by Heather K. Peake

I begin this month with an apology.

When we launched the 101 series back in February, I saw it as a no-brainer: a chance to explore some stuff I found interesting, quick to research, and easy to write.

Because the emphasis was on pure information rather than personal experience, I was automatically exempted from the burden of sharing my feelings with you readers. I was also spared facing my discomfort at being a straight woman writing to a gay audience (“who is she to tell me anything…?”). As the months have rolled on by, I’ve grown comfortable behind this shield of detachment.

This is wrong.

Whatever differences may exist in our lifestyles, we all want basically the same things: happy, healthy, productive lives. That’s where alternative practices come in – we turn to them when we perceive our normal way of doing things is no longer working. It’s a profoundly personal journey, but we can all learn from each other. My experience is mine alone, but in sharing it, I hope I can help you better decided how to use these methods, as you need them.

If I had to tell you just one thing about alternative therapies, it would be simply to go with your gut. (An inelegant phrase, but the best I can come up with) Intuition is a wonderful gift, one of our best mental tools. We just don’t use it enough. Instead, we look for outside guidance and validation, sloughing off our internal guidance as coincidence or hocus-pocus or plain old hooey.

This is the underpinning of the entire self-help industry. Do this and you’ll be happy. Eat this and you’ll be thin and happy. Take this supplement and you’ll be energetic…and happy. Even when these self-appointed gurus claim to be putting you in the driver’s seat, the implication is that they hold some secret knowledge you cannot grasp, and if you don’t pay attention – and pay money – they wont give it to you, leaving you miserable and alone.

Here’s a radical thought: you already know exactly what you need to be happy. Or thin. Or rich. You just need to learn how to listen to yourself.

Okay, so it isn’t “just” that simple. It requires you to build a sense of trust in yourself, to be able to find a quiet place in your head to listen to that internal voice, and to be prepared to explore, experiment, and go down a lot of blind alleys in the process.

For example: if you are a regular reader of the 101 series, what particular things have appealed to you? Has something jumped out at you without your really knowing why? Voila, intuition. Maybe that’s an alley worth going down. Instead of looking at each alternative therapy as an isolated practice, start looking at it as a smorgasbord. Pick and choose as you please.

As I write this, peppermint oil is bubbling away in my diffuser – a little aromatherapy that’s worked wonders on my beleaguered sinuses. I dabble with enough reflexology and acupressure to have made myself more aware of areas of tension in my body, reducing my migraines and incipient wrist pain. A recent attempt at yoga drew my attention to how out-of-shape I am. Nothing earth shattering, perhaps, but part of the process of experimentation. Sooner or later, I’ll hit on the right combination.

This morning, I had my first meditation practice in about a decade, and man, was it hard.

Illustration: A woman in a yoga-like pose for meditation.

Meditation is the act of thinking reflectively; but within this simple definition lives a wide range of practices. While not a religion in itself, meditation is part of almost every religion in the world. In the West, for instance, it tends to be a targeted practice intended to allow the practitioner to commune more directly with God. It’s usually so buried in the liturgy, we rarely see it as meditation, but it’s there.

Eastern meditation is a bit more free form. The goal is to reach a place of no thought, or where thoughts, emotions, and memories can float by without judgment. We become observers of our own mind. The theory is that in quieting the endless chatter of our brains, we open ourselves to peace, harmony, and joy. Because of its emphasis on breath control, which has a natural relaxation effect, it’s become a popular stress reduction technique in the US over the past 20 years.

The practice I’ve begun was developed by my beloved over many years. His feeling is that Eastern meditation is counterproductive; rather than suppressing emotions, we should be releasing them. By burning away layers of resistance that grow around negative emotions, we can feel them fully. Once that happens, we can surrender to them – not run from them or fight against them, but just accept them as part of existence. Oddly, this makes us feel better. The negative stuff loses the power to hurt, and we aren’t wasting energy struggling with it.

Will this work for me? Hard to say. I may get a lot out of it, or I may have to find something else. It’s an experiment.

For more information on the various traditions and forms of meditation, there are several good Web and old-fashioned print resources. Yahoo! Health offers a good listing in its Alternative Therapies section, and check out the Understanding Meditation page at observingyourmind.com or the Yahoo! Health page. You might also want to invest in a copy of Meditation for Dummies by Stephen Bodian.

I began with an apology and end with an invitation: if you’d like to share your experiences with alternative therapies, make any comments or suggestions about what you’ve read over the past few months, or just say hi, please feel free to contact me at hpeake@rocketmail.com