Is your mind a hamster running on a wheel?

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August 17, 2021

The key features of rajas are active, agitate, restless, and moving.

When I think of rajasic energy, I often think of a hamster running endlessly on a hamster wheel. Imagine that your mind is the hamster and your skull is the wheel. Oooo did you see what I did there? 

If you’re being bombarded by thoughts — day in and day out — you most likely feel restless. You’re unable to focus. All of this might lead to feeling anxious or stressed out. You crave copious amounts of activity. You’re attached to taking action just for action’s sake. And your mind still feels unclear. Emotionally you might experience competitiveness, egoism, arrogance, or jealousy.

For those of us going through infertility, one of the ways this shows up is the pure obsession with getting pregnant. We’ve written about the need to constantly do more with the hope you’ll eventually be pregnant (you can read that blog post here). The bottom line is that your need to do more creates a vicious monthly cycle of upping the ante with no guaranteed return on your investment. This is why we believe it’s important to observe your thoughts through the use of meditation and mindfulness. Doing so will mitigate the spinning hamster wheel in your mind thereby encouraging you to focus on what’s most important right now — remaining grounded and at ease. In return, your body will settle into a parasympathetic way of operating (rest and digest = reproductive function increases).

As we mentioned last week, we need all three gunas (tamas, rajas, and sattva), and we’re not meant to stay in one mode for too long. Here’s why — we need rajasic energy to get us out of a tamasic state or sloth-mode. We need tamasic energy to recover for a short period of time from the overactive rajas. Do you see where this is going?

Here’s👇 a quick guided meditation that encourages your thoughts to settle thereby allowing you to settle (ah!).

Next week, we go over sattva – the harmonious joyful energy that eludes many of us (most of the time).