea.
The other thing about the image links is the fact that Google is not a source... It only indexes other sources! I recommend finding a truly free site for all images that aren't yours. Pixabay and other free sites are perfect for this. Then, following the code that macoolette so kindly provided works very well.
Ah thankyou so much for that! I will have a look at Pixabay! :)
Meditation is really over-rated.
Living in joy, releasing emotional attachments, focusing on the now moment, breathing consciously, are a 24/7 meditation.
Agreed!!
I do find benefit in 'traditional' meditiation for sure, i have had some amazing insights during them and when im in the right place it certainly put's me in the right mode for 'connection'.
But yes, there are sooo many other ways to meditate, and just starting to be mindful of those ways such as breathing consciously works. I think a lot of people think they do it wrong, i have heard so many people say 'i can't meditate' , or 'it just doesn't work for me'. I think essentially it all boils down to being present, for that set amount of time, be it moshing out to metal, following your breathing, punching a bag, that's all your focused on, feeling/doing it in it's entirety, and this is so beneficial.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
awwww thank you so much :D
I do the same thing!!! Crazy loud music and sometimes exercise ... but always with music! I like System of a Down when I'm feeling especially stressed :)
I'm sorry that I'm here past post payout, but I found your post because I'm one of the judges in the Pay it Forward Contest where @nonsowrites featured your post. You are more than welcome to join us next week with an entry of your own if you'd like :) All the rules can be found at the contest page :)
Ah I love some S.O.A.D myself. No worries about being past payout, of course the upvotes are needed but I much prefer the interaction and feedback.
Yes I need to sit down and read how to participate it's something i definitely want to take part in :)
Thankyou
Thanks for understanding :)
Please do! It's a great group of people there too!
Up before 🌄 (here) and supporting your post @myindigoinsight, due to the entry of it, by @trincowski, into our Pay It Forward Community's weekly curation contest.
I can relate to this. Growing up, our mother always had music playing in the background. For us, it was classical music. Although not musically inclined myself, I have always admire that skill / talent in others.
All the best to you, moving forward, as we all work together to add value to our Steem blockchain.
I have had many comments on here saying it's been entered for this and that, all projects i have no awareness of it's hard to keep up and understand who is who and who's doing what! haha! But it seems this post hit a chord with many who have put it forward in a few projects and i am super grateful to everyone who has nominated and popped over to show support :)
Thank-You