Meditation

Image credit: Art by alicepopkorn on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

Meditation has been a great help to me in recent years, helping me calm and center myself. For the last several months, I have been sitting with a group once a week and meditating for forty-five minutes. I have been meditating regularly for shorter periods of time, but I still find that stretch of forty-five minutes to be incredibly difficult. And I've noticing a pattern lately.

When I first sit down, my mind is tumbling forward and my body is tense, as if I've been moving fast but inertia prevented me from noticing or feeling the movement until the brakes are now applied. I spend the first five or ten minutes gradually slowing down and relaxing.

The next ten or fifteen minutes are blissful. I'm relaxed and focused. I hit my meditation high. And on days where I'm not sitting with a group, this is where I stop, full of good feeling.

But after that little bit of lightness, the pain in my back (which is my constant companion, but usually remains at a dull ache) begins to feel excruciating and my feet become numb. After about a half an hour of sitting, I slowly move my feet and wiggle my toes, determined not to cling so much to pride in my stillness that I tumble down at the end, as I did the very first time I sat in meditation. Even with that slight movement, I feel panicky and every part of me is straining to get up, to move, to talk, to run away. I wonder how much longer I have to sit here before the sitting is over. I wonder why I'm doing this.

The last few minutes are agony. I'm done concentrating on my breath. I can't think of anything but getting up. I know I'm almost done and just will myself to sit a little longer. I tell myself I can wait five more minutes and then I'm going to have to stand up no matter what. So I start to count, not my breaths, but the seconds. When I get to 300, I will know I've done my five minutes. I've never gotten that far before the singing bowl chimes, signaling an end to the meditation.

Then the theme song to emRocky/em plays in my head, and I feel elated again. I'm the badassest ever! I did it! I sat still! And I'm struck with amazement that it can possibly be hard to sit on my ass for forty five minutes, when — with a book in my hand or computer on my lap or TV roaring in front of me — I can gladly sit on and on and on without even the need to eat. But as I finally stand up, I feel so much more conscious of every detail, so much more awake, that I remember, "Ah, this is why I do this," knowing that next week, when I'm in the midst of it, the cycle will likely repeat: I'll end up counting out the last few seconds in desperation, wondering why I'm doing it, until my feet on the floor again remind me.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.