Watering the Root
This breath, this moment, this predicament.
Lately I’ve been wishing I had gotten a brain scan ten years ago.
How I experience with the world is free of the constant anxiety that used to plague me, I want to know whether my brain looks different! Every bit of good news used to cause a cascade of worry two minutes after I found myself celebrating. Now when I receive good news, I savor it, and fold it into the other things that are changing around me.
Instead of fear, I live with the understanding that I am adaptable, kind, intelligent, and capable of drawing upon the dynamism around me. How different this knowingness is compared to the scared kitty that masqueraded as Cindy!
I didn’t get here by adding to the litany of perceived wrongs about myself or ignoring the many things that need healing in the world. I got here by watering the root.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi writes:
Problems are not solved on the level of problems. Analysing a problem to find its solution is like trying to restore freshness to a leaf by treating the leaf itself, whereas the solution lies in watering the root.
For years, so many of us tend the leaf. We analyze our behavior, revisit old patterns, rehearse conversations in our heads. We search for the insight that will finally shift something. For small things, this works. For larger patterns, we need to go beyond the surface. If our efforts keep failing and the leaf continues to wilt, it’s because the solution was never on the level of the leaf. We must go deeper.
The root of our life and living is consciousness. The root is how we know ourselves and relate to ourselves. The root is the nervous system, slowly releasing what it has accumulated — the stress, the old reactions, the calcified ways of seeing and self-talk. Vedic Meditation is one of the most reliable ways to water the root.
This practice asks little of us. Some effortlessness, twenty minutes, twice a day. Consistency is what matters. Whether a meditation is blissful or full of thoughts, deep or shallow, doesn’t change what it does. In each sit, the nervous system releases something and reconfigures its relationship to safety. Each sit, we release a little more of what has hardened. Each sit, we become — incrementally — someone who trusts themselves.
This is where the practice takes us. Not to a life without difficulty, or to contradictions that neatly resolve. But to a self that can meet life with openness. A self that can celebrate good news with warmth instead of fear. A self with enough spaciousness to extend that warmth outward — to the people around us, to the moment we’re in, to life as it unfolds. This breath, this moment, this predicament.
The present, it turns out, is another word for love.
I didn’t fix my anxiety. I watered the root of my awareness, one surrendering meditation at a time, and outgrew anxiety. If you have a practice, I hope you have been steady with it; if you learned from me, please reach out for support any time. If you don’t have a practice, see my schedule below.
Yours ever in meditation enthusiasms,
Cindy
P.S. For enthusiastic practitioners of Vedic Meditation who want to dive even deeper, click here to see my Advanced Knowledge course schedule for 2026.
Upcoming Events
Please note: I am on my annual Asia teaching tour. Pacific Northwest courses will resume April, 2026.
Web-Only
Group Meditation & Vedic Knowledge: alternate Wednesdays at 6 PM PT.
Upcoming Sessions: 3/11, 3/25.
For all practitioners of Vedic Meditation. Get in touch for link.
Taipei
Book a free Introductory Talk with me here!
Learn to Meditate: March 14 - 17. Ninety minutes each day. XinYi.
Portland
Book a free Introductory Talk with me here!
Learn to Meditate: April 27 - 30. Ninety Minutes each day. Mt. Tabor.
Want to share the restfulness of Vedic meditation with someone in your life? Send them this link. New students find me by word-of-mouth and your support means a lot.