Meditation

I went tonight to an intro to meditation open house at the Shambala Centre in town. Have been reminded of so many things that I tend to lose in the clutter of my life, the clutter of my mind.

It’s been almost 10 years that I have practiced meditation on and off (with much, much more off than on). How is it that I can find something that is so good and yet so hard to integrate into my life? The instructor tonight relayed a comment he’d heard – if you don’t have time to meditate for half an hour every day, then you really need to start meditating. Too true.

Tonight we only meditated for 10 minutes – which really isn’t very long. Yet I found it so difficult to keep my attention on my breathing. I’d think about the others in the room, my day, my stresses, even about this blog – and then I’d think about thinking! I’d try to bring my attention back to my breathing and yet, before I knew it, my mind would be veering off somewhere else.

But for all the challenges of tonight, I realized something that now seems so obvious, and yet struck me like a revelation: although I have tried meditating for years, I have never managed to stay fully focused on my breathing to the extent of removing all other thoughts from my mind, except when I was in labour.

Before going in to labour I had read a lot about natural childbirth and the importance of relaxing and allowing the body to simply do what it needed to do and to try set aside all judgement and fear. As my labour began to get intense, I found myself focusing simply on my breathing and the word ‘relax’ – even saying the word softly out loud as I exhaled.

Tonight, as the instructor was talking about the focus on breathing, about mediation being used to overcome physical and emotional pain, I realized that I had actually mediated my way through labour – a labour that was amazingly positive and quick.

So if it got me through childbirth, I think it can probably help me cope with my day-to-day stress.