Meditation Revisited

I thought I'd use the space this time around, not to tell a story, but to talk a little more about meditation. My meditation practice continues to be a really interesting exploration for me. If you remember my last post about it (Watch the Monkeys), you know it was hugely challenging to add meditation to my regular practice. Since I know it is also a difficult practice for many other folks, I thought I'd give some ideas of what has helped me keep it going.

Watching your breath or using the "So-Hum" mantra are common ways suggested to start practicing. However, I actually found watching my breath gave me way too much time to sit and think between breaths, and then I would find myself changing my breathing rhythm to give me more time to think. Bad news for meditation. And for some reason, "so-hum" just doesn't work for me. I did find that the mantra "om namah shivaya" worked better for me, or just saying to myself, "breathe in....breathe out".

So far though my favorite methods don't use mantra or breathing. One old stand-by for me was to clearly visualize a particular scene–for me it is a red flag against a blue sky. I allow myself to see it really clearly, and I can usually even hear the metal connectors clanking against the flagpole, feel the wind on my face, and smell the dry dusty air. If I wandered, I would say to myself the words "red flag, blue sky" and pop back to my scene. When I use this method, I can feel myself instantly drop and relax.

Another method that works well for me is to listen very carefully, just open to any sounds around me, not labeling them, but just allowing them to move through me. For some reason, opening my hearing shuts down my thinking.

And last is a method that I thought sounded odd when I read about it. In this method, I simply smile from my whole physical being. When I use this method, I literally imagine the skin on my body smiling, all my organs smiling, everything smiling out at the world. Strangely enough, I easily drop into a meditative state and this particular method brings me a great deal of happiness. Go figure.

If you struggle with meditation, don't give up on it. It is profoundly rewarding.

Being a C Student

The very first day of my yoga teacher training, our lead instructor explained to us how the course was set up: how many hours of each type of class were required to meet National Yoga Alliance guidelines and how many hours of each type of class our training actually had. The course was designed with extra hours in it so that if we got sick or if something else came up, we had a little wiggle room and could still meet the requirements. Additionally, though, he suggested that maybe we should consider as our goal for the course being C students, that maybe we didn't really need to give 100% to the course but scale it down a bit and see what that looked like to study yoga seriously but still have a balanced life and enjoy the beach a little. Basically, he said, we should see what it's like to play hooky just a little and learn about yoga that way, too.

I was intrigued by the suggestion and my brain was spinning as I left class. How many classes exactly would I need to miss to be a C student? Did skipping a class count if I didn't go to the beach? What if I stayed home and worked on my sample lesson plan? Could I still be a C student in that case? And were some classes weighted heavier than others, so should I be careful about which ones I missed? It took me a while but I eventually realized that I was trying to get an A in being a C student.

The other night I was having a conversation with a friend about making changes in our lives, about what it takes to change. We both agreed that one of the odd requirements for change seems to be a softening and an acceptance, an ease, with our current condition. So, trying really hard often works against the change, while relaxing into the present moment allows us to move.

In one of my previous jobs, I worked with a child with a particular behavior we were trying to squelch. I tried everything, the parents tried everything, his therapists tried everything and nothing worked. So I started taking data on his behavior, its antecedents, my responses and the results. As I watched myself from this more objective vantage point, I realized that actually I wasn't trying everything. I had a very small list of responses that I would run through with ever greater levels of frustration before giving up in despair. Once I just stopped and looked at the situation I could immediately see new options that had never occurred to me. The behavior was gone within 2 weeks.

We put such high value on working for results, on trying. I think sometimes all of our trying is focused all in the wrong direction and we can't quite understand why we're not getting anywhere. Have you heard the analogy of life being like a river and we work so hard to cling to a rock in the middle? We think we're making progress, we think we're staying afloat. After all, we're working so damn hard, we MUST be getting somewhere, right? But if we just let go, the river will take us anywhere we need to go.

copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles

Not Getting Lost

I think of myself as someone who's absolutely hopeless with direction and orientation when left to my own devices. And yet I've been thinking back lately to a different sort of person than I remember being. This is a story I've often told for its comic effect, and I tell it well, but it's a story with deep roots and wide branches.

When I was in first grade I left class to go to the bathroom. Now this in itself was HUGE. I was horribly shy and humiliated by having to admit to bodily functions. My solution to this problem was to just hold it all day. However, on this particular day I left class and went to the bathroom. When I returned, the class was gone–the teacher, the students–everyone! Just gone. As an adult I can think of many ways to approach this problem: go looking for them, ask the principal, sit down and cry...all very reasonable choices. However, another aspect to my personality as a child was an inability to admit to not knowing something. This was not ego; this was fear. I believed that I inhabited a world of people who all somehow knew everything about everything. And everyone had this amazing knowledge except me. Now, I knew I was smart. Don't get me wrong. But it seemed to me that everyone somehow mysteriously held all this information that was required to get by in the world and I was missing something. I was defective. I thought I needed to hide this truth about myself so that I would look like everyone else. And eventually I figured that since I was a smart girl I'd learn everything I was missing by observation and deduction and in the meantime I just needed to fake it and look the part. No one would ever have to know my secret.

Given my beliefs and my rules for living, my choice was crystal clear. I left school and walked home.

Home was about 5 blocks away from school and both my parents worked. I really didn't have a clear picture of the magnitude of this decision until much later in life when I worked with first graders and saw how tiny they were. At the time, my only concerns were getting in trouble and having people find out my secret. I was absolutely sick with worry over this. I had no idea that it was actually the teacher and the school administration who could get in trouble for this. I found out later that the class had just gone next door to another classroom to watch a film and the teacher had forgotten about me.

Like I said I usually tell this as a funny anecdote about my childhood. But when I think about it, I'm filled with sorrow for the little girl who was so frightened, who allowed her fear to determine everything about her, and yet whose inner strength and courage shone through despite that and who, by succumbing to one fear, overcame another and found her way home.

copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles