How meditation has begun to change my life (and it can change yours too!)
Stillness. I have experienced stillness.
Ok….. I’m done…. Hope that was helpful!
Ok, Ok, Ok…perhaps I can elaborate a little?
My mind, like many who will be reading these words, feels like it is constantly on overdrive. My mind, has been described as a “scary place to be” and/or it “never stops working.” While there is a part of me that reveres my ever-active and intellectual brain, there is an equally opposing force that is EXHAUSTED by it! I have been longing for stillness, and never believed it was something that was an option for someone like me.
When I was a student intern, I studied meditation and facilitated a group for people diagnosed with cancer. I could hear the frustrations at times from participants in the efforts to quiet or settle their minds. I encouraged them to do so anyway. I listened, and gently pushed and praised them for just showing up. I reflected to all of them the great difficultly this simple task could be for so many….the undoing of what we have been taught to do our entire lives (multitasking). I was a gigantic FRAUD! I never practiced. Not even once.
Flash forward over a decade later, I practice regularly. The process was long in the making, and encouraged by many loving people around me….. and has been every single bit as difficult at times as what I used to tell members of the group I facilitated. I have that grocery list ever present in my head, the phone calls I need to make, the follow ups with clients or potential clients, the wish or dream list for my house, my wardrobe, or vacations….I have the hopes and wants for my children. It’s all up there in a special sort of MONKEY BRAIN GUMBO! But meditation has helped me to quiet the chatter….and settle…….like nothing else…it grounds me and helps me to see my next right decisions more clearly.
While I had hoped that I would experience Nirvana the very first time I sat down, with the first inhale, ok may be by the first exhale…that hasn’t been my experience as of yet. Levitating? Sure…bring it! But in the meantime, I will accept the calming nature of intentional breathe. Just like the vastness of the great artist Pablo Picasso, there is a meditation practice to appeal to anyone (yes, this is the point when you google Picasso and see for yourself the variance of his art work)…….whether you choose to take a Transcendental Meditation course, or try Calm or Headspace apps on your phone, or join a meditation group (if that is ever possible again, yeah thanks COVID-19!), or go to youtube and try a guided meditation of your choice (I highly recommend Mindful Movement, or Joh Kabat-Zin, or Jack Kornfield), or you try mantra meditation or breathe work….. all can get you to the same place….
Stillness.
When we remove the clutter, the monkey brain, the chaos inside…what emerges for you? What next right steps or plans come to the surface? What habits or patterns are you able to eliminate in your life? What emotions or feelings that perhaps were overwhelming to you in the past, calm?
Starting with a few moments of intentional breathe…. breathing in for a count of 4….holding for 7….and then exhaling for a count of 8 can do amazing things to calm your mind and body. Learning to trust my body and trust in myself has been the biggest life lesson, not learned in the countless undergraduate and post graduate classes I’ve taken, not in the myriad of continuing education for my licensure, not in a Ted Talk or book….. it has been in my intentional/mindful breathe and mediation that I have really started to learn who I am and who I am meant to be.
Would love for you to try! Give yourself permission to slow down and just SIT with yourself and watch your thoughts coming in/out akin to watching clouds go by. Start by doing 5 minutes a day….we all have 5 minutes, right? Comments and feedback is always appreciated and know that if you have been seeking, like me, if you get out of your own way, answers will show up for you given space and time to do so.
Peace…….
