Listening to a lecture on Daoist meditation today through my school led by a well known daoist priest and chinese medicine practitioner. What's interesting is he says the type of meditation you do should be based on your 5 element personality.

In 5 elements, all people have all 5 of the energies (wood, fire, metal, water, earth) but just have different proportions. And these aren't always static, you have one underlying predominant one, but other energies can dominate at different times in life.

This is actually clearing up so much for me and it makes sense why some meditation methods like analytical vipassana (where you meditate on impermanence, co-dependent arising) and mahamudra are so natural to me and others (like shamatha) are so challenging.

He's divided meditation into 5 categories here. 1) awareness (seems similar to theravadan vipassana), 2) imagination (visualizations, deity yoga), 3) concentration (samatha), 4) insight (seems similar to vajrayana analytical vipassana), 5) emptiness (seems similar to mahamudra)

So he is saying that those who struggle with visualization or imagination meditative practices have less fire energy.

Interesting!

and surprise surprise! the two practices that come naturally to me are insight (metal energy) and mahamudra (water energy) and those are the two predominant energies in my constitution.

I am curious if you should pick the meditation type that is most difficult in order to cultivate the opposite quality, but he says if when you start to meditate you pick a technique that you really struggle with, you will most likely not be motivated to develop a regular practice

Really important for meditation teachers to understand the psychology of the beginner mind! Don't give beginners something that is too challenging, they will need to start with a practice that will give them some positive results early on so that they develop faith in meditation.

It's also important to know what you struggled with as a beginner might be different than what your student is. When teaching yin yoga, if a students struggles with poses that were always easy for me, I can't base my advice on my own experience, I have to research modifications.

5 element theory also helps foster a deep appreciation for the different ways humans can be in this world, all with diff strengths and weaknesses. It's beautiful, and we don't need to get stuck adoring some types and being adverse to others, we can cultivate an awe for it all.

Lastly I want to add, if a certain practice is just not working out for you... (especially if its causing you to feel disconnected, less tolerant of others, exacerbating trauma) it is okay to just accept that it is not working out and allow yourself to stop.

Vajrayana initially opened me up but then later started to exacerbate some issues within me in terms of becoming more judgemental of others and more rigid about what the "right" path looked like, I started to become bitter and feel more disconnected from humanity. so I stopped.

does that mean vajrayana is inherently bad? no. do my negative experiences invalidate someone else's positive experience with vajrayana practices? no. it's just not what I personally needed to be well at that time anymore.

I stepped away from buddhism and into nature-based mysticism and that helped me break down my feeling separate and disconnected. Having done that, I am returning back to the beginning of my path which was more based in postural yoga and chakra meditation with new eyes.

Know that we need different medicines for different times in our lives. Also know that we can step away from something where we feel stuck and always return to it again later after doing something else.