Updated February 25, 2014.
Watch this video of Barbara Allan, author of “Conquering Arthritis.” She talks about good meditation versus bad meditation. (4 mins)
At age 25 Barbara Allan became one of over 9.1 million people in the United States with an autoimmune-type arthritis. Her arthritis was triggered by bacterial dysentery caused by eating food tainted with a bacterium called Shigella while she was on vacation. The ‘reactive arthritis’ that she contracted was in many respects very similar to rheumatoid arthritis.
Usually this type of arthritis goes away within a month, but her case went on for years. Her symptoms were so extreme that she was confined to a mobile chair. Her doctors didn’t know what to do with her. Nothing they tried did much good.
Barbara’s illness led her to devote 11 years of her life to systematically researching and personally testing promising alternative therapies until she perfected the nine secrets that successfully cured her own difficult disease. Meditation was one of the techniques that contributed to her recovery.
By pursuing meditation for healing, Barbara was able to find incredible relief from reactive arthritis. Having experienced the life-changing health benefits of meditation, Barbara knows the value of practicing meditation for healing.
Here, she explains how people will sometimes judge their very best, most healing meditations as bad. As a result, they stop doing the practice. One reason is that meditation does not come easily to some. So, without an immediate positive result, they assume the meditation didn’t help. But curing a disease or overcoming any affliction through a technique like meditation is not a magic pill. It is a subtle life-changing process.
Meditation for Healing Takes Time
Barbara says:
There Is No Bad Meditation
So what I love is something that my meditation teacher Shinzen Young says which is, “The only bad meditation is the one that you didn’t do.”
It doesn’t really matter what happens when you’re on the cushion, how blissful, how uncomfortable, how bored, how it seems like nothing at all is happening, all of those are good if you’re showing up and you’re actually doing the meditation.
So no matter what has just happened, no matter what you feel like before you start, I encourage you on a regular basis to not preemptively take yourself away from this healing process because you don’t think that it’s working.
I actually challenge you to be so generous with yourself that you’re willing to do this for a period of time whether you’re seeing results or not that you can notice. And not to judge it until you have several weeks or a month or maybe even a year under your belt because that’s just the way it works.
Have you ever wondered if your meditation was a good meditation or a bad meditation? More importantly, have you tried meditation for healing a chronic pain or condition? We’d like to know. Please share your experience below. Thank you!
