Month: December 2018

I hadn’t been to a yoga class in a few weeks: my work schedule was out of control, I had a cold and cough that seemed to last forever, I was eating too much and feared I would not fit into my yoga pants. All of that became history today when I went to an early morning hot asana class. 

I usually move into most warrior poses with ease and hold them for a few breaths. There is an effort but the body flows and enjoys the challenge. Not today. Muscles were already quivering at the start of the pose and my limbs felt oddly disconnected from my core. The stretches felt like an attempt to straighten limbs made of steel. I could barely keep up. I usually try to stay centered during yoga class, focusing on the strength and flexibility of my own body. Not today. My eyes ventured over to the two women nearest me and my comparing mind was immediately activated. They looked youthful, supple, strong, their bodies adapting to the postures with ease. 

After class, one of the two women said  that her face became so red during class that she hoped the teacher didn’t notice. She felt embarrassed.  I said I thought redness of the face was a healthy sign and pallor of the face would be more disturbing to the teacher. I then confessed to both women how my body felt rigid and struggled with the poses. To which one of them responded with spontaneous kindness, “but you looked so good!” 

This is why I love my fellow yogis. They show up as they are, embrace imperfection in the pursuit of physical and spiritual transformation, and give encouragement when it is most needed.

Guided meditations can settle an active mind, wake up a drowsy mind, or entertain a bored mind. They are fun and a variety of teachers present different styles: sleep, breath, mountain, inner critic, body scan and others.

A while ago, I realized I had been meditating almost exclusively to guidance. The mind had come to rely on the effort of the guiding teacher to become steady and concentrated. So I stopped using guidance for my longer morning meditation sitting. What I noticed was really interesting.

Without the voice prompts, I saw the mind flooding with planning activity. During one recent sitting, I mapped out my travel plans for 2019 down to airport connections and ground transportation. The 45 minutes were over in no time. Problem was none of the plans were of any use when scrutinized later in the day. Yesterday, my mind played a thought loop over and over to solve a challenge at work. I was aware that this was happening and returned to watch the breath multiple times but somehow this thought loop insisted on interrupting the focus on my breath. It wasn’t even a useful solution but somehow the mind was trying to convince me that if I just thought this same thought one more time, it would become the solution.

The meditation teachers say this is normal and the most important part is the noticing and returning to the breath over and over again. That’s the practice.

Yuval Noah Harari, in a recent lecture to a group of young people in London about the goals of education for the 21st century, made this observation:

“To stay relevant, you will have to reinvent yourself, not just once, but repeatedly, every 10 years, 15 years, to reinvent yourself and the main obstacle for doing that might well be psychological more than economical or technological. Its just very very hard to reinvent yourself especially after a certain age. So the most important goals of education in the 21st century are probably to develop your emotional intelligence and your mental balance because you will need a lot of mental balance and mental resilience to deal with a very hectic world, to keep learning throughout your life, and to repeatedly reinvent yourself”

This is sobering. If emotional stability and mental resilience are essential skills to reinventing ourselves, then developing a meditation practice is an investment for the future. The reason I make this bold statement is based on the impact meditation has had on my emotional stability. The clouds of emotion still arise, bringing rain and thunder and lightning. But the storms don’t last as long and the sun comes out sooner to dry me off and send me on my way.

I learned this valuable insight on my first silent meditation retreat in South Africa five years ago.

I was a novice meditator. I had just moved to Cape Town and attended a meditation group that practiced “focus-on-an-object” meditation. The object was a candle. I wasn’t good at this. My eyes would burn from staring at the candle and I would spend the session wondering how much time had passed. After one of these sessions (I only went to about three), a gentleman asked me if I had ever done a silent retreat. I did not understand what he was talking about but I wanted to know more. He said he thought I would benefit from attending the Vipassana retreat at the Dhamma Patakka center in Worcester, Cape Province. Ten days of sitting meditation for 11 hours per day, no food after the noon meal and you can’t talk to anyone. At first this sounded like a cult where I would be brainwashed and end up in a commune, wearing a white robe, and forced to renunciate all worldly pleasures.

After doing some research, I learned Vipassana was a form of meditation and meant “seeing clearly”. It’s also referred to as “insight meditation”. There are variations within the Vipassana practice depending on the teacher and the tradition but the goal is to pay attention to whatever is arising in the moment and let it appear and disappear without interference or judgement.

So I went on retreat. For 10days. No phone. No entertainment. No books. Just sitting and eating and sleeping in silence.

In the silence of the sitting I began to get a glimpse of the inner workings of the mind: how the mind releases thoughts that will tell you to go in one direction one minute and in another in the next minute. These thoughts just show up, unannounced, and can either ruin a lovely moment, or cause a release of pleasant sensations, or go unnoticed in the background of the mind. There’s no knowing what kind of thoughts will arise and when they will disappear. The mind just “leaks” thoughts because that is what it does. If we don’t pay attention, we get seduced by the thought and follow it around, become entangled in the story, only to “wake up” and find we are sitting cross legged in a mediation hall in the mountains of Worcester where the birds are chattering under the African sky and the person next to you just took a deep breath.

I don’t have to believe everything I think.

 

A girlfriend of mine recently celebrated her 50th Birthday. It got me thinking about how much I am enjoying my 50s. Here are some of the reasons I am living my best decade so far:

• I am learning to accept things as they are. It makes life easier and more fun.
• I am finding my own voice in the world.
• “I don’t know” is an invitation to curiosity rather than the judgement “why don’t I know that?”
• “Good enough” is my antidote to perfectionism.
• I can say “In my experience…..” and make a meaningful contribution to the conversation.
• I have less time remaining with the ones I love and I am prioritizing accordingly.
• I have realized my close relationships are more important than almost anything else in the world.