Meditate Like a Feminist: Do It for Pleasure
Meditation is a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s certainly been studied, and we all know that meditation has a lot of benefits. But what, exactly, are we talking about when we talk about meditation? Sitting for 11 hours in complete stillness fighting the desperate urge to move, as is often taught with Vipassana? Or the one where if you fall asleep someone will whack you with a stick of bamboo, as happens in some forms of Zen meditation? What about the mantra meditation where you say the same word over and over again in your mind like you’re chewing a stale stick of mental gum, as you see in Transcendental Meditation?
I’m sure devotees of those practices and more have excellent reasons to defend them, and if they work for you, that is wonderful. Meditation should work for you. These forms of meditation do not work for me. For me, it is non-negotiable that meditation should be pleasurable.
Yup. Pleasurable. Meditation should be pleasurable.
Most of the forms of meditation that we have with us today were created by and for men. Patriarchal societies tend to elevate masculinity and denigrate femininity (regardless of the gender of the person expressing those qualities). The “male” category has been seen as more rational, more able to access enlightenment, more able to transcend the body. People in the “female” category, with their monthly bleeding, their ability to swell and scream new human beings in this world seem so inescapably physical. Women have always been associated with the earth, the land, the fruits and flowers, the sensual realities of what Freud referred to as the “dark continent” of psychological mystery. Femaleness has always been related to the earthly plane, rather than the light, disembodied place where, it is so often assumed, God must reside.
Perhaps it’s true that people born in female bodies have a harder time escaping them. They are so present, so painful so much of the time. There is ovulation, sore breasts, occasionally debilitating monthly cramping, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding—and, if not those, the struggle of fertility treatments, miscarriage, contraception, abortion and/or menopause. There is a lot happening in a body with female parts.
But who said the body was not a place God could reside? Bodies take the world in, transform it into energy, and dispel waste. Bodies heal, a lot of the time, on their own. Some female bodies gestate and produce life. Patriarchal religions, it could be said, do an awful lot of stretching the imagination to see God in a man’s image.
The Hindu and Tantric goddess Kali is an example of someone ancient and powerful who is ready to behead the patriarchy.
It might seem strange to think of something so intimate and personal as meditation as being political. But one of the basic tenets of feminism is the idea that the personal is political. The way we experience our bodies and our minds, the way we look, and the way that we are taught to experience our sexuality—all these things are inextricably intertwined with the society we live in. The goal of traditional meditation is, generally, transcendence over the evil, suffering body, which leads to enlightenment, a state of superiority over everyone and everything. This is the very mood of patriarchy (not to mention colonialism).
What if, instead, meditation could be a space to rest and recover from the immense pressures and anxieties of this world? What if it were a practice of allowing ourselves to feel our feelings without judgment? What if it allowed us to notice the injustices of this world and find creative ways to fight against that? What if meditation were a pleasure?
In her book The Beauty Myth, feminist critic Naomi Wolf explores how advertising, especially within the beauty industry, teaches women to spend a ton of time and energy on how they look in order to be socially acceptable. She comments,
[…] ever since I had looked at what I saw as the negative effect on women’s minds of such mundane “tracking” activities as calorie counting, I had the sense that the reason so many tasks women are expected to do in society involve this kind of thinking (e.g. scanning, list making, judging themselves critically, “measuring up”) had something to do with the suppressive effect this kind of thinking has on other, bolder kinds of intellectual or emotional leaps.
I thought of this when I learned the mantra meditation where I was meant to fill my mind up with the same made-up word whispered in my ear by a guru so many times that I would stop thinking. The teacher would ask, “Did you feel a little bit of space between your thoughts?” And we would all nod obediently, surely whether or not we’d felt that space. I didn’t. And if I did, it was an exhausted space, tired from the exertion of repeating a word over and over again in my head. It wasn’t a space where I felt safe or good or relaxed. It didn’t fill me up. It made me feel like I was calorie counting. It felt less like a way to keep my thoughts quiet and more a way to keep me quiet.
Now, when I meditate, I meditate with my body. I follow my breath in. I notice what physical sensations and emotions are happening. I tap into the part of myself that loves and accepts me unconditionally. Part of my practice is cultivating that self.
We live in a society when people who are raised to be female are expected to be “human givers” rather than “human beings,” in the terminology of the Nagoski twins’ book Burnout. We are expected to care for everyone and everything else at the expense of our own desires, needs, hopes, dreams, and physical wellness. Meditation carves out a space that’s just for us. It doesn’t have to be about enlightenment or clearing your mind or even calming yourself down. It doesn’t have to be for anything, except, perhaps, for whatever it is you need at that moment.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I do not think you need a special chair or seat to meditate. I sit on a comfortable couch or lie down on my bed. I’ll take 5 minutes or 25, whatever I have time for. Sometimes I’m thinking. Sometimes I’m feeling. Sometimes I’m planning out my list of things to do for the day. And that’s fine. It doesn’t matter. It’s my time and I can do with it whatever I want. That’s the pleasure. And that, right there, is a radical act.
Yes. This is meditation. Fight me.