I have always been a busy person, in my days and in my head. I work, I cook, I clean. And I have always had a list that I never finish. That’s a safe statement for absolutes. Do I have anxiety? I prefer to see myself as overly ambitious. But, it would be nice to be able to sit still and have my mind chill.
When I retired from teaching and my son got his license and graduated, I thought I would be able to achieve this easier, the chilling out. Nope. I am prolific at filling my days and mind without even trying. I can sit still on the porch, listening to birds singing and read a book for an hour or so. That feels like a fantastic break in the day to me, but the author is still directing my thoughts. I need the book to sit there.
When I first tried yoga, I loved it. I have been working out since high school, but I can do exercises, even somewhat strenuous ones, and still think about what I’m cooking for dinner or replay a conversation in my head. Yoga required my attention to such a degree and there were so many physical sensations. Then there’s the part about not wanting to tip over, or collapse, that it was all encompassing.
I sought out the more rigorous yoga classes at the local YMCA. I thought of yoga as exercise. It was at the gym, where people go to workout. But if I see the gym as a place to take care of one’s health; years and many instructors, styles and classes later, I can see yoga as a mindfulness class first and body, second, if at all. The instructors followed the demand of each group of students, some more focused on which muscles we were toning and others had lessons as spiritual as an easily-offended society would permit.
Regarding the mind, both of my parents worked with patients in mental health care. It has long been upsetting to me that mental health care is stigmatized to the point that so many health insurance companies used to treat it as an add-on, if they even offered it. What a better world we’d have if we acknowledged the mind, as another part of the body, with all of its chemicals and drives that so affect us. Find a family dealing with a loved one with PTSD or depression and they will tell you how real it is. I’m not suggesting that meditation would solve these issues at all, but it is an exercise for good mental health.
I wasn’t interested in meditation and saw it as a practice that other people did. I respected it, read about it, saw people doing it, but it wasn’t for me. Yoga hooked me from an exercise angle, the Americanized version of it, but most of my classes ended with a final savasana (check out the health benefits in this article by Joni Sweet), translated from Sanskrit to mean corpse pose. This is laying on your back on the mat, eyes closed, arms at your side, hands open; utter stillness. For some this may sound dark with the concept of death as bad, but it’s more about the peace of nothingness.
As one yoga teacher explained in class, yoga was never intended as exercise. Yes, it can be strenuous, but it was all to get the practitioner to the point of meditation, either through savasana, or in a seated pose. Having physically spent muscles and then laying still on your mat or sitting cross legged, makes it easier to get into a meditative state. You’re tired and sitting still with your body craving rest. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has fallen asleep in savasana after a challenging class.
This was my entry into meditation and years later, I am still trying – the irony being how can you work at stillness? Sometimes I sit cross legged, trying to calm my monkey mind (what meditation practitioners call hopping from one thought to the next, like an Internet search or the endless stream that The Algorithm sends to you). I’ve been told to not resist the thoughts, but see and acknowledge them, and then let them pass, presuming the stream would end at some point.
When COVID mandates were first imposed, I missed the gym the most. I had a really fun and supportive exercise community. For one cardio class, I had the same teacher for over ten years. Many people would join and then not return, as Florida is so transient, but there was a core group of about a dozen, that we all watched each other’s children grow as we chatted before and after class for a decade. I’ve since moved out of state, but I still miss Hildi and the other people.
After exploring exercise classes at the YMCA and then getting introduced to yoga at work, I also found a fantastic yoga instructor at the Y. Teachers are like hairdressers, it takes a bit to find one that has similar ideas to what you want.
We had an awesome principal where I taught high school, who gave the teachers an amazing yoga instructor once a week, after school. Teachers don’t really have much down time together, so it was healing and social. Jenna demonstrated, encouraged and was my first hands-on teacher to guide her students into positions (that part was optional and hard to adjust to at first, but really beneficial). She explained the poses while we held them and gave us a great learning experience. We loved that our principal gave us the gift of destressing.
Also due to COVID, I dove into exploring yoga and exercise channels on Youtube. It was easy to sort out the ones that went really fast versus the guiding instructors, offering the same poses or exercises at various experience levels. Since anyone can put out a channel, you have to be careful, even with some that come up relatively high in searches, like one instructor with CGI students and the instruction to do 60 squats in 60 seconds. Even if it were possible, that would be an injury for me. My favorite on-line yoga instructor is Yoga with Adriene. She’s careful, thoughtful, knowledgeable, goofy and she consistently shares her valuable content for free and has a paid version.
I am still such a novice to meditation. I have tried guided videos on Youtube. I found it calming at first, but then if I arrived at a place of absolute stillness of thought, the calm voice would jar me with their next set of guiding instructions. If I play music, I prefer instrumental so that I don’t focus on words. I have found a few lovely mediation soundtracks on Youtube. Some that I like have nature sounds, but again, if there is a rain themed soundtrack, once in a while a thunderclap will be counterproductive for me.
For the times that my mind is so busy that I can’t get to the experience of just blank peace, I try a breathing technique that I learned in yoga called Box Breathing. I’ve done this with varying counts (6,3,6,3 or all sides as fours). Think of a square with four sides. Close your eyes and breathe in for a count of four, stop, hold this air in your lungs for a count of four, breath out for a count of four and stop, hold for a count of four). I will do this over and over, and while my mind is not empty, the only focus I have is on the counting and breathing, which is much less to think about than if I didn’t have a focus.
I thought that practicing for long periods was better, but I just get itchy and frustrated. Also, trying really hard to let go is a bit of an oxymoron. I have only tried the mantra “Om” in a class and it was powerful being in a group chanting it.
At the moment, I am attempting to meditate after my daily yoga practice, seated upright on my mat, that I have pulled over to where my dog is sleeping. I like her quiet, calm company. I set a timer for a limit that is manageable for me, at least for now, and light a candle and sometimes incense to set a mood. Even on an “unsuccessful” attempt, I am gaining good posture.
There is a beautiful calm as I come back into motion getting up from the mat. It’s a little like waking up after a nap and this calmness has clarity, so for me, it’s a better than one from a glass of wine (although that has it’s time and place as well). I also like the idea of having control over my monkey mind. If I can control that, then I could work toward a more peaceful state, more often.
Please comment and let me know what works for you.
