CAN MEDITATION HELP?
Photo by Liz Wuerffel
I hope I didn’t already lose a good chunk of my readers just by using the word meditation. It’s a word that seems to put most people in distinct camps immediately. You either think it’s essential, or you are convinced it’s not for you.
Meditation takes many different forms and is called by many different names by those who practice it. I’m not a devotee of any one particular way. I began to explore meditation 25 years ago with the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, and I still tend to seek out teachers in this tradition. Tara Brach is my go-to these days. I’ve also used various tools such as Headspace, a secular app that, since its inception in 2010, has gotten the attention of leaders in various organizations and businesses across the world who are gifting it to their employees. Brilliant! And during this pandemic, Headspace is offering a year for free to those who are unemployed.
Fundamentally, meditation is the process of being a witness to whatever arises in us, be it thought, feeling, or sensation, and returning again and again to the breath, or some other focal point. Having a focal point to return to gives the mind a job to do when it wanders, which it will do. The mind is designed to think, and we will never stop it from doing its job. One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that if we are doing it “right,” we will be able to stop the mind’s incessant chatter. We won’t. Over time we can build the muscle of slowing down the busy mind, but we will never stop it completely. Pema Chodron, after almost 40 years of meditation, still describes herself as a person with a very busy mind.
As we train the mind to pay attention to the breath, or a mantra, or a candle, or our feet taking one deliberate step at a time, etc., we begin to notice that quieter, more subtle, and perhaps hidden parts of ourselves start to show up. Glennon Doyle, in her new book Untamed, describes meditation as a process of sinking below all our moving, talking, searching, panicking, and flailing. Buddhists use the metaphor of the ocean and the waves. At the surface, the waves of our life may be big or small, steady or stormy. Whatever form the waves take, below is a vast ocean where the busyness and chaos stills and we can feel and sense things that are not apparent at the surface. Whole new worlds can open up in that space.
Inevitably, when I’m working with someone (including myself), some form of meditation comes up as an essential practice in living the kind of engaged and fully present lives we long for. Eventually we all come to points in our lives when the strategic mind, with all its benefits and necessities, is not enough. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t “figure it out” using only our minds. There’s help available and it is as close as your breath.
