Tiny Buddha

Tag: meditating

  • Meditation Simplified: How to Find Calm in Our Chaotic World

    Meditation Simplified: How to Find Calm in Our Chaotic World

    “Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    I completed my meditation teacher training in 2022 and continue to practice two to three times each day.

    I was initially skeptical of what this practice could possibly offer me. But, as someone who had been riddled with daily anxiety, periodic bouts of depression, and an exhausting inability to maintain focus that left me depleted energetically, I was keen to learn more and discover for myself what sort of support this practice could offer me.

    While the religious roots of the practice originated in the Hindu tradition and were later established in Buddhism, we now have a strong, scientifically based understanding, backed by evidence, that likely makes the practice a little more digestible to Western cultures. The key is to experiment with a few different approaches and go with what works for you.

    Let me explain. Meditation is a formal practice of mindfulness. It requires a person to intentionally direct their attention to a single point of focus in the present moment, on purpose, and without judgment.

    While there are some fantastic guided meditations and educational resources that you can download and use on Apps like Calm, Insight Timer, or One Giant Mind, I love simplicity and don’t like to overcomplicate things. Less is more.

    For me, when I’m meditating my preference is to simply focus on the only thing in my body that is both constant and noticeable—my breath. In and out. That’s it.

    Try this now. Just for one minute.

    Set a timer for one minute on your watch or phone.

    Close your eyes or lower your gaze to a steady point of focus in front of you.

    Release any tension in your body, from your head to your toes.

    Now notice your mind focusing on your breath going in, then out. Now let’s play a game with your mind: How long can you sustain this focus until you notice a thought enter your mind? Ten seconds? Three seconds? One?!

    Gently let the thought that has arisen go and return to noticing your breath. Try again. How long until the next thought pops into your mind? Let it go and return to observing. Continue in the same manner for one minute.

    Tricky, isn’t it?

    Now here’s the thing. Your mind wants to think—that’s its purpose. It thinks to help protect you and keep you safe. It needs to remind you about your dentist appointment tomorrow, or to decide what you should cook for dinner tonight and, therefore, which items you need to pick up at the supermarket. Or perhaps it wants you to unpack that meeting you had with your boss yesterday, and now you’re worrying about what he or she thinks about your productivity levels.

    Your mind wants to protect you by solving all the problems in the world (either real or imagined), whether you are in the middle of meditation or not! And this is the point where many beginners will say, “My mind won’t stop thinking—this is too hard. Meditation doesn’t work for me,” before they give up.

    But just like weight training and running are exercise to strengthen your muscles and increase your fitness levels, meditation is exercise to strengthen your brain. Just as you can’t run a marathon when you’ve tried running for ten minutes, you can’t strengthen your brain after meditating for ten minutes. And yes, you’re probably going to be all over the place when you start, in both cases!

    When you first begin a meditation practice, your mind will wander ALL. THE. TIME. I mean, it’s going to go everywhere—up, down, backward, forward, and around in circles. That’s good—it means it’s doing its job! But we just need to rein it in a little and keep it under our control, much like when out walking the dog, we pull on the leash when the dog starts to pull away.

    We only need our mind to do its job when we need it to do its job, and we can train it to work more efficiently and effectively for us than it may currently be.

    Now more than ever, we need to strengthen our brain. Human beings exist today with the most highly developed brain of any species on the planet. Unlike any other living creature, the human brain can produce and communicate ideas and engage in creativity and planning, which we have used to continually shape and evolve the world around us, making it what it is today.

    This unique capability has enabled us to build a world that is so technically advanced, scientists have discovered that in our fast-paced modern world, the brain is now continually exposed to 11,000,000 bits of sensory information per second, even though it has the capacity of processing only sixty bits of information per second.

    So, while civilization has progressed enormously, the human brain, which has barely changed in structure nor cognitive capacity in the last 500,000 years, now finds itself existing in a world where it is failing to function and serve us effectively in its efforts to adapt.

    In the highly stimulating world we live in today, we find ourselves attempting to spread our bandwidth of sixty bits of conscious attention across all incoming sensory information. What we now observe is that we are in a constant state of distraction as our brain endlessly alternates between the vast load of stimuli vying for our attention—commonly known as multi-tasking.

    When we engage in task switching, as it is known in the world of psychology, our stress levels increase, as do the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in our bloodstream. We have low self-control, and we’re fatigued as our conscious present moment awareness is reduced.

    In addition, we now observe that the amygdala, buried deep in the lymbic system, responsible for the processing of emotions and essential to the survival and protection of the human species, is being continuously triggered in response to incoming stimuli that we evaluate, attach meaning to (whether accurate or not), and interpret as being threatening. This could be an imposing deadline at work, or the examples of the dentist appointment, the shopping list, and the meeting with your boss mentioned earlier.

    With its connection to so many other parts of the brain, the amygdala organizes physiological responses that are subsequently felt throughout the physical body.

    This examination of society has revealed that the source of our progress as a species, our brain, is also the source of our unhappiness.

    While we have witnessed technological advances throughout history, we have also seen a surge in mental illness, including chronic stress, anxiety, and depression; an increased reliance on medication such as anti-depressants; and also a rise of a myriad of medical conditions from high blood pressure to migraines and eczema.

    The mind is like an instrument, but rather than the mind playing us, we must master it so we can use it to do what it has been so beautifully created to do. Serve us.

    We are constantly being played by our minds when we allow them to distract us with text and email notifications. Or when we allow it to tell us self-comparison stories about how our business will never measure up to our competitors, or that we’ll never be able to run a marathon, or that we can’t fly in a plane because the chances are too likely that it will crash.

    Meditation allows us the opportunity to stop and practice observing our thoughts. Each thought that enters our mind is like coming to a fork in a road.

    If we observe a negative thought, we can either choose to take it with us and head down one path, along which we will continue to encounter many other negative thoughts that we will attach to our first thought—thereby creating the story spiral that we all know too well; or we can let go, gently place that thought down in front of us, and carry on down another path that will allow us to gently return our focus to our breathing.

    The first option creates feelings such as tension, worry, stress, anxiety, or anger in the body, which are manifested physiologically as symptoms such as tight muscles, shallow breathing, or an increased heart rate. The second option allows us to maintain a state of homeostasis, a stable internal environment, and we feel calm, relaxed, and grounded.

    We can’t do much to change our wider world, so the question is, how can we change ourselves by changing our habits so we can adapt? How can we use meditation to achieve a state of calm centeredness in our fast-paced, adrenaline-inducing, chaotic world?

    There are three elements that make up a repetitive cycle that we need to understand and follow when practicing meditation.

    Notice, Accept, Redirect.

    When you have closed your eyes, relaxed your body, and drawn your attention to your breath, notice the following over the duration of a minute:

    Your ability to notice when your mind has wandered from observing your breath to a thought or chain of thoughts.

    Your ability to accept your thought or thoughts for what they are, and not cast judgment over them by labelling them as “good” or “bad.”

    Your ability to redirect your mind back to your point of focus (in my case, and for the purpose of this article, that’s my breath).

    You will find yourself moving through this cycle over and over and over again as your mind, well-practiced in running its own show, jumps from thought to thought to thought. This is normal—it’s doing a job that it has learned over years of conditioning.

    What we are trying to do is to help it relearn how to slow down and to maintain focus on just one thing at a time, and not allow it to unnecessarily trigger alarm bells of fear and panic, which we feel as unwanted sensations throughout our body.

    And just like any physical workout, you will have some experiences in meditation where you will notice you are calmer and more focused than in other experiences—just as I do most of the time when I meditate, particularly in the initial stages when my mind is trying to settle. (Think of the settling of your thoughts like tiny pieces of glitter that have been shaken up in a jar of water and have now been left to slowly settle at the bottom of the jar).

    But as tempting as it is, try not to label your experiences either during or at the end of your practice. Remember that we are also practicing non-judgment. And just as a negative judgment will likely create a build-up of resistance to what you are trying to achieve, a desire for things to be anything other than what they are creates tension—which is exactly the thing we are trying to ease. Just accept the experience for what it is—it’s a practice, and every practice brings you closer to your goal of creating awareness to help master your thoughts.

    As you develop both your awareness of thought and agency over your thoughts, in time you will begin to gradually apply these skills to your daily life. You may notice that you are able to sustain focus on a task, whether giving a presentation for work or having a conversation with someone, and be fully engaged in the present without your mind kicking into default mode where it wanders and starts thinking about unrelated events. (Ever noticed your mind thinking about your day at work when you’re prepping the veggies for dinner?)

    With an awareness of your thoughts you are able to create space between them, which will enable you to pick and choose which thoughts are useful and of benefit to you, and which are not. In addition, with consistent daily practice, you will experience improved emotional stability, reduced fatigue, and reduced physical ailments resulting from allostatic load or long-term stress.

    I have begun my practice with just thirty to forty minutes each day—once in the morning, once at lunchtime (if I can manage it), and once in the evening. You may be wondering where on earth you could possibly pull that time from. I’ve simply substituted a portion of the two to three hours a day when I would get lost in checking my phone and mindlessly scrolling, or watching random stuff on TV, with my practice.

    Identify the habits in your day that you consider unproductive—for example, scrolling, video games, and TV. Or perhaps you can save time on trips to the supermarket by creating a list of things to buy in advance, or allocate blocks of time when you will check your emails rather than constantly monitoring your inbox throughout the day.

    To help create and reinforce your new habit, identify set times throughout your day when you will meditate, just as you do with brushing your teeth.

    Interested and want additional tips on how to get cracking with your practice?

    • Start with small and achievable. Set yourself the goal of doing one minute at least in the morning and in the evening. Allow yourself to extend this time whenever you feel the urge or desire. No pressure.
    • Keep it simple and don’t overcomplicate things. Simply focus your attention on your breath—in and out. When your mind wanders, without judgment, gently bring your focus back to your breath, just like the analogy of the dog pulling on a leash.
    • I like to use my earplugs and add some gentle music. There are plenty of appropriate musical options and choices available on Spotify or YouTube.
    • Start in a comfortable position, with some type of support for your back. And if you find yourself falling asleep, no stress. Just let the session go and start again later in the day. (This could also potentially be an alert to check your sleep stores—are you getting enough rest? Our brain waves slow down when meditating so we remain alert and focused, but we don’t want them slowing down so much that we are falling asleep.)
    • If you get interrupted (the kids start making noise, someone comes to the door, or your phone starts ringing), again, no stress. Just let that session go too.
    • Alert people when you’re devoting time to your practice. I have taught the members of my family to let me be when I am meditating. Unless it’s an emergency and the house is burning down or someone’s arm is falling off, it can wait!

    It is important to remember that our worries are the stream of jumbled thoughts and stories that we tell ourselves about a given situation. With the awareness of thought that evolves from a consistent meditation practice, we empower ourselves to choose to let go, or to do as we please with these thoughts, thereby opening ourselves up to improved physical and emotional well-being.

  • How 10 Minutes of Daily Meditation Can Calm Your Mind and Relax Your Body

    How 10 Minutes of Daily Meditation Can Calm Your Mind and Relax Your Body

    “Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of these things and still be calm in your heart.” ~Unknown

    I began the morning with a meditation. After taking my dog out and brewing the coffee, I sat in my sunny living room, my little dog Frankie nestled beside me. I perched cross-legged, a blue pillow on my lap for warmth. I closed my eyes and began to focus on my breath.

    When ten minutes passed, I raised my hands in appreciation. “Thank you for this day. Thank you for my family and for our health. Give me strength, wisdom, and love.” Then I extended my hands forward, “So that I may give strength, wisdom, and love.” Finally, I stretched both arms out sideways, wiggling my fingers in my peripheral vision, a reminder to be fully aware. This is how I start every day.

    It wasn’t always this way. My older brother Marc tried to get me to meditate when I was fourteen. Although he was a patient teacher, I didn’t understand the point of the exercise.

    “Let’s sit together. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breath.”

    “Why do I have to do this?

    “Just sit, Lise. It’s good for you to learn. We will do it together.”

    “OK, but why?”

    Marc tried, but I resisted. I stopped meditating as soon as he went back to college.

    Years later, as part of my psychology training, I took classes which touted meditation as a stress-reducing technique. During the classes, there were demonstrations which I always enjoyed. I sat back, breathed deeply, and felt a deep flow of relaxation inside me. But, back home, I had no follow-through. Once the classes were over, so was my meditation.

    My breakthrough into daily meditation happened in 2020, one of the few good things that arose from that dreadful year. I was home, virtually every minute of my life. I didn’t have to dash from of the house, brave traffic, and arrive at the office by 9:00. Mornings stretched more languidly. It was easier to find those ten minutes to breathe every morning.

    Now I sit every day. I scan through my body, noting points of tension, areas of pain and pressure. Simple awareness of the tension shifts any pain, and my body settles.

    My mind, free from my constant to-do lists, drifts along, as if floating on the waves of a gentle sea. I hear the sounds of the house around me, the heater outside, working mightily to warm our home; Frankie the dog beside me, sighing. My stomach muscles unclench. I notice thoughts drifting in. I don’t attend to them. The thoughts fade away. Peace.

    Of course, that’s when meditation goes well. Sometimes every minute slogs on. My scalps itches. “I forgot to return that phone call,” I think, and my body tenses into high alert. “Oh no, I have to write that woman back!” My throat tightens. “What if that editor doesn’t like my submission?” My stomach jams into a knot. I cannot let these thoughts go. “I suck at meditation. Why can’t I just breathe? When will these ten minutes be over?”

    Sometimes meditation goes like this. It isn’t always peaceful, and it doesn’t always feel good. The key, I’m told, is to keep at it. Like any skill, the more we practice, the better we get at it. It is no accident that we say one “practices meditation.” I didn’t get decent at writing in one year either.

    If you are like the fourteen-year-old me, you might be asking, why meditate at all? There are so many benefits I don’t even know where to begin; here is a partial list. Meditation…

    • Soothes anxiety: When you learn to focus the mind, your thoughts don’t spin off into anxious “what-ifs,” spiraling into anxious ruminations.
    • Calms anger: Focusing on breathing calms the mind, stopping our internal tirades over people who have wronged us.
    • Improves the immune system: The body is not designed to be in a constant “fight or flight” mode. When we are tense, our immune system works poorly. When we relax, our immune system resumes its work.
    • Lowers blood pressure: Meditation is a proven technique for improving hypertension.
    • Manages emotional reactivity: This is a big one. It is easy for me, sensitive soul that I am, to feel hurt and wounded by other people. Meditation allows me to detach from the provocations of the moment, and to tap into inner peace. Once I have calmed myself, I find freedom from reacting emotionally. I can bring more thoughtfulness and wisdom to my relationships.

    Happily, the benefits of meditation extend past the ten minutes into the whole day.

    Now that I practice regularly, I notice when my shoulders leap to attention. With mindfulness, I can lower those shoulders down.

    I notice when my stomach tenses up, and I can breathe that tension away.

    I notice when my mind anxiously swirls around my to-do list and I can tell my mind to relax.

    The awareness that comes from a regular ten-minute mediation follows me throughout my day, helping me stay calmer and more serene.

    A while ago, I was getting ready for a radio interview, as part of my recent book promotion. I had an hour to spare, and I thought I’d make a quick phone call to an insurance company.

    This “quick” phone call dragged into an infuriating forty minutes. I was on hold, listening to inane music, on some incessant torture loop. Finally, the customer service rep came on, but we had with a terrible connection. I could barely hear her, as she was undoubtedly on another continent, and I couldn’t understand her either.

    After a brief exchange, which I barely fathomed, she declared she couldn’t help me. I got off the phone in disgust.

    “I’m so aggravated! I just wasted an hour on the phone with this stupid company and now I have an interview in fifteen minutes. What a colossal waste of time! I have this radio interview and I am so upset I can barely think!”

    My husband gazed at me. “Why don’t you do your meditation thing?”

    I glared at him. I really just wanted to righteously complain. But my husband was right; I was a wreck.

    I sat in my bedroom and closed my eyes, focusing on my breath. Immediately I sensed my body’s distress. My heart rate was elevated. I breathed rapidly. My shoulders were raised and my stomach was in spasm.

    “My god,” I thought. “My body is completely dysregulated, all from one stupid phone call.”

    Quietly, I focused. I felt my muscles relaxing and my heart rate slowing. I ended the meditation, feeling like a different woman, and started the interview with a smile on my face.

    That is the power of a regular ten-minute meditation practice.

    Let’s be clear. Everyone, no matter how busy, has ten minutes to spare. You can do this, and build yourself a calmer, more peaceful life, in a healthier body.

    One final tip: it is best to find a regular time of day for your meditation practice. Do your breathing every morning, or every bedtime, or every evening after work. Otherwise, you will keep putting it off until later. If you are like me, you might even put it off for forty years.

  • How Spending Time Alone Helped Me Overcome My Loneliness

    How Spending Time Alone Helped Me Overcome My Loneliness

    “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre

    I have spent most of my life surrounded by people, which is probably why I never realized I was lonely. For the majority of my adult life, the only quiet times I had to myself were the very start and very end of the day. Otherwise, my mind was inundated with chatter, notifications, and distractions.

    This constant noise let me mask the depths of my loneliness. I was bombarded with texts and distractions at all times, but I lacked deeper connections. As the years passed and I grew busier and busier, I found that I actually took steps to reduce my alone time. I’d watch TV until I fell asleep; I’d check my work emails first thing in the morning.

    Looking back, the situation was obvious—I was terrified of being alone with my own thoughts—but at the time, I just thought I was being productive, or simply didn’t like being bored.

    I didn’t realize my problem until my laptop suddenly broke. One chilly afternoon, when I was curled up on the sofa, ready for some New Girl, it unexpectedly powered off, and I was faced with my own reflection in the black screen. My phone was out of charge.

    Without distractions, work, or social media filling up my mind, I came to the abrupt realization that, despite all my activities and invites, I was deeply lonely. And that was making me profoundly miserable without even realizing it.

    That afternoon, I found out I was terrified of being alone. I looked at my relationship with myself and found it lacking.

    The prospect of being stuck in my own company was so scary to me that it jarred me into action. I’d gotten so good at filling my mind with chatter, I didn’t know who I was when I was alone. I was definitely one of the many Americans who spend more than five hours a day on their phones, according to a 2017 State of Mobile report—never really alone, after all. But I didn’t know how to start being less lonely.

    I didn’t want to only rely on others, so I made a plan to build my relationship with myself.

    I decided then to be mindful about my intentional alone time. First, I figured out when I had space to be with myself. Then, I identified the times I found it hardest to be alone. Finally, I picked out the obstacles.

    That left me with a solid three-point strategy: I had roughly three chunks of time during the day when I could have mindful alone time. My mornings and evenings were roughest for me. And my phone was the primary driver in stopping me from my goals.

    My plan was to have three sections of alone time: active alone time, time meditating, and time doing something that didn’t involve a screen. But before I did any of that, I had to remove the biggest obstacle: my phone.

    Even though it kept me connected to the world, it was holding me back from developing a deeper relationship with myself. I spotted that I used it most in the morning and the evening, so I invested in an old-fashioned alarm clock and decided on a strict no-screens-after-9:00pm rule.

    Normally, my morning started with me staring at my phone’s notifications. Instead, I got up and went for a fifteen-minute walk in my neighborhood. At first, it was boring—I was desperate for distraction. But the more I did it, the more I found myself capable of noticing birdsong, thinking about my plans for the day, unraveling the tangled feelings of the day prior, and looking forward to my first cup of coffee.

    I also worked in a five-minute meditation. At the time, meditation was new for me, so I figured that five minutes would be short enough for me to start getting into the habit. I quickly realized I needed to invest in an app to do guided meditation, which really helped me stay consistent and get actual benefits from it.

    Finally, I filled my evenings with reading and painting. Both of these activities are manual, which meant that I couldn’t check my phone while I was doing them. I was able to rediscover my love of books, and while I’m not very good at painting, the process of producing tangible art helped patch the gap in the evenings when I normally would reach for my phone.

    Research proves that loneliness is harmful for your physical and emotional well-being, but you don’t necessarily have to look outside yourself to cure your loneliness.

    All my habit changes pointed to one final conclusion: You can’t depend on others to feel better about yourself. Learning to be okay with being alone was crucial to my journey with myself. You can’t begin to work on real relationships with others until you have a solid relationship with yourself.

    For me, it took one crucial moment to bring home the reality of the situation. From there, I needed to actively carve out alone time—not just time without other people physically present, but time without distractions, notifications, phone calls, or emails.

    Time that belonged just to me.

    Finally, it did take tweaking. I tried to do it with my phone, but realized it was impossible, so I removed it. I originally tried to do a half-hour walk, but the time away from any devices stressed me out. When I began meditation, I thought I could do it without an app, but found I spiraled into negative thought patterns or fell asleep.

    My point is, I didn’t get it right on the first try. The most important thing for me was that moment of realization. From there, I was able to keep trying until I found methods that worked for me. The results were amazing in the long run. I have a better image of myself, and I’ve found my relationships with others have improved.

    Because I’m dedicated to feeling my feelings instead of drowning them out in a blur of notifications and escapes, overall, I’m more present and self-aware than I used to be, which helps keep me more self-accepting and centered. Nowadays, when things get rocky—and that does happen, as an unavoidable part of reality—I’m able to draw from my reserves and go with the flow.

    It was uncomfortable, it was difficult, it was frustrating, but it’s definitely been worth it.

  • How to Get All the Benefits of Meditation by Balancing

    How to Get All the Benefits of Meditation by Balancing

    “Use only that which works and take it from any place you can find it.” ~Bruce Lee

    Ding.

    The meditation timer chimes, and through a small miracle of willpower you managed to sit through an excruciating ten-minute meditation session.

    What you should feel is a sense of accomplishment. After all, you often skip it altogether.

    But instead you feel frustrated having just spent the entire session fidgeting, lost in fantasies that involve bragging to a friend about meditating today.

    Your “monkey mind” is strong. It’s like a whole jungle of monkeys in there.

    I went through the same thing back in 1998 when I first came to the cushion. My mind was like an overgrown garden full of angry racoons.

    Sitting on a pile of pillows, back aching, knees screaming, and mind racing, I would wonder, “Am I doing this right?” But the promise of freedom from my inner turmoil kept me coming back to the practice.

    And, even though I always felt a little better afterward (if for no other reason than I was doing something good for myself), it took months to see more tangible and lasting results.

    What I didn’t realize then was that I already knew how to meditate. I had been doing it for years as a young boy, but it didn’t look anything like the exotic (to me) methods I was trying to learn from my grandmother’s dusty old books.

    In fact, I had completely forgotten about the temporary state of calm, clarity, and focus that settled over me like a soothing balm on those dusty summer afternoons of my childhood.

    Now I meditate every day, but I’ve also returned to some of those earlier “practices” from my youth. Methods that you should know about too because I know how hard it is to adopt a consistent practice.

    Our Attraction to Distraction

    When it comes to focus, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

    Our world is a sea of distraction that you’ve been swimming in your whole life.

    Bombarded with ads, alerts, and alarms, you watch films that jump from one scene to the next with dizzying frequency. Texting causes your brain to slavishly listen for the next “ping.” One-click shopping allows you to gratify any urge almost as quickly as it arises.

    The mind must be trained to focus, and I think you’ll agree that we live in an environment engineered to do just the opposite.

    So don’t feel bad if it’s difficult to quiet your mind and maintain steady attention.

    Traditional meditation doesn’t come easily to anyone (no one I’ve met, at least). And even those who are completely sold on its many benefits often struggle to maintain a consistent practice. Yet they stay committed to the idea of it, hoping they’ll find their groove someday.

    If this sounds like you, don’t despair. There is an easier and fun way to experience that meditative state, one that doesn’t require the traditional butt-on-cushion approach.

    Don’t get me wrong, a formal meditation practice is wonderful and rewarding. It helps you cultivate consistency and discipline; connects you to a tradition; and lays the foundation for more advanced spiritual practices.

    But, while you’re working on that, wouldn’t it be great to start enjoying some of meditation’s benefits right away?

    A Balanced Approach

    As a boy I suffered with intense anxiety and emotional turmoil.

    Maybe it was my parents’ divorce that left me feeling scared and angry. Or possibly the bullying that terrorized my early years.

    I was weaker than the other kids and would become paralyzed with fear when they took turns choking and punching me in the schoolyard. Sometimes I would lie about not feeling well so I didn’t have to go to school.

    I hated that place.

    Paying attention wasn’t a struggle because I didn’t even try. I learned that it was futile. Instead, I stared out the window, daydreaming about running free outdoors.

    And when school let out that’s exactly what I did.

    Across the street from my house were the railroad tracks, the unofficial boundary line of a special world we called the “Pipeyard.”

    This piece of land was dotted with old warehouses and crisscrossed by dirt roads that provided access to the piles of steel pipes being stored until they could be sold to oil leases and other industries.

    There were big fat pipes you could climb inside, and skinny pipes that flexed when you walked out to the middle of them. Sometimes they were piled ten feet high, while other racks were almost empty, allowing the pipes to roll as you climbed on them.

    For an unattended eighties kid, it was the ultimate playground.

    But this dangerous place wasn’t just for fun, it was my sanctuary. A place where I could spend hours alone, balancing back and forth above the dusty weeds.

    And that’s when the magic happened.

    All of my worries and anxiety would disappear. On those narrow pipes there was no room for the nagging fears, the unhelpful inner dialogue, and vague uneasiness that haunted me.

    I would enter a kind of meditative trance, immersed in the sensory experience of my feet touching the surface of the pipe, the little wobbles in my legs, the sound of high-top sneakers scuffing against rusty steel.

    There was power in the simplicity of it.

    It helped that I was outdoors. Alone, quiet, and focused single-mindedly on the task at hand.

    The physicality got me out of my head and into the present moment. When a yoga teacher tells me to get grounded, I know exactly what that feels like.

    In balancing, every moment is novel.

    Step onto any elevated surface with the intent to balance, and your mind will immediately sharpen—a protective mechanism evolution hardwired into our nervous system.

    You could say it’s the ultimate meditation hack.

    With even a little time balancing, you’ll find how quickly you adapt. There is constant and immediate feedback telling you to relax, bend your knees, breathe… and focus.

    Do it for a little longer, and your mind becomes increasingly clear, perceptions heightened—creating a magical experience where time seems to slow down. The same things you experience after a great meditation session.

    The World Is Your Playground

    The beauty is that you don’t need anything (or to go anywhere) to get started.

    No need to endanger your health and safety like I did as a seven-year-old!

    Begin by standing on one leg. If that’s hard, stand near a wall or chair so you can catch yourself. Simply walking along a seam in the sidewalk or on a low curb will be a good starting challenge for many.

    If you connect with this practice, it’s easy to set up obstacles at home.

    I built a balance beam in my living room from an eight-foot-long pine beam purchased at The Home Depot. It cost less than $20, but even a simple 2” x 4” laid flat on the floor should keep you occupied for a while.

    Once you catch the balance bug, something clicks and you’ll see obstacles everywhere you go: Parking curbs, low walls, railings, fences, logs, rocks.

    Balancing is a blast. It adds an element of play, creativity, and adventure to your day. Remember the game “hot lava?” Whatever you do, don’t touch the ground!

    Here are a few things to keep in mind for better results.

    Don’t do anything reckless, please. Stay off the railroad tracks and bridge railings.

    Keep in mind your physical condition and abilities.

    Always test logs, rocks, or railings for strength and stability before you hop on. I’ve taken some spills, but I’m in good shape and know how to safely take a fall.

    Start with simple, small, and safe.

    This is about adding just enough challenge and complexity to focus the mind. And it doesn’t take much. Especially if you don’t have much experience balancing.

    Here are three tips to help you maintain or regain your balance:

    Breathe deeply into your abdomen by imagining you’re inflating a balloon in your gut with each inhalation. Inhale to fill the balloon, and as you exhale the balloon deflates.

    Relax (especially your upper body) as much as possible on each exhalation. When you do this, relax and bend your knees until you regain your composure.

    As you exhale and relax, drop your awareness down toward the object you’re balancing on. One of my qigong teachers would often say, “Where the mind goes, energy flows.”

    With these safety and balance pointers in mind, you will be poised to start benefiting from your new meditation practice.

    Meditation Is Back on the Menu

    The benefits of regular meditation are undeniable, and now you can drop into that state of mind many times a day.

    The more you do it, the better you get. Your nervous system becomes conditioned to enter an optimal state faster and more effectively with each session.

    Balance evokes the memory and energy of play, often becoming a game to see how long or far you can make it without falling.

    The cool thing?

    Your motivation to do a more traditional practice will likely increase.

    Why?

    Because you’ll be in the habit of dropping into a meditative state. We enjoy doing things we’re good at, and meditation is no different.

    Do your neck, back, and knees get sore during sitting practice?

    Not a problem with balancing. You can alternate between standing in one place or moving. We sit too much already, it’s better for us to spend more time in mindful movement.

    Think of balancing as a form of dynamic meditation practice, similar to Tai Chi, qigong, or yoga. For balancing to be more meditative, be quiet, move slowly, and bring your full awareness and attention to your body and breath.

    And finally, don’t forget that balance is a fundamental physical ability, one that declines with age.

    For you, that shouldn’t be a problem.

    Finding Stillness in Movement

    Meditation won’t always be so difficult.

    Sure, there are good and bad days, but at some point you get past the struggle and mostly enjoy it.

    Fortunately, there are easier ways to get most of the benefits that don’t require the superhuman discipline required to meditate consistently in today’s distracting world.

    Keep it fun, make it a game, and have some adventures.

    Stay safe out there.

  • Pain, Suffering, Joy, Love—Meditation Helps Me Experience It All

    Pain, Suffering, Joy, Love—Meditation Helps Me Experience It All

    “I know, things are getting tougher when I can’t get the top off the bottom of the barrel.” ~Jesse Michaels

    No one thought I was going to live to see twenty. Including me. In fact, I vividly remember telling my father that it would be miraculous if I saw twenty-five. It wasn’t emotional. It was simply a statement of fact. And yet here I am—mid-thirties, wife, daughter, one on the way, house, job, sense of purpose. What happened?

    I was one of those kids with questions. Big questions. “What does it all mean?” questions. I used to wonder what the point of all of this was. As young as seven and eight I remember lying in bed at night trying to understand the nature of the world. I would examine my family, my friends, my fears, my aspirations, looking for the thread that would unravel the existential knot.

    I loved to learn, and I was frequently drawn to the sciences in a way that I now see as continuing to look for answers to the big questions. When my friends were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they gave the common answers—policeman, fireman, professional athlete, etc. I think someone said “Batman” (it might have been me…).

    When it came to me, I would usually say, “paleontologist or astronomer.” (I later amended this to astrophysicist, but I hadn’t heard of it yet, and further, didn’t have the math skills.) It was clear to me that this world had a rhyme and a reason, and I wanted desperately to understand it. And then, at twelve, I discovered the answer.

    I became a drug addict and an alcoholic. It was beautiful. It did not give me any answers; it simply took away the questions. It shrunk my life to the “one-pointed mind” that I would rediscover later in another context.

    Addiction is an all-consuming activity. I compounded this problem by developing a number of co-occurring mental health problems—rage, depression, anxiety. A continuous cocktail of hopelessness and loss.

    This spiral was only arrested at the nick of time by the intervention of a loving family and a supportive community dedicated to service to those struggling with addiction.

    In the decade and a half since, I’ve watched many friends die, go to jail, disappear, and I have often wondered what the difference between them and me is.

    I have heard the “some have to die so others can live” theory and the “they just weren’t ready” platitude. I have heard the “at least they’re not struggling anymore” and the “God must have needed them” explanations. I reject these utterly.

    While these statements offer some degree of emotional and psychological comfort, I can’t imagine the reality of what they seem to imply: Some of us are “chosen” and some of us are not.

    I think about a friend of ours who died Christmas Eve morning from an overdose. I couldn’t conceive of going to his grief-stricken family and saying, “Bummer about your son, guess he wasn’t chosen.” I’m sure that would’ve helped lift their Christmas spirits every year.

    I have been to seventeen funerals in the past few years, all for people under thirty and most under twenty-five. Each time I have asked myself the same question: Why them and not me?

    I don’t pretend to have an answer. Furthermore, I don’t think there is an ANSWER (capital letters intentional). When I discovered my spiritual and meditative practice I was strongly drawn to the fact that these practices openly admitted they had no answers, only a means to investigate the questions.

    Meditation doesn’t give me any answers. It doesn’t allow me to sidestep grief or pain or rage. It doesn’t make good times better or bad times suck less. It doesn’t offer me a way to disassociate from my very real human experience. Although, for the record, I have tried to use meditation to do all of these things.

    So what difference does it make to me?

    The meditation practices that I employ bring me face to face with the pain and hurt and fear and rage. The pain of losing my friends; the hurt that no one could help them, not even me; the fear that I very well could fall victim to the same delusions; the rage at the utter injustice of why beautiful, talented men and women at the beginning of their lives are lost to us.

    In not trying to avoid the pain, I get to experience it and learn from it.

    I have repeated the negative and destructive patterns of my life not because of lack of will or lack of desire to change, but merely because I didn’t see them. I’ve looked away from my pain and my trauma, and so it’s had no choice but to reemerge over and over again.

    Sitting “on the cushion” has given me a stable and safe place from which to step into the sea of suffering, find the part of me that needs comfort and compassion, and try to bring it into the light.

    My practice has shown me that the answers we look for are whatever we want them to be. Meaning is not an inherent quality. Things happen, and we, as human beings, assign them meaning. Sometimes the meaning is that we “live for them” (the people who have past). Sometimes we “make it matter.”

    I once asked out a girl in one of my graduate school classes because I had just helped bury a seventeen-year-old kid who I realized would never get to ask a girl out again. So what the hell? I asked her, thinking maybe Danny would give me an assist from wherever he was. She still said no. I swear I could hear him laughing at me.

    Sometimes we use things to reinforce the negative story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world we live in. We create our own victimization and tell ourselves it’s not our fault. The world is terrible. I did this forever, reinforcing the story of my own victimhood until it almost killed me.

    Meditation helps me examine all of these storylines. It helps me embrace the things that make my life better and discard (almost always with assistance) the things that are detrimental to myself, that cause pain to those around me.

    It offers me the opportunity to “turn the volume down” on the rage and anxiety and depression. It brings me back within the bounds of experiencing these without them becoming the monsters they used to be.

    It also helps me accept reality as it is. Nothing is supposed to be happening. It’s just what is happening. Embrace it or fight it, it makes no difference. It will, has, and does happen exactly as it’s happening. I only need to adjust to conditions as they are, not how I would wish them to be, to be truly content. Meditation helps me see things closer to how they really are.

    I write this having attended a funeral last week for a twenty-three-year-old man who was my student and my friend. I am selfishly grateful in a strange way that his death was accidental and not related to any substance abuse. I’m not sure if that matters, but it feels different.

    I loved and will continue to love Josh. He was amazingly talented. I met him when he was fifteen and couldn’t play a note. By the end of our time together (I was a music teacher then) he could play four instruments well and a few poorly (harmonica is tough). He had interned at a local music festival during high school and eventually parlayed that into a full-time gig at one of our local venues. I am so proud of him.

    His service was packed. Friends, family—he touched so many lives. The greatest gift that my practice afforded me is that I was there. Really there. I cried. I laughed. I hugged people. I snuck one of my medallions into his casket when no one was looking. I thought he’d like that, both the medallion and the sneaking. (We share a bit of an anti-authority streak.)

    I didn’t run—from his death, from my feelings, or from the people around me. I hugged his dad and told him how much I adored his son and how grateful I was to have helped him along his journey. I stood with my friends and offered a shoulder when they needed it and received one when I did.

    I am so deeply moved to have been able to be there, without a buffer, to help send off my friend. I can be uncomfortable and be okay with being uncomfortable. Pain and sorrow are my teachers. So are joy and love. Meditation brings me to the place where I can experience all of it. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.

  • The Life-Changing Benefits of Two-Minute Meditations

    The Life-Changing Benefits of Two-Minute Meditations

    “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I felt everything, from my lower back pain flaring up to tightness in my jaw where I clinch and carry my stress. With my eyes still closed, I rolled my shoulders and repositioned the pillow under my butt. Five minutes had passed, and I had no idea how I would ever make it to forty.

    I opened my left eye to see if anyone around me was fidgeting as well and saw rows of people sitting in perfect, cross-legged lotus position with straight necks and relaxed jaws next to me.

    Our teacher, mindfulness author David Richo, sat in front, a relaxed calm floating around him like morning mist. I sighed, shut my eye again, and tried to concentrate on not concentrating so I could make it through the rest of the group meditation.

    Once I remembered that I’d forgotten to pick up my dry cleaning and that I still hadn’t called my best friend back, I relaxed a little more and tried to just “be.” I heard a rooster crowing in the wilderness above the Spirit Rock property, noticed it, and let it go. I re-recognized the back pain and let that go as well.

    Next, I heard what sounded like a cross between a snorting pig and an old rusty shed door opening up. The crackling sound lasted a couple of seconds before it caused my body to jerk and jolt both of my eyes open.

    I looked around confused. No one else moved, and I realized that the sound had come from my nasal passages. I had fallen asleep and snored on or around the twenty-seven-minute mark.

    Mortified, I clasped my hand to my mouth, shut my eyes tight, and prayed to disappear. So much negative talk flooded my brain, I had to stop it right down at, “You suck at this. Who are you trying to be here, Michelle?”

    I nervously picked up my notebook and reread what David had taught us that day. To be healthy, we must be kind and patient with ourselves.

    I took a deep breath and remembered that my meditation skills were new, and that forty minutes simply might have been too much to expect at that particular time in my life. Despite my attempts at self-compassion, my cheeks still burned with red embarrassment.

    I didn’t feel like trying again, so I sat quietly and continued to review my notes from Richo’s lecture while the rest of the group finished. I pined over the snore for the remainder of the afternoon and found it impossible to simply love myself for being human.

    In Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert writes about spending entire days struggling to meditate at an Ashram in India. I remember, when the book came out, reading a FAQs page on her website where she addressed questions and encouraged beginners not to start out at the ashram. Hours of meditation are difficult even for experienced meditators. Forty minutes is still hard for me.

    What I have found is that I am much more comfortable practicing small doses of meditation throughout a day, rather than forcing myself to plan extended stretches that make me so anxious, I end up avoiding the meditation all together. Even just two minutes can make a tremendous difference.

    Meditation and yoga force us to sit with ourselves. That means we sit with anything we are avoiding, as well as anything that is hurting us mentally and/or spiritually. I have a tendency to avoid feeling discomfort.

    So, sitting still is incredibly counter-intuitive for me and, I believe, many other people. By going easy on myself with how long I “should” sit, I am more likely to sit at all.

    Through practicing short meditations, I have seen the positives in my life grow and the negatives decrease.

    Self-Compassion 

    I’ve cultivated more self-compassion through meditation. The more I can get quiet and turn the Michelle who is a “human-doing” off, the gentler I am with myself. By giving myself the time to be still, even if it’s for two minutes, I am showing self-love and learning to become more comfortable in my skin. In that stillness, I am able to see where I am self-critical in a clearer way.

    For instance, in meditation, I often criticize myself for not being able to quiet my mind enough. I also look at what I didn’t accomplish that day rather than what I did. Inside of the practice, I am given the space to see these things so I can bring compassion to my critical mind and practice loving kindness instead.

    Acceptance of Discomfort

    When I can sit with painful feelings, I usually realize fairly quickly that the wolf at the door wasn’t as big as I thought. Meditation reminds me that I am more than capable of handling the thing I am dealing with.

    Some of the biggest discomfort I encounter is related to conflict with others. Even if the problem is small, like when I had to ask my guitar teacher to stop texting during our lesson last week, I still feel uncomfortable. My teacher kindly apologized, and once again I remembered that conflict is part of life. Meditation helps me to approach conflict with grace and to remind myself that the world isn’t going to end if someone reacts negatively when I speak up.

    Pronounced pain, like disagreements with family members, takes more time for me to process. The strength that’s grown out of facing that pain through meditation, has helped me to approach uncomfortable emotions with less fear.

    Compassion for Others

    Sometimes when I meditate, I send out positive energy toward people I’m not super fond of. I bring compassion for them into my body and out into the universe, and I feel less pissed off as a result. I wish for them the best of everything, and this often helps me to let go of the thing I was mad about in the first place.

    I don’t understand why this happens, but it does, and holding as little negative energy as possible eases tension and makes me gravitate toward the next meditation.

    Ability to Pause

    The more I meditate, the more I am able to pause in tough real-life situations where I might have reacted in the past.

    Road rage comes to mind here. Most of us have gotten mad at someone else’s driving skills at some point. What I think about now in the pause is that I don’t know what the other driver is going through or who else is in the car. I usually have no context as to why they are driving the way they are. Where I used to honk, now I can wait and calmly move around them.

    A yogi once told me, “Imagine that driver is a cow standing in the parking space you want. You would probably laugh and just find another space. When it’s a person, why do we suddenly rush to honk and yell?”

    Meditation simply makes me calmer. It is far from perfect, but it has given me more of a capacity to marinate before I respond to sticky situations.

    Increased Connection

    Meditating reminds me that I am a tiny part of an incredibly larger whole. My problems feel smaller when I can stop and remember that I am a grain of sand in a giant universe. The practice puts life, and my place in the world, into perspective.

    It really doesn’t take much to experience these benefits. Two minutes of meditation can make a huge difference. Focus on your breath. When you think of or hear something, notice it, and then get back to your breathing. See how you feel, and then, if you’re able, work your way up.

    You can sit quietly, or you can also listen to the myriad of guided meditations available through YouTube, iTunes, and many other platforms. Sometimes it helps in the beginning to listen to a nice soft voice telling you what to do.

    There are also meditations that include cool music with those bowl sounds as well. Just make sure the sounds aren’t so relaxing that they put you to sleep and then you snore in front of 200 people. Let it go, Michelle.

    I could be better and more consistent with meditating. I could also harness more self-compassion and less negative self-talk. I know that the more I meditate in short increments, the closer I will get to achieving these things.

  • 6 Ways Meditation Improves Your Life

    6 Ways Meditation Improves Your Life

    “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our hearts, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    Back in 2001, I was a freshman in college, and my saving grace from anxiety was a yoga class. More specifically, it was the most glorious of poses we call savasana that kept me sane.

    For those unfamiliar, savasana—or corpse pose—is a pose of surrender and noticing thoughts and sensations without judgment, much like meditation. (It’s the pose that looks like everyone is just lying around napping.)

    Back then, yoga and meditation were still mostly seen as these hippie things that flaky people do. There were certainly no yoga classes anywhere near my hometown in Connecticut, so I hadn’t had the chance to even try yoga before college. And as far as I knew, meditation was something that monks did on a mountain side.

    Without the three physical education credits my college required, it likely would have been years before I experienced the peace that is savasana.

    College was a very stressful time for me, as it is for most people. I still had no idea at this point that what I had been experiencing most of my life was anxiety. All I knew was that there was a bee’s nest living inside my chest, vibrating at an angry frequency that made my skin crawl.

    I rarely went to parties or out to bars (even though I had my handy fake ID, which was surprisingly easy to get back then). The fear of what the “much cooler” kids would think of me kept me in my dorm room watching Empire Records, Tommy Boy, and The Emperor’s New Groove on VHS over and over and over again (we didn’t have cable and YouTube wasn’t a thing yet).

    The worry of making my parents proud exhausted me. The fearful anticipation of being called on in class and not knowing the answer haunted me. The pressure to be at the top of every class crushed me under the weight of receiving a B.

    I didn’t know how to escape these feelings. I wasn’t given the tools. I wasn’t told what it was. I was raised in a “suck it up” kind of household and thought I just needed to “deal with it.”

    To distract myself from the internal pain, I started inflicting some externally. I’d gnaw at my skin with a dullish blade or dig my nails into my arms—not to break the skin, but to have a more tangible pain to focus on. One that I could control, one that I could look at and point to and know where it came from.

    I knew it wasn’t constructive or healthy, but I didn’t seem to have the words to talk about how I felt. I just knew that was the best idea I had at the time.

    That “solution” thankfully didn’t last for long. Soon I was introduced to the saving grace that was the last eight minutes of yoga class.

    The class was held on the hard, barely carpeted, cold concrete floor of my dorm building’s basement. It was right in the middle of the day, and the beautiful final pose of the class always made me feel fantastic. It became the reason I went and still is my favorite part.

    The peace would last anywhere from five to ten minutes. I was told to listen to the space between my breaths. I started to notice that there was this place I could go that didn’t have noise that would last for mere seconds, though it felt much longer.

    It was so tranquil. It sometimes felt like a rush of calming chemicals were being released in my brain. It was, for lack of a better term, amazeballs.

    Amazeballs
    a·maze·balls (əˈmāzbôlz)
    Adjective, informal
    Extremely good or impressive; amazing.

    In those moments there was no bee’s nest, no crawling skin, no need to escape. For a few minutes a day for three days a week, I felt peace.

    After a while I noticed that I was carrying that stillness with me through the rest of my day. It fueled me.

    But sometimes I thought I was doing it wrong because I couldn’t “shut my brain up.” I didn’t realize that I was essentially meditating. I didn’t truly know what I was learning through the process. I had no idea just how impactful it was. I only knew I felt great afterward.

    That is why I’m writing this post. Through years of meditation practice since those glorious days on the cold basement floor, I’ve learned how and why meditation was helping me and my anxiety, my confidence, and my overall mental health.

    These are the things I wish I knew meditation was doing for me earlier in life. Had I known these back then, I would have sought out a proper teacher much sooner and made it a daily practice instead of weekly, and learned to practice mindfulness off the cushion as well.

    1. Meditation teaches us the difference between ourselves and our thoughts.

    When we meditate, we learn to notice when a thought is happening, as well as when it has taken our attention and we’ve become absorbed in it. Once we recognize this, we bring our attention back to a point of focus.

    In learning meditation you will be introduced to the concept that you are not your thoughts. That they are not one in the same.

    This idea blew my mind when I was first heard it. “If I’m not my thoughts, then what am I??”

    Some call it our Wise Advocate. Others call it our Inner Self, or our Soul. I just call it Me.

    Think of your brain like another sensing organ. The eyes see, the ears hear, the brain thinks. You are not your thoughts as much as you are not the things you see.

    Our brains serve up ideas, not truths. A thought is merely a sentence constructed by the neurons in our brains. It’s up to us to decide if we believe the thought, or if we want to choose another one that feels more true to ourselves and our values.

    When we differentiate between the two—there’s me and there’s my thoughts—it gives us the power to choose. We are not subjected to or victims of the ideas we hear our brains serve up.

    When thoughts like “I suck” or “I can’t handle this” or “No one will like me” come to mind, these are not truths, these are ideas our brains came up with.

    It’s up to us to recognize that is a thought, not us. We can choose to believe it or choose to question it, reframe it, and find a thought that serves us better.

    Meditation is a practice that builds this skillset of noticing thought, recognizing it for what it is, and stepping back far enough from it to choose where to go next.

    2. Meditation teaches us how to let go of thoughts, and improves sleep.

    “My brain won’t shut up!!!” I told my doctor when I asked him for something to help me sleep.

    Meditation is like a workout for your brain. Except instead of picking up weights to build muscle, you’re putting down thoughts to build strength of mind.

    When we meditate, we notice when thoughts arise, then gently bring our awareness back. That awareness could be on the movement of your breath, the feel of your body, the sound of a mantra, or the visual of a mandala—an anchor to bring you back to the present moment.

    Then your mind will wander again. Then you bring it back. Then it wanders. Then you bring it back.

    It’s like doing reps at the gym. You’re building the “muscles” that bring your mind back to the present moment, giving you more control over the direction of your attention.

    And over time your ability to let go of thoughts—especially those that do not serve you—grows. This makes it easier to fall asleep, to get out of a funk, and to clear your mind and find more peaceful moments in life.

    Thoughts, worry, rumination, fear—these keep us up at night. These thought patterns became so habitual for me that it even felt impossible to let go daydreaming while I was trying to fall asleep.

    By learning to disengage from the thoughts spinning on the hamster wheel, we’re able to drift off to sleep.

    3. Meditation teaches us self-compassion and patience.

    Meditation is a pretty simple concept, but it isn’t always easy, especially when we are just starting out.

    Thoughts come and go all the time. That’s what our brains do—it’s one of it’s jobs, to give us thoughts. When we meditate we’re continually recognizing that we are thinking. “Ah, that’s a thought.”

    Learning to not attach ourselves to that thought takes practice. And practice takes time.

    Just like how you can’t force yourself to fall asleep, you can’t force yourself to ‘go deeper’ into meditation. You allow it to happen. It takes patience.

    And a lot of our anxiety comes from a place of impatience for the feeling to be over, for something in the future to make us happy.

    With practice, meditation teaches us acceptance.

    There may be times where you feel like you were thinking the whole time you’re meditating and you may find that frustrating, like you’re doing something wrong.

    Or you may have been meditating for some time and feel you “should” have progressed faster in your ability to not get attached to your thoughts so often.

    But, through the practice, we learn that we need to be kind to ourselves and accept that this is how our brain works. That there isn’t anything wrong with us.

    It takes self-compassion to accept the present moment for what it is, especially when the present moment isn’t to our liking.

    4. Meditation teaches us to be less judgmental.

    We’re constantly judging ourselves and others. We put labels like “good” or “bad” on people based on their actions or appearance.

    Judgment separates us from others. It’s isolating.

    And when we judge ourselves we do the same. We’re separating ourselves from others. We might feel like we’re bad because we’re not as pretty, or smart, or talented. This judgment puts us in another category, separate from others, which is a lonely place to be.

    Non-judgment is an important part of meditation, especially in mindfulness meditation.

    Mindfulness is paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment, without judgment. That means experiencing without labeling in judgement.

    Nothing is good or bad in this moment, it just is. A thought in and of itself isn’t good or bad. It’s just words or pictures. Just a fleeting idea. It is meaningless unless we choose to apply meaning to it.

    When we meditate we witness our thoughts. We observe our feelings. We experience our bodily sensations. But we don’t judge them.

    We approach them with curiosity. “Isn’t that interesting, I felt self-conscious when I noticed my stomach roll while sitting here.” Then back to the breath.

    5. Meditation teaches us to not run away from our feelings and become confident.

    During meditation, we’ll notice emotions coming up. Some are pleasant, some are not. But since we’re learning to not judge these things that come up, we’re also learning to allow them to happen.

    When we experience emotions that are unpleasant—fear, anger, sadness, irritation—we naturally want to avoid them, hide from them, or dull them with food, alcohol, drugs or TV.

    We gravitate toward comfort because comfort in our minds equates to security.

    But emotions aren’t things that can physically harm us. They can cause muscle tension, queasiness, heat, a sense of heaviness… but there is no physical harm involved in a single instance of an emotion.

    When we feel this afflictive emotion, we think “I don’t want to feel this, I shouldn’t feel this, it is bad to feel this.” And this resistance causes us more pain.

    It’s like getting hit with a second arrow. The first arrow caused the negative emotion. This happens and it is part of our lives—we are meant to experience a range of emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant.

    The second arrow, however, is avoidable. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. When we apply resistance to that negative feeling, instead of leaning in and allowing it to be and to flow through us, we cause ourselves more pain.

    We need to allow these feelings, to let them flow through and watch them pass. We witness how a thought or a feeling can’t harm us. It’s just passing by.

    This is such an empowering skill because it makes us feel like we can handle anything. It builds confidence, because confidence is simply the willingness to experience a negative emotion.

    6. Meditation can help you break habits and literally rewires your brain with new patterns.

    Did you know that your thoughts can shape your brain? Like, literally. What you think and what you experience shapes the connections in your brain.

    Thoughts and behaviors form neurological connections. If we do something often enough, or if our actions result in a desired outcome then the brain says, “Hey, let’s store this as a habit.” Like saving a computer program.

    Worry, rumination, anxiety, stress, even daydreaming—these all can become habits.

    The brain likes habits. It helps it work more efficiently. If you’ve done something in the past and it worked even a little, it will store that in a secure part of the brain for safe keeping.

    For example, rumination can be a habit. If in the past you worried about something and that felt like it was helpful to prepare for what is coming, the brain sees that as a successful pattern and voila! You have a habit of worry.

    In the future, your brain will play this program when something stressful arises, because that is easier and more efficient than coming up with a new idea from scratch.

    Just like it would be a lot of effort to have to re-learn how to drive every time you get into a car, you store those behaviors and automatically run that program once you sit in the driver’s seat.

    Meditation rewires your brain through the process of neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to form new connections (you can teach an old dog new tricks!). Habits start to break. And we start to gain more control over what we think, how we feel, and what we do.

    I think this is the coolest part about meditation. It eventually allows us to respond to situations in the way we choose instead of always automatically reacting with our old, afflictive patterns. It allows us to fully become the person we know we are, the person we want to be.

  • My Life Will Be My Message

    My Life Will Be My Message

    “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Gautama Buddha

    I have meditated for over half my life. It didn’t always look like meditation, and I didn’t always refer to it as such, but the driving need to introspectively understand my universe has been an ever-present presence,.

    For a long time, there was a certain guarded nature to my practice. It was intimate for me. I didn’t have words to explain what I was doing in a way that didn’t seem crazy. I didn’t realize that there were other people who were pursuing the same path. And so, I remained solitary.

    A series of fortunate events led me to spend the past fifteen years working in alternative education.

    I spent thirteen years working with adolescents living with the challenges of addiction. As a result, my practice began to take on new elements. Self-care became paramount, and I used the refuge of meditation to handle the day-to-day heartbreak.

    My introspection became a way to get a shore leave from the battle against addiction. And still, it was solitary.

    Then one of my coworkers, a wonderful mentor, took a course on mindfulness meditation and began using it with the students. Amazingly, many of them gravitated toward the practice and began to look forward to the time carved out during the day for relaxation and mindfulness.

    I stood on the outside, wanting to participate in a more active way but still feeling a sense of almost shame of the weirdness, the apartness that I had unconsciously associated with my meditation practice. When my mentor left he took that time with him. I didn’t feel qualified to continue it. So we let it lapse. I didn’t even offer.

    Over the next few years my practice continued to deepen and take on a central role in my personal development. I began to talk more openly about my meditation with my colleagues at first, and then with a few students who I felt close to and thought might be receptive. I invited them to come sit with me during lunch.

    Our cafeteria was often an incredibly negative place for both the students and the staff. I thought I would offer an alternative to that. We had recently built a space for teaching yoga that was being woefully underused that fit my needs exactly.

    I wish there was a happy ending. That the students came by the cartload and blossomed, and that my colleagues rushed to my side to begin meditating as they saw the infinite benefits of the practice.

    Instead, my colleagues politely declined citing their own classroom needs or lunchtime responsibilities, and other than a few students who took me up on my offer a few times and then returned to their regular lunch, I found myself alone… again.

    Strangely enough, or perhaps not, what seemed like defeat bore fruit. My solitary lunch became my moments to reach for my own compassion and to try to find the humanity that at times seemed so lost in both those suffering from and those trying to aid people in addiction.

    I began to see that not my words, but my life had to be the message. If I truly believed in what I was doing, the way that I comported myself would be far more profound than discussing the effects that meditation had for me.

    So I began to talk openly about my practice without reserve whenever it was appropriate. When a student would come to me for advice I would invite them to sit with me while we talked.

    I began to try to remain still during my staff meeting instead of squirming and joking with the people next to me. I learned how to try to give my single-pointed attention to those who were with me more often. I began to talk less and listen more to my colleagues.

    I began to try to see the middle way in the frequently passionate meetings we would have after school, finding compromises instead of pushing for my point of view. Especially as those meetings took on an increasing layer of gravity and an almost frantic quality as our students began to fall victim to the opiate epidemic. One death after another, sometimes within weeks of each other. Beautiful young lives ended.

    I learned about holding grief and sharing pain. I learned about being present in the moment because the blatant reality that the next day was no longer guaranteed was ever present.

    I left that job after ten years, with a heavy heart, amidst what felt like an interminable sea of personal troubles that had prompted my decision to leave a community I had quite literally grown up in.

    When I reached my new employer the next school year I set up my desk. I put my singing bowl out and hung up my banner with a quote from HH the Dalai Lama. My new students started to ask me about them. I told them quite openly about what they were for and about my meditation practice.

    I asked a few of my colleagues if they would let me do a short meditation before they started their class, and for the first few months of the school year I took five or seven minutes to try to teach some of the most basic elements of meditation: relaxation, finding the breath, body position.

    Once again, most of the students weren’t particularly interested, and my colleagues quickly reclaimed their “time on learning” for more important things. But I persisted.

    My openness brought other colleagues from other grades to me, and we began to have a small community of teachers who not only all had a practice, but all shared the hidden shame and frustration of knowing the impact of meditation but not knowing how to implement it, or how to even discuss it with our students. We found each other.

    We began to talk about how to bring this into the classroom and into the school community. I began to offer a short twenty-five-minute class on meditation during a recess on Friday.

    I expected maybe three or four students. Those who seemed receptive to our conversations over the course of the year and who would frequently request that I return to leading meditation before class. Instead, I got eight. And to my surprise it was not the students I expected. I had made my own poor judgments. Most of the students at my door that first day were not even on my radar. Over the next few months they became some of my best students.

    I left that first class with a deep gratitude. The students were hungry for this. For a time and a place that was unscheduled, safe, and without threat, where they could simply be.

    I saw what I had always believed, that these practices were powerful, useful, and practical for anyone who was willing to try, even a little.

    I’ll never forget the first time I had a meeting that ran into that time, and one of my sixth graders stomped up to me and demanded to know where I had been and informed me that I owed them a meditation!

    This small class turned into a bigger and longer class. I got an official class period once a week and told the specialist coordinator not to cap the number thinking, once again, that I wouldn’t need to. On the first day there were seventeen that came. By the end there were nineteen. I had planned for eight.

    I learned about a different kind of at-risk student: High drive for success, high socioeconomic status, high expectations. The achiever. The over-scheduled. The listless and bored. It was incredible to me how infrequently these children got to be children.

    The first time one of them relaxed enough to fall asleep during a class I felt like I had achieved something important. They were safe, they were calm, they were able to relax and for a few minutes experience the solace of not being asked to do anything. To be allowed to just be.

    What is the point of all this? For me, it was the realization that if I wanted to make an impact on my students, my community, my world, it required the courage of truth. It required me to be exactly who I was.

    I have no illusions that my students came to me to learn meditation. The novelty of the experience wears off fairly quickly. They came to me to learn meditation because they saw how I lived.

    I own who I am. Waking up doesn’t make you less human. It makes you intensely human. Emotions bloom like flowers and then fade and die. I enjoy the flower. I let the flower go. I live openly and it draws the openness out of others.

    I don’t know if meditation will have a place in my students’ lives in the future. I do know that my life has gently jostled theirs in that they now know, consciously or otherwise, that there is someone in the world who cultivates peace and serene silence.

    One of my favorite students commented that he had never seen me upset for more than a few minutes. He was a deeply anxious child with tendencies toward obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD.

    Without my saying anything he remarked, “That’s because you meditate right?” “Every day.” I replied. He smiled. I smiled. We were present, together for a moment.

  • Being Busy Made Me Feel Important, But Now I Feel at Peace

    Being Busy Made Me Feel Important, But Now I Feel at Peace

    “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes a day, unless you are too busy, then you should sit for an hour.” ~Ancient Zen proverb

    I used to think that life was about powering through things. I’d grab a latte, write my to-do list, and proudly cram as many things as possible into my day.

    At work, there was staff, payroll, invoices, customers, marketing, and the occasional cleaning of an office bathroom. At home, there was parenting, dinner, cleaning, homework, bedtime, laundry, and plans for the next day. When my eyes could no longer remain open, I’d fall into a restless night’s sleep accompanied by a busy mind and grinding teeth.

    I figured I had no choice. I had two kids, a husband, a landscape business, a school that wanted parent participation, a co-housing community with obligations, and an overachiever complex.

    There was plenty on my plate just being a mother of two with a family business. But what made matters worse was me going above and beyond. I was president of the school foundation, head chef for community meals, point person for committees, and in my free time, (when was that exactly?) an aspiring athlete training for triathlons. I wanted to be the woman who could do it all, and do it well.

    Being busy made me feel important. The more I juggled, the more praise and attention I got from others, fueling my sense of purpose. It fed my ego and gave me the adrenaline to keep going.

    Without being busy I thought my life would look insignificant. I might disappear like a beige house in a sea of endless tract homes, bland and provincial. So I filled every second of every day with a sense of purpose and a mission that never left room for rest. When no one needed me, I scrambled for something or someone to engage with. I’d repaint a bedroom or rework our website to keep from being unproductive.

    My busy-ness became an addiction. Another project complete, another shot of adrenaline. I felt good and sh*t was getting done!

    But similar to a person with anorexia who starves herself to the point of hospitalization, I was so focused on getting results that I didn’t realize the toll it was taking on me.

    I told my concerned parents I was fine, and that it all needed to happen. I rationalized that I had to do it all for the sake of my family. But underneath it, I was wearing out. My back hurt, my jaw ached, and according to my Ayurvedic practitioner, I’d worn down my adrenal glands, which would eventually lead to other health problems.

    When my mother died, my father took up Vipassana meditation at a Buddhist retreat center in Northern California. For Christmas, he paid for me to attend a three-day silent meditation retreat. I was touched by his gift, but nervous.

    The thought of sitting still for three days scared me. How would I exercise? What if I had to go to the bathroom during a meditation? What if I couldn’t do it?

    The first two days were the hardest. I did everything in my power to summon my patience, but sometimes I let my mind wander on purpose, counted the minutes until the bell rang, and allowed myself to take walks instead of “walking meditations.” I did what any person new to meditation might do: I bent the instructions to fit what I thought were my needs.

    But by the third day, something profound happened. I surrendered to the moment, and the stillness felt good. A calm washed over me like the warmth of a bath. What once felt tense relaxed, and I experienced a deep sense of peace. In the absence of doing, I felt like I was coming home.

    That New Year’s Eve I made a resolution to meditate every day for one year. Though I knew it was one more thing to add to my to-do list, it felt important. There would be no schedule, no method, no particular length of time, and no particular place. It was just me, sitting in observation of my breath, every day. It needed to be on my terms and without judgment or pressure, or it wouldn’t work.

    I noticed my life began to calm down that year. My back pain eased a bit and I craved more quiet. I was quick to notice my feelings and follow my intuition, and my urgency about things getting done was beginning to diminish. By the end of the year, I had only missed six days of meditating. What was once a good idea had become a part of my daily routine.

    It’s been over six years since that retreat, and the results of my almost-daily meditation practice have been noticeable, but my proclivity toward being over-productive remains.

    Like a recovering alcoholic, I have to talk myself out of falling back into its socially acceptable, compelling grip. My smartphone taunts me like a flask I carry in my purse, begging me to engage with more causes, more conversations, and more people. It never goes away; I just have to keep on top of it.

    But unlike alcoholism, being addicted to busy-ness is not a disease; it can be a simple choice. I know that if I choose to indulge myself by packing my schedule, kicking back too much coffee, and going full throttle, I will feel depleted after the race. I know that if I choose to over commit myself, I’m actually looking for praise.

    So, instead of getting down on myself, I now close my eyes and focus on my breath. Though I feel impatient and annoyed at first, eventually the familiar warm water soothes my active mind and I am reminded that there is no need to panic, no need to rush. I just need to be still and present, the place where my feelings of insecurity are replaced with feelings of deep connection and gratitude.

    It is there that I can relax and just be.

  • How I Lost 30 Pounds by Meditating (and All the Things I Gained)

    How I Lost 30 Pounds by Meditating (and All the Things I Gained)

    “Clear your mind. Your heart is trying to tell you something.” ~Unknown

    I recently lost thirty-plus pounds without trying or intending to. I remember excitedly sharing this news on social media one day, after stepping on a scale in my hotel room and being shocked. I don’t own a scale, so between the time when I had last weighed myself and this day, I’d lost over thirty pounds without being conscious of it.

    After my public announcement, people from all directions contacted me asking me questions. Everyone wanted to know how I did it and what could they do to lose weight too. My heart could feel the longing and pleading in their voices. I wanted to help, but what a precarious situation to find myself in! Weight loss has many layers to it, and it is completely individual to each person.

    Many were hoping to hear about what pill they could take, or a new diet-of-the-day to adopt, or hoping for a secret exercise program that they hadn’t yet tried. What was the next Beach Body, ketosis, paleo, juice cleanse, gluten-free, South Beach diet, Crossfit fad—that was actually going to work this time?

    My answer to this riddle was surprising to all and too unbelievable for most of my friends. But there was a handful that said they would consider giving it a try.

    I lost the weight because I’d started meditating. That is the concrete foundation of it all. Many felt baffled by my answer, but it was because of my meditation practice that I naturally made lifestyle changes that led me to lose extra weight I wasn’t even aware I was carrying around.

    I was in grad school at the time, and for homework my professor assigned (prescribed!) meditation. I secretly rolled my eyes when she did this and thought to myself, “I’ll blow this one off.”

    About a month later, at our next teacher/student review, she told me that she could tell I wasn’t doing the meditation homework. She followed her accusation up with, “I understand if you think you don’t need this. But how are you going to lead someone down this road who does need it if you haven’t walked this road yourself?”

    I was shook! How could she possibly tell I wasn’t doing the meditation homework? And the way she just called me out on it? Shamed. As an “A” student, I felt humiliated that she could tell I blew off the assignment. The fact that she knew I wasn’t meditating was enough to get me to do it.

    Right there, humbled down, I began.

    For twenty minutes a day, we were to clear our heads and focus on only our breath. It was excruciating! It was so much harder than I thought it was going to be, which is humorous considering the reason I blew it off in the beginning was because I thought I already knew how to do it.

    I couldn’t even sit still at first. I would wiggle all around. I’d give up and then start again. Over and over. For what seemed like forever I would get angry and think about how this wasn’t working, and I didn’t think I could do it, and maybe meditation was for better people than me. Finally, after struggling daily but keeping at it, a little over two weeks later, a shift happened.

    It was like when you are learning how to snowboard and every day it’s hard, and frustrating, and you spend most of your time falling down, but then with giant relief, you have that moment where you finally link your turns and suddenly you just get it. Everything clicks, and you feel like you are floating on a cloud. Or like the first time you learn how to ride your bike. Or, when you are surfing and struggling and getting beat up by the waves, and then finally you catch your first wave, and suddenly you’re gliding.

    It felt like that. It was a connection. It felt good!

    After that experience, when I tapped into a feeling of complete ease, peace, and surrender, I felt like I finally understood how powerful meditation can be if you keep at it. And then it became easier for me to tap into that feeling each time I practiced. Gradually, it got easier for me to maintain that feeling for longer amounts of time during the meditation.

    Eventually, I was able to maintain that feeling outside of the meditation. And this is when my life really began to change.

    This deeper connection to myself felt really good. This new sense of being gave me a fresh perspective, a renewed reverence for myself, which propelled me to make some changes in my lifestyle. It didn’t seem too difficult because it felt like the next natural step to take. I felt called to live in a new way.

    When you meditate, you grow your self-love muscle. It grows your self-respect. Self-respect means to honor and care for yourself. This new feeling and self-awareness motivates you to make different choices and do healthier activities with your mind, body and soul.

    Meditation trains you to listen to the voice inside of you that is always looking out for your highest good. When we get really good at listening to that voice, we are led to treat ourselves and others with greater care. It is not to be underestimated how life-changing this can be.

    The voice inside of me told me that I needed to start going to bed by 10pm. It urged me to stop eating certain foods. It told me to get my booty moving and do daily exercise outdoors. It nudged me to stop drinking alcohol.

    These were some of the changes I was called to make to take care of myself better, and as a natural byproduct I lost thirty-plus pounds in a matter of months. I watched my body morph into a body so fit that I couldn’t even recognize myself in pictures. All without consciously trying to lose weight. Meditation simply led me to love myself better, and my dream body was the result.

    I don’t know what habits you personally need to change for you to get a healthier, fitter body. But I do know the tool that will get you there. We all have different habits that keep us from our best self, but meditation will give you the clarity to weed out whatever it is that you need to change.

    Meditation clears away our head chatter—everything that vies for our attention and keeps us from being our best selves. Our heart, the voice of love, will always be in a battle with the mind, the voice of our ego. Meditation helps us quiet the ego so the heart can talk.

    When we approach weight loss as something we need to fight, obsessing over calories and punishing our bodies in workouts, it’s an uphill battle that’s difficult to win. An unhappy journey doesn’t lead to a happy destination. This method is exhausting. It doesn’t feel good, and it doesn’t make us feel good about ourselves.

    You don’t have any more time to waste struggling against yourself, disliking yourself, or being unhappy with yourself. It’s time to try a new approach. It’s time to love yourself into better health.

    When we choose to love ourselves more, we have a greater desire to treat ourselves better.

    When I check in with myself before I eat, and ask myself what is the nicest food I can give to my body right now, I make different choices. Before, mostly all of my food choices were emotionally based.

    Most of us don’t eat consciously; we eat emotionally, trying to stuff down feelings from the past or the present.

    When we allow our emotions to rule us in this way, we are ignoring our guidance system—our intuition, our inner wisdom—about what our body needs to function at its best.

    Self-betrayal is when we disregard what’s best for us, which only leads us to more unhappiness and triggered eating. This is a painful cycle to be in, and it comes with a cost. The emotional weight that we carry manifests itself as physical weight. This sets a foundation for stagnancy and disease.

    Meditation stabilizes emotions. It lifts you up out of old patterns of thinking. It can set you free. Free your mind and the rest will follow.

    It also helps you develop self-awareness so you’re less apt to unconsciously reach for comfort food when you’re feeling something uncomfortable. Instead, you’ll be able to ask yourself what inside you needs to be comforted. Then you’ll be able to confront your emotion instead of trying to stuff it down.

    Craving comfort is really a call for love. Craving sweets is a call for more sweetness in your life. Rather than eating for your sadness, you’ll be able to see this craving as an opportunity to give yourself what you are really craving—love.

    Then, over time, as you allow meditation to soothe your mind, your need for comfort dissipates. It helps you recognize that love doesn’t come from outside you; it comes from within you. When you understand this, you will no longer crave it. Love is an unlimited resource located inside you.

    If you’re interested in sustainable weight loss, meditation is your key, though it’s not a quick fix. Nothing worthwhile is. A daily meditation practice will naturally lead you toward some lifestyle changes that will unburden you and lighten your load—mentally, emotionally, and physically. It will take some practice before you get the hang of it, but stick with it. Remember, it took a while for me to get it too. If I can do it, anybody can.

    Now I know how my teacher could tell that I wasn’t doing the meditation homework. So much changes in you when you start meditating daily. I wasn’t connected to my inner guidance, and to those who are connected, it’s obvious when others are not.

    I was living, eating, speaking, and acting unconsciously. I was led by my feelings instead of being grounded in love. So much of the world operates this way, hence why we see so much chaos, drama, and disease.

    Looking back on this now, it astonishes me because I had no problem with the way I had been living, and I had no previous intention to change. I am so thankful I had a teacher who led me to meditation and held me accountable long enough for me to experience the benefits.

    Only you can know what is best for you, and your inner guidance—your heart, your intuition—knows the way. Meditation will help you hear that voice. Don’t delay—begin your best life today!

  • 21 Easy Ways to Create a Calm Mind (Without Meditating)

    21 Easy Ways to Create a Calm Mind (Without Meditating)

    “Learn to calm down the winds of your mind, and you will enjoy great inner peace.” ~Remez Sasson

    While juggling a full-time job and my writing, I found it easy to lose track of the days. Weekends ceased to exist, and my life ebbed and flowed between working and writing, the two constantly blurring into one another.

    I dragged myself from day to day without a moment’s rest in between. When I did rest, I’d feel guilty for taking a break from working on my dreams, and it didn’t take long for the guilt to turn into frustration.

    I wondered whether I’d ever reach my dream of writing full-time, if and when it would ever come.

    I intended on using every free moment I had from my job to write, without realizing the true consequences of what I was doing. And by constantly pushing myself forward, I never gave my mind the space it needed to shape and form my thoughts; I never allowed myself to simply be, which resulted in all kinds of mental blocks and frustrations that met my writing progress head-on.

    I was on my way to burnout, and fast, and I knew I needed to make a change. So I turned to meditation. It helped me become more mindful throughout the day and approach my writing from a new angle of clarity.

    As I began to incorporate mindfulness into my daily routine, I found it easier to give myself permission to relax and unwind from the pressures of my day job, rather than simply filling every moment with something more to do.

    Mindfulness Goes Beyond Meditation

    While meditation can help you become more attuned with your mind, you already possess all the tools you need to reap the benefits of a quiet, calm mind.

    By simply tuning into the small things in life, you can work your way towards a greater happiness and fulfillment in your own life. Here are twenty-one ways you can boost the quality of your mind without meditating.

    1. Create a mindfulness mantra.

    As Eckhart Tolle says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have.” Every morning I remind myself that my new life starts today, which helps me step into the now and connect more deeply with the present moment and separate myself from the worries of my mind.

    2. Remind yourself you’re not your thoughts.

    Whenever a negative thought occurs in your mind, simply identify it as a “thought” or “feeling” and move on. You’re not scorn or regret, and you’re not self-doubt or anger. You’re separate from your thoughts, and they’re separate from you, so why dwell on them?

    3. Accept that thoughts arise naturally.

    And if you can’t change them, then why bother trying to replace them with different and “better” thoughts? Don’t beat yourself up over something you can’t control, but don’t ignore them either; simply move past them and choose not to identify with them, even as they cloud your mind.

    4. Breathe.

    Take a long breath through your nose and breathe it out through your mouth. This can help to calm you and remind you that your thoughts are a small part of the infinitely vast world around you.

    5. Thank someone in any way you can.

    Even the small act of saying “thanks” to a cashier can reconnect us with the present moment, and it can also prevent us from becoming stuck in our own thoughts, which block us from enjoying life as it comes.

    6. Smile at a stranger.

    Smiling helps focus our attention outward to the people around us, and by reconnecting with this gratitude for others, we can connect more deeply to the present moment and remind ourselves to simply be.

    7. Go for a nature walk.

    Go for a walk and fade into the environment around you, and listen for sounds you’d otherwise have missed.

    8. Keep a daily gratitude habit.

    Keeping a gratitude journal helps pull us away from the stress of the day. It also forces us to appreciate life as it comes and find the good in every day.

    9. Leave your phone on silent all day.

    You can also turn off your phone’s notifications, as these can be distracting and pull you away from the present moment. Your messages will still be waiting for you there later when you’re ready to go through them.

    Turning your ringer off can also stop each disruption from clogging your mind and blocking you from the peace of mind you could be having throughout the day.

    10. Eat slowly.

    Focusing on the texture and the taste of what you eat can help remind you that while all feelings are temporary, it’s important to truly experience the moments as they come, rather than letting them pass you by.

    11. Drink tea.

    Tea can help calm your nerves and slow down your thoughts and connect you more to the present moment.

    12. Take a bath.

    Baths can help you relax by forcing you to take a step back from the bustle of the day, and they can be a great way to let your worries fall away as they fade into the heat of the water.

    13. Listen to instrumental music.

    It’s proven to boost your ability to focus, which can raise your quality of mind and help you relax when your thoughts won’t stop coming.

    14. Tackle one of the most stressful things on your to-do list.

    While it’s important to be mindful despite the demands of your day, don’t avoid completing a stressful task on your list if it’s giving you unneeded anxiety. If you need to finish your taxes, for example, but keep putting them off, then it might be useful to complete them to get rid of the stressful thoughts that come from procrastinating.

    15. Have a deep conversation with somebody you know.

    Fully focus on the other person and listen to what they have to say. By not simply waiting to say our piece, we can help pull ourselves out of our own heads and connect more deeply to the moment by showing appreciation to the people we talk with.

    16. Watch your favorite show.

    It’s important to take time out of our day to reward ourselves, and indulging in a simple pleasure like watching a show we like can help us step away from our worries and enjoy our free moments from the bustle of life.

    17. Write a haiku or any restrictive poem.

    This can challenge you to be creative in ways that free-form writing can’t do, and can help you recapture a moment in your life that was pleasant but fleeting.

    18. Do a word puzzle.

    Crosswords can help your mind be creative and can boost your intelligence, as well as the overall clarity of your thoughts. They can also provide a break from your daily routines, all while being fun to complete.

    19. Do the dishes.

    Doing the dishes can be a great way to take a break from life, and also be productive while you’re at it. Cleaning dishes can help you feel great, and it pulls you away from your current thoughts, which, in turn, can give your mind permission to relax and recharge from the stress of the day.

    20. Stare at a piece of art you love.

    Whether it’s the Mona Lisa, a poem you like, or a drawing that your spouse made, nothing is off the table here. Art is subjective, and it can help you feel and fully embody the moment by showing your appreciation for the work of others. (Just don’t think about why you like something, as that’s not important here).

    21. Pet a dog or cat.

    Feel the fur beneath your hands and the softness of their skin. Petting an animal can help release our tensions and connect us to the moment, and can pull us away from our thoughts.

    Sometimes we’re so busy focusing on ourselves that we forget to enjoy the moments as they come. We become trapped in the confines of the day-to-day and the span of our own goals, and we forget to enjoy the beauty of life and the little things.

    Being more mindful helped remind me that all good things come with time, and there’s no sense in working so hard if you don’t enjoy life as it comes. It helped me escape the pressures of my job and embrace my writing without allowing it to consume my life, and it helped remind me to enjoy life again by tapping into the power of the present moment.

    We All Have Time To Be Mindful

    Mindfulness doesn’t have to be time-consuming or all-encompassing. You can easily use any of these techniques throughout your day to calm your mind and keep yourself fixed in the present moment and free from your worries.

    Just don’t forget to stop once in a while and breathe it all in.

  • How Meditation Can Help Us Heal from Trauma, Pain, and Loss

    How Meditation Can Help Us Heal from Trauma, Pain, and Loss

    Man Meditating

    “In the midst of conscious suffering, there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    I still remember the first day I met her.

    I was running a bodywork clinic from home at the time, and she came to me one day for a treatment. Let’s call her Miranda.

    Miranda had something about her that I noticed immediately, a palpable sense of peace and clarity that shone through her eyes and radiated out from her very core.

    She seemed to be the most spiritually grounded person I had ever come across. I conveyed these impressions to her and asked if she had some sort of spiritual practice.

    Indeed she did; in fact, she was what I would call a hardcore meditator.

    For more than twenty years she had seated herself on her meditation cushion for three hours every morning from 4:00 to 7:00. I was incredibly impressed with her commitment to her practice, seeing as I had dabbled on and off in meditation for some years, but found it hard to commit to a regular habit.

    After chatting about her practice for a while, I asked her to share the biggest benefit that regular meditation brought into her life. I saw a hint of sadness appear in her eyes as she proceeded to tell me her tragic story.

    A few years earlier, her daughter, who was about eleven at the time, was diagnosed with a type of leukemia.

    The prognosis was not good, and as a last resort, her doctors wanted to try an aggressive treatment that on the one hand could save her life, or on the other, could potentially result in severe side effects, perhaps even death.

    It was up to Miranda and her husband to make the agonizing decision to go ahead with the treatment or not. Her daughter had been raised within a very healthy lifestyle, with mostly organic food and little exposure to chemicals, so Miranda felt worried about exposing her daughter to this intense therapy.

    Eventually, Miranda and her husband came to the difficult conclusion that without the treatment she may die anyway, and so decided to go ahead with it. Sadly, her daughter did pass away after the treatment.

    Miranda and her husband were overcome with unspeakable grief, but also a sense of guilt at having chosen a treatment that ultimately proved too much for her daughter’s body to bear.

    Of course, it was no one’s fault that she passed, just a sad consequence, but nevertheless they were both riddled with guilt.

    For some people, this kind of deep emotional trauma has the potential to destroy their lives forever.

    Some people break in this kind of crisis never to feel whole again. And while Miranda spent most of her days after her daughter’s death consumed with pain and loss, she had the fortitude to continue with her daily meditation practice.

    In those hours of stillness, she let herself surrender.

    She surrendered to her pain, she embraced her grief and guilt fully, riding the waves of her deep emotions until her consciousness was able to drop even deeper, to that still, silent place within that is ever-present, but often obscured by the constant river of thoughts and feelings.

    Those three hours of peace were Miranda’s lifeline and path to healing. They kept her sane, and they kept her strong for the rest of the family.

    Of course, Miranda will always experience a sense of loss and sadness after losing her precious daughter, so please don’t think I am implying that meditation takes away the emotional pain in our lives or helps us to escape our feelings or problems. It doesn’t. But it does help us to get in contact with that part of ourselves that is beyond them.

    Our lives are a series of changing experiences and external conditions that we deem “good” or “bad.” In order to avoid being at the mercy of this seeming chaos, it is essential that we understand the transient nature of our existence. As the Buddha famously said, “All of life is suffering.”

    In other words, all things we hold dear will eventually disappear.

    We look for happiness in our loved ones, our jobs, our possessions, our health and well-being, and our material wealth, but the great truth is that each of these things can and will be taken away from us eventually. Nothing is permanent in our world of form.

    For this reason many of the great spiritual seekers that walked the Earth searched for what is real, or permanent, in our existence.

    They discovered that beyond form, there is an awareness that we all possess that is spacious, calm, and still, and central to our true nature.

    When we learn to access and live from this place within us, we are not so easily thrown around by the changing external conditions of our lives. We are able to meet life’s challenges with a sense of grace rather than resistance.

    Miranda’s story and her palpable sense of peace left a lasting impression on me. I too wanted to search for the eternal, ever-present stillness that lies beneath the petty thoughts, feelings, and dramas of my conscious mind.

    Thanks to her inspiring dedication, I made meditation a regular part of my life also. While I know that loss and emotional pain is as much a part of my human life as joy and happiness is, I have within me now an anchor at the center of my being that keeps me steady throughout life’s rough waters.

    Man meditating image via Shutterstock

  • How Taking Quiet Time for Yourself Helps People Around You

    How Taking Quiet Time for Yourself Helps People Around You

    sitting

    “I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.” ~Hafiz of of Shiraz

    “What I wouldn’t give for a few moments of silence.”

    “I really should start meditating.”

    “I know it’s important to take breaks, but I just don’t have time.”

    We’ve all heard (or made) comments like these at some point. Implicit in these statements is the idea that resting in stillness is beneficial…for the individual.

    But what if such a practice of peace is more than that? What if it’s beneficial for others in your family, your community, in every life you touch?

    When I worked as a live-in caregiver for adults with intellectual disabilities at L’Arche, I often rose early to help my housemates with their morning routines. (L’Arche is a non-profit that creates homes wherein people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together in community.)

    I came to live there after college, and it was a wonderful challenge for an introvert like me to live and work with fourteen housemates for two years.

    When I wasn’t assigned to help my housemates with their morning routines, however, I had a ritual of my own. I’d pad down the staircase in slippers, my journal in hand. I’d assemble some breakfast, and then sit down in a living room chair that faced the house’s front windows.

    Morning light would warm my skin and my spirit too. I’d sip my coffee and stare silently, content to take it all in.

    My housemates would move through their routines around me; my morning oasis was, after all, right in the midst of a fourteen-person household. I would greet them with a smile, then duck my head and keep silent. (more…)

  • 8 Ways to Make Meditation Easy and Fun

    8 Ways to Make Meditation Easy and Fun

    “The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.” ~Robert M. Pirsig

    I know meditation is good for me. I know it can do wonders for my mind, body, and spirit. I deeply desire having a daily meditation practice. Yet I can go months without meditating. I’ll think randomly, “I should really meditate sometime,” but when it comes down to it, I don’t.

    My thing is this: I know meditating is good for me, and yet I don’t do it. I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way.

    I’ve read countless books on how to meditate. I have gone to so many meditation retreats and classes it’s not funny.

    I know the meditation routines. I know the old staring at a candle flame one. I know the stilling your mind thing. I know the nose-breathing-in-and-out thing. I know about making your own visualization.

    I also know that they feel like work. They feel like something I have to work at. It feels hard.

    I know I’m not lazy. If you’re like me, I know you’re not, either. It’s just that we haven’t found the right way of meditating for us yet.

    Here are some ways to make meditation less of a chore and more like a fun, doable thing for you. (more…)