I wanted to give some focus to this blog, rather than writing about mind-body medicine in general. I have been dancing around the commitment to a daily mindfulness meditation practice and making that promise publicly should be a good motivator. I like the idea of writing about the act of sitting on a cushion and doing nothing–every day for a year. What’s interesting about it is that, ironically, there should be a lot to talk about. There should be plenty to say about the flurry of mental activity that I’ll observe when I sit and the way a meditation practice effects me when I’m not meditating. We’ll see.
This is my process: I sit in my living room in a cozy corner between a big plush chair and a bookcase. I use a purple meditation cushion filled with kapock. I’ve heard that kapock is a good type of filling for a meditation cushion and I like the exotic nature of it. I use an app on my Android (I think iPhones have one too) called the Zen Timer. I love using it because before the age of apps, I had to peek at a clock to see where I was. This app has chimes that sound like real beautiful chimes and since the sound on the Android is so good, it’s a real pleasure. You can set it to the time you want to sit, the number of chimes, the style of chime, whether you want to hear a sound half way through, etc. When you are done, you can type a journal entry and the app automatically logs your sessions so you have a record of when you sit and for how long. The journal entry is wonderful because just as you finish, you can write a brief sentence that encapsulates something that came up or a feeling about the session.
I’m starting with 18 minutes because the Gematria for “life” is 18. In mystical Jewish thought, words are translated into numbers and visa versa, showing a deeper meaning. When you take the Hebrew letters for the word life, and translate their numerical value, it comes out to 18. So, 18 is considered a lucky number. And that’s where I’ll start.
It often happens when I’m meditating, that I start thinking of things to add to my to do list. The temptation is to write these things down, but it interferes with the process. I just write down the things that come up as long as I remember them when I’m done and I’m happy these things come to mind. The quiet mind does not lose track of things as easily as the distracted mind.
While I was meditating, in addition to remembering things to do for the day, like check an email address I hadn’t checked in a while, I had some ideas for this blog. I want to create links to blogs that I think you might like. Later in the day, I caught myself daydreaming as a I walked down the street and remembered to stay in touch with where I was, to literally ground myself physically and mentally. That was a good sign because it means that the practice is working beyond the sitting to make me aware, if even for one moment that day, of the fact that I was distracted.
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Love this… I’ve also just recently commited myself to daily mindfulness meditation. I do mine every morning when I wake up and I also have a meditation spot.
Gosh that iphone app sounds awesome! Wish I had that 🙂
xx
Good luck with your commitment to meditate. Let me know how it goes.