The Failed Art of Meditation
So if you are someone into meditation or trying to get into meditation or even hoping that meditation is the answer to all of your life problems, do you sometimes feel like meditation can make you MORE stressed than less?
And of course we all define meditation differently. Running, Knitting, Cooking, Painting are all different forms of meditation but I am talking about the sitting still and not doing anything and not thinking about anything and calming down and observing your breath kind of meditation.
I enjoy painting or reading or doing mandalas or cooking or doing some form of strenuous exercise. These are the times when my mind is thinking just of the task at hand and not wandering into unnecessary directions, thinking of unnecessary things and making up improbable scenarios to increase my anxiety.
After a recent health check up showed that my cholesterol is high and the doctor said that given my health and lifestyle the only cause could be stress, I have decided that I need to do more passive meditation instead of the active meditation things I have been doing which while great, aren’t doing much to calm me down or relax me.
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But my god! Meditation is possibly causing more stress and increasing my cholesterol. The thing is I told my body that we are meditating. So my body being the good obedient child it is listens when I say ‘sit in one place, close your eyes, place hands on your thighs and take a deep breath’ but this mind! The mind is like the most rebellious child who says ‘lol, no’ to everything you say just for the heck of it and to see how you lose your cool over that simple no. It just will NOT listen. I will be like ok mind, clear yourself of all thoughts, think of a beach and crashing waves and mind will be like ‘hey you remember that time at the beach, you were running and thought you were Pamela Anderson but then fell face first most ungracefully and your face, body and everything had sand on it and some 200 people saw it and laughed. Do you remember that?’
And then I will be like ‘SHUT UP MIND. Think of a tall snow capped mountain with trees on it and waterfall’ and mind will be like ‘Listen two months from now, the kids have ten days off and you wanted to book tickets to that hill station so you can trek that mountain and the ticket prices were ridiculous even two weeks ago and now they must be even more expensive because you forgot to do it’
Like my mind just LAUGHED when I told it that this is the meditation we are going to be doing today. And mind is like DISTANCE? From me? And my VALUABLE thoughts? Are you crazy? Ain’t gonna happen girl.
Seriously, I feel like I am fighting a losing battle with mind every time I try and meditate. By the end of the meditation I am super stressed because my mind reminded me of 324 tasks I haven’t done and 123 instances where I embarrassed myself or 2349 times I said something totally tone deaf to someone. All of which would not have happened had I just spent that 10 minutes walking while listening to music or a podcast thereby effectively shutting my mind OFF for 10 minutes.
So tell me friends, how do YOU meditate and ensure that you shut off mind for at least 10 minutes so you are able to calm down and relax?
