for beginners Mindfulness Meditation: When You Don't Have 10 Minutes and Can't Sit Still for 2
The last time I'd tried meditating, it gave me back aches so unbearable it took me decades to even think of trying again. Unless I'm reading or watching tv, sitting still is excruciating. And boring. There has to be a billion more beneficial or fun things I could be doing with my time, I decided. Then, a few years ago, I hit a low point in my life. Not rock bottom, not depression, but I wasn't happy. Persistently, I was doing what I could, I got into therapy, made some life changes, but in the end I still felt this low-level bad. Colse to this time I started hearing about all the benefits of meditating and about a meditation technique called Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction (Mbsr) in particular. It seemed like every day the news covered some study which had discovered some great thing that meditating was good for; it was effective in managing pain, anxiety, and depression; it was found to growth grey matter in the brain and neuroplasticity; and it increased the body's immune response. Although just the word "mindfulness" made my eyes roll, what got me was the idea of pain management. I wasn't in corporeal pain, but sometimes you can't do anyone about a bad spot you're in, and if meditating could help conduct corporeal pain, maybe it could help with dissatisfaction and any one of a whole of emotional aches and pains I was feeling. I also read that Mbsr was beneficial in alleviating hot flashes, and that year I was generating sufficient heat to get all of Manhattan straight through the winter.
Mindfulness Meditation: When You Don't Have 10 Minutes and Can't Sit Still for 2
When I types "Mbsr" into the Google hunt box, I learned that it was advanced by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts curative School. The curative school website also listed people Colse to the country who were trained to teach Mbsr to others. I found a man in New York City and signed up for eight sessions over eight weeks.
The question was I still hated the very idea of meditating and sitting still for extended periods of time. I had to made a decision and a commitment. I went with the same commitment I made twenty years ago when I signed up for a schedule to stop smoking after repeatedly failing to quit smoking on my own: I would do all I was told to do regardless if it sounded stupid, painful, time-consuming, whatever. (I haven't had a cigarette since.) When I signed up for meditation classes I made the same commitment. For eight weeks, I would do all the meditation instructor suggested. If in the end it didn't do anyone for me except give me back aches, I would have lost nothing, I told myself. But at least I would have the peace of mind from knowing I had given my all.
At the first session I learned we were imaginable to meditate every day. "Wait, what? Every day? Every single Day?" For a minimum of twenty minutes a day, the instructor recommended. "Just shoot me now" I thought. But the Mbsr instructor said we could meditate in any position we wanted, even laying down, so that is what I did the whole first month. The second month I started meditating in a sitting position. That was four years ago. I've been meditating every day since, although I do miss days from time to time, and sometimes I only meditate for ten minutes. Also, I did, in fact, get back aches at first, and to this day I occasionally get them - I'm just not a naturally relaxed man - but the back aches normally go away in a itsybitsy or two, and if they don't I turn my position. I just do it mindfully.
What does it mean to do something mindfully? You know how sometimes you're acting like a complete idiot you know you're acting like a complete idiot and yet you can't stop yourself? Mindfulness is like an enhanced, friendlier version of that. The part of yourself that can watch yourself is more thorough, and it watches with dispassion. You are aware that the behavior is idiotic, but your attentiveness is not in critique-mode. Instead, you're naturally observing all going on in that moment, what you're thinking, what you're feeling physically and emotionally -- think of it as a hi-definition version of awareness. If you're being hard on yourself about the behavior you're observing, i.e., "God, I am such a jerk, why am I always a jerk," the fact you're judging yourself in this way is added to the list of things you're observing. This is such an foremost point I want to spell it out: when you are being mindful, not being an idiot or changing your self in any way is not the point. The idea is to be aware of all that is happening in the occasion that you're observing. You may stop being an idiot in those moments, that sometimes happens, but it turns out that being present for anyone you are going through, good or bad, is just naturally better. The act of observing while simultaneously removing the stress of needing to fix or turn yourself all the time is a relief and quite soothing. Beside, life often throws you into situations you can't turn or do anyone about, and I've found it terribly beneficial to have someone else way of experiencing them.
For me, the hurdle was getting to that first class. The instructor once sent us a Goethe poem that I believe is helpful in this respect. "The occasion one assuredly commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would l have come his way. anyone you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." I also like this Eleanor Roosevelt quote, because I am often stopped by fear. "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every taste in which you categorically stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
I woke up this morning feeling good. The window by my desk was wide open, the air smelled of a recent rain and falling leaves, and the sound of cars going by in the length was roughly lulling. When I sat down at my desk to write this a cat was curled up next to my computer purring, and my coffee was wonderfully strong. I was more there at those moments thanks to Mbsr. Now, tomorrow might be a terrible day, the cat might get sick and a storm could blast in my window and destroy my desk. But as man once said at our monthly Mbsr meeting, "good, bad or indifferent, it's life and I don't want to miss any of it." Life is great when you're more here to live it.
I know how roll-your-eyes all of that sounds, but mindfulness worked for me. It's been beneficial for all the things I'd read it would be beneficial for, and other things I hadn't, like the recent onset of tinnitus.
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