Welcome to our new #MeMeditating series! Hear from our students as they share their real-life stories of how Vedic Meditation supported them during lockdown.
– May 2020 –
I’m Ursula.
I learned to meditate in July 2018.
I was in a very tough place emotionally. I was completely devastated and heartbroken from the end of a relationship. I had tried everything from psychotherapy, sound-baths, holistic retreats, shamanic healing and tapping, but I was still struggling.
Vedic Meditation has felt like the final piece in the jigsaw to solidly get me back on my emotional feet. My life is unrecognisable from how it was four years ago and I feel sure that since I started meditating, I’ve been happier, calmer and more productive.
I am in lockdown in South West London right now with my beloved cat Benny (who loves meditating with me). I’m lucky to be sharing my house with a good friend who is a fellow meditator. At first, I felt more anxious than I had done in many years! I fall between the cracks of people who are being helped by the government financially and my future feels very uncertain. I work as a freelance fashion editor, which means I work on set with big groups of people, so there is absolutely no chance of me being able to do any of my normal work at the moment. However, I realised that I needed to do something proactive to keep myself busy during the lockdown.
Last year, I trained to become a Naturopathic vegan chef and had been enjoying a little ‘side-hustle’, working sporadically as a chef on yoga retreats and private events. I’m pretty sure I was meditating when the idea popped into my mind to write a vegan, lockdown recipe book. It’s become my main focus. I’m producing the book via crowdfunding and donating a percentage of the proceeds to the Trussell Trust who support over 1200 food banks in the UK. Once the book’s finished (hopefully in the next couple of weeks) I will also use the funds to make some healthy vegan food to take to Kingston hospital where my (Covid 19 surviving) sister works as a doctor, to fuel her and her colleagues through their gruelling 13-hour shifts.
The process of writing and photographing a recipe book, on my own, during the lockdown has been quite a challenge as I am not a trained photographer or writer! Meditation’s giving me the energy, determination and discipline to get through the project. Also some of my best ideas arise when I meditate, so with every twenty minutes, I’m excited to see what my brain might come up with!
Find out more about Ursula’s recipe book here.