A woman sits down, closes her eyes, straightens her back and honestly tries to quiet her mind. Five minutes later she stands up with the feeling that nothing happened again, and the conclusion she draws is never in her favor: I must not have the discipline for this. That conclusion is almost always wrong, because the problem is the instrument. How women's meditation actually works and what has to happen inside it was explained by Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, musician, composer, author and facilitator of self-development trainings for women.
Why the mind will not stop on command
The mind today lives in an acceleration that did not exist before. Information moves so fast that a woman has no time to absorb it, and day after day she trades mental projections with the world instead of live feeling.
«We cannot stop thinking. We stop feeling. We stop feeling this flow of energy in our body,» says Peruquois.
That is where the background sense of being unsafe comes from, and no argument talks it away. The roots are cut, the body is left out of the conversation, and the mind is trying to solve a body problem with its own tools. It cannot, and discipline has nothing to do with it.
What women's meditation does to the body
Peruquois states the task in plain physical terms. «Women's meditation is different, it is to move out of the tissues of your body, to move out stress, to move out this tension, this pain, this fear, this thing we feel in our heart,» she says.
A woman's body is built to receive. It takes in signals from the world, other people's states, the anxiety of those close to her, and it usually does this below awareness. The pain lands in the heart and in the womb, because the womb is the center of life.
If that accumulated density never physically leaves the tissues, the channel of the body stays closed. The woman feels compressed and shut down, and then the mind runs at full power trying to compensate for what is happening lower down.
Four things without which it does not work
In Peruquois's approach there is room for four instruments at once, and all four matter.
Sound. The voice is the fastest way to shift what is stuck, because vibration travels through tissue.
Breath. A deep breath downward gives the sound its base and sets energy moving.
Movement. Energy held still stays where it is, and the tension does not leave.
Touch. «And also very important is touch, because if there is no touch, we wither,» says Peruquois. The heart does not register that it is being attended to when all the attention goes to the mind.
What the first step looks like
Peruquois describes the opening move simply. Place your palm directly on your heart, take a deep breath, and notice that something under your hand is physically vibrating.
«This is the first realization, this is the first trigger that says, this is my body, this is my vibration, this is my heart,» she says.
After that, pain may rise, or emotion, or tension. That is the point of the whole thing. If you keep going there and keep releasing, the body starts filling with different sensations, because space opens up.
Why talking it out solves a different problem
Women are good at talking to each other and often survive on it. You meet, you discuss, you feel lighter for an hour.
«We can sit in a cafe and try to solve this question through chatting, but it is a low-efficiency method,» says Peruquois. Conversation works at the level of the mind, while the disturbance sits in the body, where words do not reach.
That is why she built short practices with a physical exit. The first level runs about fifteen minutes, and that is deliberate: the thing a woman says most often is that she has no time at all.
The voice restores connection faster than anything else
«The voice helps a woman restore connection instantly,» says Peruquois. That is why there is so much sound in her practices.
What startles many women on first contact with their own voice is its size. It turns out to be bigger than she has allowed herself to be, and the first reaction is usually the same: is that really me. Yes, it is.
That is what the return is made of. From a woman tightened and shrunk down to a convenient size, back into the real one, who can take up as much room as she actually takes.
Women's meditation begins when the body gets its voice, breath, movement and touch back. The mind settles after that, on its own, without being talked into anything.
And if you want to try this kind of meditation from the very beginning, in a short and clear format, take Peruquois's course Meditation for Women, Level I, you will find it on the website under Courses.
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