Sometimes, we need some alone time to get our head on straight and deal with everything that’s going on in our lives. Especially in today’s world, where if you carry a cell phone, you’re literally connected to billions of people at all times. No breaks. Not ever. Heck, I share a place with my wife and my cat and sometimes I just need some time to myself. That’s where meditation comes in. I think meditation comes with a stigma. That you have to put on Depok Chopra and sit in a dark room with only candles for light and a tiny little water fountain off to the side and throw weird chants into “the universe”. Sure, that’s one form of meditation. But luckily meditation, like ice cream, comes in many different kinds. Biblical meditation, guided meditation, there’s way too many kinds for me to list here. Let me just tell you about the two kinds of meditation that I do.
First, I do a sort of “shut it down” meditation. I’ll sit quietly in a chair, close my eyes and just try and clear my mind. Now, that’s a lot easier said than done. I live off a busy street and there’s a few businesses by my house, so there’s some level of noise almost all the time. But, I do my best to not concentrate on them. I learned a little trick a few years ago when you’re meditating. It’s impossible for me to let my mind go completely blank (insert your own joke here), so when thoughts do come into my head, I kind of just let them go right on threw. If you’re over 30, you remember one of the very first screen savers on computers was a line of text that you got to write, and then that line would literally bounce around the computer monitor until someone activated the computer. When I’m meditating and a thought comes into my head like “It feels like an Arby’s night” I picture that thought as a line of text and watch it float off into the darkness, kind of like that screensaver. OR, sort of like the scroll that’s at the beginning of every Star Wars movie.
The second kind I do I like much more than the first kind. I call it meditation for people who can’t sit still. I like to walk. That’s it. Just walk. Most of the time I’ll have Sirius XM radio on, sometimes it’ll be a book on Audible, and sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast. But, almost every time I go out walking at some point I’ll turn whatever I’m listening to off, and just listen to the world. The leaves blowing in the wind, squirrels climbing up trees, and I love the winter, when there’s snow on the ground and it absorbs all the sounds, so there’s a really peaceful quiet. In my opinion, that’s when I feel closest to God. Just being outside. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t WAIT to move back to Rapids, where it would be really awesome to walk outside. Here, there’s houses on top of each other, a Subway every 30 feet, and 4 CVS’ at each intersection. But, when you go down a side street and there’s a rare minute when there’s no cars and no loud noises, it’s pretty awesome. My mind is cleared and it feels a little bit like I was sleeping walking. I highly recommend it if you get the chance.
Whatever the kind you choose, I think everyone should try meditate at some point. It may not be for you, or maybe it takes awhile for you to find something that works, but at least try. There’s currently at least three places in the Wisconsin Rapids area that teach some form of meditation. So now, you don’t have any excuse. Sorry this is short, but I’m actually starting on the next blog and you might wanna get an extra pair of pants out, because I’m gonna burn down the internet, baby!!!!!!
Her Take:
This week I learned that I can, and have, clenched my eyeballs.
I know what you’re thinking, but no, not my eyelids, I’m talking about my actual eye sockets. I was clenching them. And, most importantly, I learned that I could unclench them, and it feels amazing.
And I have more great news for you: A little over a month ago I officially went from being someone who said “I’ve always thought meditation would be cool..” causally just to have something to talk about when I felt awkward, to someone who actually meditates and wants to talk about. I’m not sure which of those two things is more annoying for other people to listen to, you be the judge.
In all honesty, I didn’t think I’d get here because I assumed my brain just wasn’t made to meditate. You know, like, properly clear my mind and all that? It’s just WAY to cluttered up there, it’s a mess really, and it was hard to believe that I would ever get even close to a state of zen. I didn’t even think I had enough gas in the tank to get to the state line.
And I spent a lot of time getting ready to learn to meditate, by which I mean I would pick up a book, or read an article, or watch a video about meditation and secretly hope what I learned would come up in conversation soon before I forgot that I learned it. (I’m an actual monster.)
But somehow I never quite got to the actual meditating part.
I think it was this combination of fear and skepticism. Fear that I was fundamentally flawed beyond the capability of meditation to do me any good and skepticism that maybe it was all just a lot of hype. I mean, what if not only didn’t help me, it wasn’t capable of helping anyone? Then where would I be? Without a totally untried thing to pin all of my future hopes on?
No, you’re right, it was all a little silly. Welcome to my life, friend.
What makes it especially silly is how dramatic it WAS NOT when it finally all changed. One day, almost out of nowhere, I realized that I could probably just google a short meditation and try it, just to see what happened. So I did. Boom. I typed “5 minute meditation” into google and clicked on the first video I saw. And just DID that .It was a guided meditation that had me focusing on my breath and visualizing a glowing light, and it felt great. I did that exact same thing about four nights in a row, just before bed, and I realized that I was sleeping better than I had in a long long time. (If you missed it, I did a whole blog on my insomnia, which is now technically outdated.). Then I kept doing it, and it kept feeling great.
I’m not going to bore you with each and every detail of my practice, but here’s what you need to know: I found an app that has all kinds of meditations, from just a couple of minutes all the way up to an hour, and I just choose one every night before bed. I’ve had nights where I’m so clear and focused that I feel like a meditation master, and nights where I am beyond scattered and don’t think I’m going to make it through. Sometimes I catch my mind wandering, you know, thinking about my day, worrying about tomorrow, remembering that time I kicked Wayne Haefner in the nards in 5th grade, and I just have to let that go. That’s the secret, you see, that you acknowledge your mind is wandering, decide that it’s not a big deal, and bring yourself back.
So, yes, this should be the part where I tell you that if I can quite my brain well enough to sit for sometimes up to TEN WHOLE MINUTES and just breath, you can too. And maybe I should have some research right now to tell you about how meditating lowers your blood pressure and helps with anxiety. I don’t have that, because,as nice as that is, it isn’t what matter the most to me.
I went my whole life without giving myself any time, right? The second my eyes open in the morning my brain starts to move and it moves, endlessly, in every different direction all day long. At the end of the day I’m not just tired, I’m exhausted, because, whatever my body has done, my mind is running laps around. Stress and worry and anxiety were eating me alive and, while I can’t claim I’ve fixed that entirely, for a few minutes each night I’m giving myself time, being gentle, and loving myself enough just to breath.
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