October’s Training Tuesday dove into the world of mindfulness and meditation. Local expert, Angela Gala, led participants through exercises and stories of personal triumph while on her mediation journey. During the one hour session, participants practiced breathing and meditation, in addition to a Q & A session.
About Angela
Angela Gala is an instructor at Charlotte Meditation in Myers Park. Additionally, she teaches courses on Laughter Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation to corporations, non-profits, universities and schools. Angela has been featured on The Today Show, as well as in The Charlotte Observer and Charlotte Business Journal. Her commitment to her community shines through with Youth Meditation, a non-profit that she co-founded, which teaches meditation to kids, teachers and parents.
“Mindfulness and mediation are sisters, but they’re not exactly the same thing,” says Angela. “Meditation is the way that we train our bodies to experience mindfulness and mindfulness are the intellectual practices we use.”
Her Journey to Mindfulness
Angela credits her mother for introducing her to mediation more than a decade ago. After seeing the calming effect it had on her once highly-anxious mother, she was curious to experience the same for herself.
“It was as if she had become the most joyful version of herself. The most relaxed … she had a glow about her,” Angela stated when discussing the change in her mom.
As a mom to young kids and a small business owner, this new way to potentially calm herself was appealing to Angela. As meditation was passed to Angela by her mom, Angela has incorporated these practices into her own home life and it is now part of her and her children’s daily life. Some benefits Angela has seen in her own life as a result of mindfulness practices are:
- Sleeping better
- Less reactive/bothered by day-to-day struggles
- Less paranoid/anxious
- Able to find more joy in everyday life
- Able to guide her family to a much more peaceful and joyful state
Meditation and Mindfulness in Schools
Angela shared with the group some observations from her time so far with her non-profit, Youth Meditation. While some students express negative emotions through anger, others do so through anxiety and panic attacks. Angela feels that whether kids are expressing their emotions through anger or anxiety, the reactions are usually the result of not knowing how to properly express their emotions. Teaching these practices in schools not only benefits the students themselves, but also the people that they choose to share it with, such as their parents and siblings.
“Meditation is a connection to yourself.”
Meditation and Mindfulness Practice
Angela started out with an exercise called Laughter Yoga that challenged participants to step out of their comfort zones and feel silly. Everyone in the group turned on their cameras and microphones and chanted “Ho ho, ha ha ha” while clapping along, prompting an eruption of giggles from the group as the exercise continued. She says that with exercises such as this, young children tend to enjoy them more than adults simply because adults are more cognizant of judgement even when it is self-inflicted.
“As we get a little older we realize everyone else has an opinion and they feel really free to lay it on us. So we stop doing things for our own enjoyment.”
Angela hopes that through this exercise her students will be able to become aware of the internal factors that hold them back due to fear of judgement. She describes stress as resistance to reality and says our ability to handle stress greatly impacts the quality of our lives. The key to better handling stress is acceptance of the way things are.
If anyone is interested in taking a Mindfulness Meditation class at Charlotte Meditation, click here
For more information on Angela’s non-profit, Youth Meditation, click here
