Meditation: Calm, How to Meditate: Body Wisdom Length: 14 minutes Where: Home Office/Guest Room, Los Angeles How It Felt: Relaxing & Empowering Who Joined Me: Steve
What can I say about today’s meditation? On four hours of sleep? It’s quite hard to think of anything intelligent, even though it was absolutely incredible.
Why four hours of sleep? Oh, all kinds of reasons. A plumber who came much earlier than expected. Sabrina, the night owl, who starts waking up around 10pm because she is cursed to love the moon. A cat who likes to announce when anyone is awake, or moving around, or simply present, as in, “HEY MOM! It’s 7am and Dad fed me breakfast and also he’s here now did you know that because he’s out here with me and no I don’t wanna come in and cuddle I just wanted to make sure you know we are up and I’m out here with Dad ok?”
I’m in a weird headspace, is what I’m saying….
Today, however, I took fourteen minutes out of my day, along with my cat’s dad, also known to some as my husband, and meditated. Because I’m dedicated, people!
It was an awesome session today, all about impermanence and, my favorite thing, equanimity. We were instructed to focus on how we felt physically, notice it, and just lean all our focus into one feeling, one spot, one place we noticed. For instance, when my upper back started to get crabby from sitting up straight (even though I did an intense yoga session beforehand to loosen it up- routines, guys! I’m doing it!), instead of moving around to get rid of the achy feeling, I leaned into it. I focused all my energy into it, which was uncomfortable, but, also, the pain started to….disperse.
I remember a play I did as a kid, part of a summer theatre program, where we had to lie on the floor perfectly still behind a scrim for a certain amount of time- probably, like, a minute, but to a nine year old kid it felt like hours.
One of the kids scratched their face during a rehearsal, and the director told us afterward that, to be able to lie perfectly still, we shouldn’t ignore any weird itches or discomfort, but instead put all our focus on it, and it would go away. I used that trick for years onstage and on set. Especially on set! When it takes a whole crew forever to get every light and camera angle in the perfect spot, and the whole cast is waiting to nail it, and every minute costs like a billion dollars, you do not want to be the person who suddenly disrupts it all and causes everyone to start over. Believe me.
I hadn’t really thought about this in a long time, though, and I was pleased to discover it was not all in my mind! Well…it actually, literally is…. but, you know.
At any rate, our levels of concentration were high, so perhaps being super present made the meditation more relaxing than normal. Steve said he thought he fell asleep sitting up a couple of times!
Or…maybe we were both just super, duper tired today.
We may never know….
Point being? What we resist persists. Nothing lasts forever. Meditation is awesome. My husband is adorable.
I think I lost the thread there somewhere, but you get it. Right? Yeah….
You get it.
You totally get it.
My Year of Meditation 