The Greatest Gift You Can Give the World is a Peaceful Mind

“the strongest mind wins”

When people around you are in an uproar, there has been a flood or school shooting and you are feeling heartsick with grief, when people close to you are anxious, try to not add to the chaos. Steady yourself. Come back into your body, breathe, and let yourself become still.

“The greatest gift you can give the world is a peaceful mind.” ~ my meditation teacher Swami Veda Bharati

He would sometimes say that whoever has the strongest mind field “wins” so to speak. That is why when we meditated with him, our minds would be more still and we could go deeper into meditation. The calm in his mind would help to settle ours.

Years later I interviewed Dr Gabor Maté and learned another way of understanding this — we are co-regulating in our nervous systems. Babies and children do not have the brain development to regulate their own nervous system. They need a stable adult to co-regulate with. When children don’t have this, their brain and nervous system is not as healthy and resilient. This is referred to as developmental trauma.

As adults, we have developed more capacity to regulate our own emotions and we have tools like breathing and grounding. Even with that, we are still highly affected by the people…