Stillness

Welcome to January 79th, the endless month of the year! January has a knack of dulling the “new year” glitter and resolve in a matter of days….at least for me. While I’m not a resolution type person, I read this thoughtful article in the New York Times about ReSOULutions. This happened around the same time I was wearing a cloak of depression that I couldn’t shed, no matter how hard I tried. I pulled out every tool in my toolbox and while these tools didn’t hurt and probably helped some, I wasn’t getting the relief I was seeking. A blessing and a curse of my personality (an Enneagram 1) is my tendency toward action, toward improvement. But humans sometimes exhaust our reserves, and when we get to that point, we have choices to make. 

That’s when I have to surrender. Usually the memo comes through my physical body, which makes my choice for me. The body doesn’t lie. Any kind of mental or emotional distress generally shows up as pain, illness, infection, fatigue, etc. Surrender isn’t giving up, it’s giving back. Giving back to health and wholeness. There is freedom in that, rather than loss. At least that’s how I’ve reframed it for myself.

I’m in the middle of reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. In a future blog post, I want to unpack that in more detail. Reading this book, along with having to surrender, and the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, inspired me to finally implement meditation. 

I have dabbled with meditation in the past and just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t commit. I told myself it is another tool that might work for me someday, but for now, I have other tools: my faith, talking with people I love and trust, yoga, exercising outside, nature, journaling, therapy, acupuncture (do I sound like a piece of a work?? I am!! LOL)

Meditation is for other more enlightened and disciplined people, I had told myself.

But when you’re at the end of your rope, surrendering, done trying, whatever…you think, what the hell? So I tried again. This time, I was intentional about creating space and time, knowing that failed attempts in the past were partly due to not prioritizing it as part of my day. I had to fold it into my routine, like brushing my teeth.

I decided to meditate first thing in the morning, and I hate mornings. (Case in point: I have had to train my early-morning-wake-up spouse over the years to not ask me “how are you doing?” when he first sees me, because I’m always doing bad before coffee!)

My meditation ritual looks like this: I wake up to my alarm clock and push the snooze (usually once or twice), take a bio break, drink some water. I lock the bedroom door. Lay out my yoga mat on my closet floor. Grab a pillow, blanket, cozy socks (my closet is cold.) Put in ear plugs. Set the timer on my phone (which is on the bathroom counter, adjacent to the closet.) Depending on how I feel, I set the timer for 5-10 minutes. Then I close both closet slider doors, and sit down. 

That’s the easy part.

Then all I do is breathe. I focus on how my body feels sitting on the cold floor, swathed in a blanket. I notice other bodily sensations. I watch and feel myself breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. My monkey mind inevitably starts swinging, but I direct myself back to my breath (some days more successfully than others.) And then the timer rings. At first it seemed like a long time, like I was waiting for the timer. But not anymore. Today I meditated for 15 minutes and when the timer went off, it surprised me.

What I am learning: The power to be still. There is actually movement in stillness at the soul/core of our energy. The importance of disassociating from my mind, even for a little while, is helpful. 

A thought is just a thought. I am not my thoughts. 

My life situation is not my life.

And you know what else I am learning? There is a distinct difference in how I go about my day. I feel calmer. I feel peace and less reactivity. I feel more okay.

I feel enough better to know that meditation is working for me and that is motivating me to do it almost every morning.

I have heard that the brain is an outstanding worker, but a terrible boss. Do you agree? 

My mind is very good at accomplishing practical things, like my job, household tasks, organizing, planning, problem solving, communicating, etc. 

But it is not the best at directing me. That direction has to come from within. And it’s up to me to put my brain on a “work break” everyday and let my inner self, my inner knowing, my soul – whatever you want to call it – reveal itself. In the stillness.