Meditation

I believe that meditation is the single most important piece of self care we can practice.  The benefits include relaxation, resilience, mental clarity, self-knowledge and emotional stability. It’s also absolutely free, it doesn’t require a lot of gear, and it can be practiced almost anywhere.

So why is it so hard to get ourselves to do it? Why do I sometimes resist sitting for meditation even though I find it pleasurable, I learn a lot about myself, and it makes me happy?

One thought is that our inherent misconceptions about the practice get in our way.  The idea that you’re supposed to sit down, instantly relax and start levitating on a cloud of pure bliss is a major stumbling block. It makes us feel like we’re “doing it wrong.”

Meditation is not about emptying the mind. It’s about making friends with yourself. It’s about carving out space to sit quietly and observe the mind’s patterns without judgment.

When we remove the subtle aggression inherent in self-improvement projects (the idea that there is something fundamentally unacceptable about us and if we could remedy that we’d be so much better), when we sit down with ourselves and listen like we might with a good friend, something starts to unfold naturally.  We don’t have to show up with a rigid agenda about what that shift needs to be.

Being able to move into emptiness is the same as being able to move into possibility. It takes effort, discipline, courage, and a good sense of humor, but then you get to be more fully yourself, not just who you think you are.