Tag Archives: meditation

Not a Problem, an Opportunity

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We all get angry sometimes.  That’s just a natural part of being human (or maybe just of being).  And, I suspect – unless I’m the odd one out here – that we all have people who push our buttons and make us feel irritable and frustrated pretty much constantly.  You know the people – the ones you cannot maintain a nice nonverbal comportment with… the ones you are always wondering what their bad motivation is this time… the ones who seem to just do whatever they can to get in your way.  Uh huh… them.

Well, lately, pretty much all of my meditation has involved mantras/mindfulness regarding patience.  I know this is something I need and want more of in my life.  I need to be more patient with myself, and I need to be more patient with others.  It’s helping, some, but I’ve got a long long (did I mention it was long?) way to go to really be the person I want to be – to be the person who can maintain equanimity, even in the face of my own shortcomings or the shortcomings of others.  I want to be someone who doesn’t feel the need to question the motives of others – just accepts their actions.  I want to be the person who is less snarky, less hard on myself, less easy to anger, less easy to be hurt.  Wow.  It’s a task.

So, this week, I have been working on rethinking the way I frame my experience with my regular “button pushers.”  I know who they are, so that part is pretty easy.  Now I am trying to recondition my response to them – to not view their approach as a challenge, causing me to tense up my muscles and my mind.  Instead, I’m working on thinking of these people as an opportunity.  They are an opportunity to exercise patience and equanimity.  They are a chance to respond to someone else with enough peace that it seeps over into their being and creates more serenity and calm for them as well (and this is good, because the people who tend to wind me up are people who see almost everything and everyone as “against” them).  It’s a win-win.

It’s working pretty well so far, but it’s certainly not easy and requires continual reminders to myself.  But, if I can make it work, imagine how good it will be for my inner peace!

It’s Like Herding Cats

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Minds like to wander.  They do.  And they are hard to rein in, because even if you get the alpha mind headed in the right direction, suddenly you realize that the beta mind is off in the corner thinking about something completely different.  So, you head over and nip at its heels until it comes in line.  And… then you notice that now you are thinking HARD about what you are or are not thinking about and how short your attention span is and how hard it is to stop thinking – and you’ve completely forgotten to meditate or breathe.

I’ve been really trying to work on this lately during meditative yoga poses and during Savasana.  Sometimes, I feel like it’s working, and other times I get part way through and realize that I am so busy thinking about how hard I need to try not to think that I haven’t really even begun to meditate.  Or, I notice that my “back mind” has been sneaking around planning dinner or writing a blog post (ahem) while my “front mind” is trying to cooperate.

What to do, what to do?  Nothing.  And that’s the catch, isn’t it?  We aren’t very good at doing nothing.  Our minds aren’t very good at doing nothing.  Busy! Busy! Busy!  I don’t actually think it’s a lack of attention – I think it’s more that we cannot stop attending to all the things we have going on long enough to be in the moment.

So, here’s what I’m trying now – we’ll see if it works!  First, at this moment, concentrating on breathing is just not working for me.  My brain wants to be busier than that.  So, I need a mantra.  Sometimes it’s extremely simple, like “be here now.”  Sometimes it’s a little more complex (last week in yin it was “I release stress; I release anger;  I cultivate happiness; I cultivate peace”).  If the surroundings or my physical position are more distracting, like in yin poses that I find very uncomfortable and even painful if I think about the physical sensations too much, then I go for a more complex mantra.  For Savasana, I tend toward something simple.  Second, I made a very unfancy set of mala beads (in bracelet form for easy portability) to bring with me when I’m meditating or doing yin.  I gave it a trial run last week with a crochet row counting bracelet that I had recently made, and I liked it.  So, that’s another tactic I’m going to work with for now.  And last, I’m really really going to try to stop berating myself for thinking when I’m trying not to be thinking, because then the judging becomes its own thinking, which increases the self-critique and so on in an infinite cycle.

Now, if you’ve ever seen a dog actually try to herd cats – and I have – you know that it’s one thing to have a plan and a strategy and it’s quite another thing to actually end up with the cats where you want them.  And I’m pretty sure my dogs’ frustration strategy, which consists of running up and barking in the cat’s face, won’t really work with my thoughts, so I’ll have to do what I can.

Nameste,

L

Do you mind?

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The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. ~ R. D. Laing

In the summer, I took a day off from yoga class to cart and spread mulch in my flowerbeds.   When I next saw my yoga instructor, I commented about what I had been doing and his reply was “as long as you were doing it mindfully.”  I just said “yeah, sure” and went on with my day, not thinking much about it.

Over the last week, after some medical business, I’ve had to take it a little more easy with asanas.  So, I’ve tried to do more meditative work or other things that I can do with mindfulness, even crocheting.  But, this has encouraged me to think more about what it means to be mindful and how it benefits us.

Mindfulness refers to the act of focusing attention on the present moment and on the activities of that moment – whatever they may be.  Too often, we move through our day thinking very little about what we are doing.  We drive on auto-pilot (how often have you gotten to work and then realized you had no memory of the drive there?); we shower while considering what we will be doing at work; we eat while surfing the web shopping for holiday gifts.  In each of these moments, we are thinking not about where we are or what sensations we are experiencing in that moment, but thinking about the future or the past or someone or something else.  We ruminate on our emotions, our stresses, the slights we have experienced, until they fill the space of our day – even while we engage in the many activities that are living.  To be mindful instead, then, requires that we pay attention to what we are doing and feeling in that moment in time, and let the other things fall away.

This sounds easy, but it’s not.  Even in yoga class, I can easily “miss” the whole Savasana because I’m thinking about what I need to do with the rest of my day, or the things that happened before class or the day prior.  And I pretty rarely seem to truly taste what I’m eating with any degree of mindfulness.

Yet, if we can do it, if we can focus on what we are experiencing in the moment – all of the sensations that exist in every single second of our lives – think how much more it would 0pen up to us?  Perhaps mindfulness while eating would help us to fully experience the sensations of eating, and maybe to understand the ways in which we have been using food to cope with other emotions.  To be truly mindful of the moment when we sit with a loved one in silence or in conversation would help us see more clearly how we feel in the presence of that person and what he/she brings to our lives.  There is evidence that mindful meditations have other positive impacts on our stress levels, depression, sleep patterns, concentration, etc.

So, the next time someone asks “Do you mind?”, say “Yes!”