I never thought I would be someone who meditated.
I will admit that prior to discovering meditation, I had no
real idea what it was and looked a little strangely at people who said they
practiced it. It seemed a silly practice to me. A waste of good TV time. Why
are you just sitting there? How on earth is that helping you do anything? I don’t
get it. If you are tired, just take a nap. That seems hard. That seems
pointless.
Oh how WRONG I was!
A few years ago, my path to faith led me to Buddhism. I was
so enthralled, intrigued, and fascinated by everything I was reading and
discovering about my new path that I devoured every article and publication
that I came across. Obviously this meant I was going to need to figure out what
this meditation thing was all about, and I was intimidated. Everything I was
reading painted a very different picture of this practice than I had ever known
about it previously. It was no longer some strange reason to sit quietly, but a
new way to finding my own mind. How was this possible?
I began slow. I would find ten minutes here and ten minutes
there to sit quietly and clear my mind. On my lunch breaks in my car. Before I
sat down to watch tv when I got home from work. After dinner. It wasn’t easy. I
was learning on my own from scratch. Add to that my very busy mind. I like to
compare it to a constantly running TV with a brick on the remote control’s
channel button. It’s just scrolling over and over again through all the
channels. All day, all night. I did what I read and sat still, closed my eyes,
and concentrated only on my breathing. The pattern of the in and out of my
breath. I felt it slow down. I felt my heart beat slow down. Unbeknownst to me,
my blood pressure was also slowing down.
It felt so incredibly good. My nerves would calm and that
television in my head was still running, but it seemed that brick had fallen on
the mute button somehow because it was much quieter now in my head. When I
would close my eyes and sit still, I would feel the tension leave my neck. I
would feel my usual anxiety back away. Something was welling up inside of me,
starting in my chest and spreading to my brain. It seemed to be taking the path
of my blood vessels. My bones. My nerves. It was peace. The feeling of peace
was washing over me.
After a couple of
weeks of actively making it a part of my every day, I got hooked. To my own
surprise, I also got healthier. I found that without that ever pressing
tension, I felt better. I was able to move around more freely. I also found
that I was sleeping better. The television in my mind had stopped scrolling
through the channels. It was now back under my control. This threw me for a
loop because while I was simply looking for a way to connect with myself, I was
finding a way to connect with everything and it was changing me. It’s something
I will never be without for the rest of my life! This is incredible!
Then I had a baby.
She is my second, but there is a ten year age gap between my
two kids. My son was six years old when I started practicing meditation so
finding a quiet moment was not too hard. He is a pretty independent kid, even
now at 11 years old. I could sit cross legged in front of Buddha and find that
solitude that I needed while he was playing by himself, at school, or at his
dad’s house . I had no idea then that I would eventually remarry and have
another child or how that would impact my practice.
While I was pregnant, we fell on some hard times. Health,
finances, a high risk pregnancy all contributed to my excuses for my lack of
meditation through that time. None of those excuses was good enough and I
should have kept up that practice at a time when I probably needed it more than
any! I was dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety and was having a hard time
finding a quiet moment so I just stopped looking for them. This was the wrong
thing to do. The brick had fallen back on the remote in my mind and that
television was back to its old tricks of scrolling all day and all night
through all the channels. I was not sleeping well.
Then my gorgeous little girl was born! As is usually the
case for new moms, the first few weeks were tough. They were wonderful and
tough. The lack of sleep, physical recovery from a c-section, and caring for
this new human life had my mind a tangled mess and I knew then that I needed
meditation back in my life. I was also on my way back to work soon full time
and I knew that would do a number on my soul being away from my little baby.
I decided to try and
find a few minutes each day to meditate. It was hard at first as the quiet
moments I got were usually reserved for sleeping. I was determined though so
went back to my early methods that got me started. I would look for ten minutes
here and there to sit quietly and clear my mind. I would do it when baby girl
was napping. I would do it after she had fallen asleep. It took me a while to
get back into it, and I am still now trying to find a pattern again.
Being back at work, I am again finding those quiet moments
on my lunch break or sitting at my desk when it’s slow. I am a work in progress
but I can report that it is in fact working. The change in myself has been
amazing, even after this short time back in the saddle. I am finding my anxiety
backing away and the impact that even these small meditations have had on
treating my postpartum depression has been incredible. Meditating doesn’t cure
all my ills. It simply helps me better navigate them. This can do wonders for
us all as new parents. (again!)
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