So, I have decided to start with meditation. That thing that everyone is always telling me to do and I say I'm going to do and then I never do it. Sometimes I'll start to do it and my brain starts firing off so many random things that I just give up, take the headphones off, and go do something else.
So for once I am going to give it a solid try.
Last night, I downloaded a podcast. Now, I don't normally do podcasts as I have the attention span of... what's that?! OOH! SHINY!
Yeah. Like that. Anyhow, I got myself a podcast. Actually I got myself a whole bunch of them, but this one in particular from Meditation Oasis just simply looked like the simplest and most basic place to start. So today, that's what I went with. Her voice was soothing, and yet every time I felt like my mind would start to drift into the ether, her voice would bring me right back into my body. Happily they have a 2nd track that is just music. I'm going to work my way up to that. The one I downloaded from iTunes was called, "Deep Rest Guided Meditation" by Mary and Richard Maddux. (February 26, 2009)
To start, I couldn't stop thinking about everything. Things I don't normally think about popped into my head as soon as I tried to clear my mind. Things like, "What really is the optimal place to put the cats' litter box?", "Should I go pee before I meditate?", and "Should I be breathing with my mouth closed or open?" (until she said it matters not if my mouth is now hanging open all slack jawed and drooly) <--- well she didn't say THAT but she did say it doesn't matter. So once I got past the anxiety of are my arms and legs and head and stuff all in the right spot and am I breathing the way I'm supposed to breathe for meditation and am I wearing the right clothing? Once I got past all that, something amazing happened... I really did start to feel like I was drifting off into the ether. Her voice would bring me back and I'd start the cycle over, but she said things that put me way more at ease with the whole thing AND she gave me some insight to something that had been bothering me for awhile, but we'll get to that later. So I would drift in and out of feeling floaty and coming back to myself and feeling floaty again. My mind happily relinquished control, but my body was a completely different story. I was finally able to get my jaw to relax, which explains why I get so many headaches. Apparently I grind my teeth a lot when I'm anxious...
I finally got myself into a relaxed state, and then my body just decided that it wasn't ready to let go. Muscle twitches and itches and is that a hair or a bug crawling on me? Those things seemed to explode out of nowhere. Legs felt like they would jerk uncontrollably if I didn't move them and body parts wanted to suddenly erupt in pain for no reason. It was kind of strange, really. Obviously my body did NOT want to let go of the stress and be relaxed. It was at this point that I realized that I'm going to give this a real go. Not a one time thing where I've decided that was pointless so forget it. My body betrayed itself to me and now I must defeat the stress monster. So, definitely going to do this before bed at night, and if I'm up early enough (which generally I am) then I will be doing this in the morning as well.
Oh yeah, the insight? At one point she talks about any emotion being present, let it be present. Feel it, know you can't change it, and continue on with your deep relaxation. I have always tried to force myself to change my mood when it isn't where I feel it should be. So when I'm sad, I always try to force the happiness. It seems to me that I've taken the opposite approach to what I should have done all along. I think the next time I feel sad, I'll have myself a good cry, take a shower, maybe pamper myself a little with a good sugar scrub or something (because a good sugar scrub can be made from stuff you have in your cabinet and just feels good when you're all done) maybe put on some of this awesome relaxing music, and let my brain drift off into the ether, and then see where that takes me. Definitely worth a try.
So Meditation? Yup, I'm going to keep trying it until my body decides to give up the fight against it.
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