“Quiet the Mind and the Soul Will Speak”

Hello, friends!   

For those of you just tuning in, after my recent return back into the blogosphere, I wanted to present to you over the course of the next few weeks, a few helpful changes that we have made in our home as I try to find my way back to me after a pretty epic year. 

First up, is meditation.

The Journey to Stillness

So….some background.  My husband, Pat, and I have been talking about meditation for years.  It was probably 2008 when we both read Eckhardt Tolle’s A New Earth (remember Oprah’s Book Club??) that we both said how beneficial it would be for the two of us to begin a practice.  Our oldest was a few months old.  Seemed do-able.  Theoretically, I was wholly aligned with the idea of meditation…but my mind was fully consumed with new motherhood.  We also had a giant move across the country, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, with an 8 month old.  We threw ourselves into getting settled, making friends, and my husband’s career.  A few months later, we found out we were pregnant again.  Over the next several years, we kept adding more and more babies to our family’s squad and with pregnancy fatigue and a longer to-do list and amplified noise…when my husband would bring up the topic of meditation again…. and yet again, it almost became like a trigger word.  Something else I wasn’t doing (but should be).  I also sort of felt confused and annoyed if I would hear about it…. Like, ahem, when, precisely, would this meditation occur? (Insert: eye roll). I have tiny infants and toddlers and preschoolers and school-aged children and the stress/noise factor isn’t really, you know, conducive to meditating…

Years went by without the stillness and, maybe a year ago or so, our neighbor began meditating.  He would tout its benefits at the bus stop and share how wonderful it was and how much it was helping him to be present.  His wife and I would laugh and we’d roll our eyes, oh yeah, super simple…we’ve got a hundred squawking ducks pecking at our knees all day, every day…just when exactly would we squeeze a little zen-like meditation in??  Slowly, though, she warmed to the idea and began waking up early and exercising and meditating at the early part of this year, to great benefit.

Still, for me, it didn’t click.  For whatever reason, I suppose I just wasn’t ready.  The deep desire was there, but the willingness to move mountains to make it happen simply wasn’t.  Truly. Also, I didn’t know how.  Do you sit in stillness? Chant om?  Repeat mantras?  I mean, what.  Honestly, I had a hunch I actually did NEED it.  And after throwing back my covers once and for all and getting out of bed after 8 months back in February… I was eager to re-enter the beautiful madness I once knew.  But.  My family was only just beginning their “processing phase” of living a life without me for the better part of a year, and to be perfectly honest, my sea legs for managing my life weren’t yet under me.  I got pulled into the undertow and my life was flooding my soul…. and not in a good way. My fuse had become short and I was yelling more than I knew my formerly-patient self did.  I sensed that this feeling of general “crazy” was normal over the years, though, as friends and I would share our tweaky necks and eye twitches across the picnic tables or up to our calves in water in the baby pool or at the bus stop each morning when we would twink and twinge at our kids’ missteps…when one’s child or the other would be pushing every last button we had.  I just wasn’t there yet…

The Aha Moment

But for some reason, back in July, on an incredible trip down to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia with my mom and my aunt…we were en route and in North Carolina visiting my mom’s other sister…and my aunt asked if my mom and I wanted to do a meditation using this new app she’d downloaded.  She said no pressure, but she had just started out on her own meditation journey and she was really liking it and she offered to set it up for the two of us on my aunt’s back porch.  My mom and I kind of shrugged and thought…okay… “Do you want ten minutes or fifteen minutes?” “Ten,” my mom replied quickly.  I nodded in agreement.  We took our coffee out on to my aunt and uncle’s beautiful back porch, surrounded by bird feeders (even some for the little hummingbirds too), and she hit play, and off into peace we went.  

Wow.  Ten minutes when by in a flash and my blood pressure went down, way down, noticeably. (I didn’t even know it was up, honestly….that’s how unaware I was.) I just was so relaxed. I felt so still.  It. Was. Heaven.  Was it just being away from the kids, I’d wondered?  I honestly didn’t know that depth of calm was even possible, and it certainly wouldn’t be like this once I reinserted myself back into the family fold…right?

  
In the week or two after that, though, I dabbled in meditation here and there and then once our vacation began in early August, that first week, after what would soon become my daily run on the beach, I would sit on my parents’ front porch in their rocking chair. I’d open my Calm app and close my eyes and listen to a soothing voice for 10-15 minutes. And the changes I felt in my body were palpable and clear from moment one.   I felt calmer, more still, my heart rate was slower, my shoulders were lower and less tense. Once, a butterfly landed right beside me and just flapped its wings, slowly.  A lady bug descended upon my leg.  We returned home after vacation, and still I would meditate.  Once, in my back yard, a hummingbird even came so close and felt so comfortable, it slowed its wings to a halt and just sat with me for a while.  My husband commented that it really goes to show you that we all individually really do put energy out into the world and he said that these little creatures must have been drawn to the peace I was feeling and putting out around me.  In our house, both the home I grew up in and now in the home I’m raising my kids in… we always talk about the circle.  You know the drill…everything is chill…until someone walks in.  You can almost feel them before you even see them.  They are in a bad mood, they drop their bag, say something mean to a sibling… then that child cries….then that one, who moments prior was happily bopping along in life… now they’ve got some “mad” to unload…so they push someone else.  That guy then takes it in, and…. You get the idea.  It’s energy.  Good vibes aren’t just hippie talk.  It’s real.  (Either that, or maybe I’m a hippie ? ).  We are all responsible for the energy we bring into a space.  I remember back in 2008 Oprah saying she had a sign that hung on her office door and in her dressing room saying exactly that.  It’s true.  We have to own that…being mindful not to litter someone’s life with our own “stuff” and being aware enough of our own center to not pick up anyone’s baggage along our journey.   For me, I feel like meditation is like one big giant hiss of air being let out of an overfilled bike tire.  It brings me back to zero.  Returns me to baseline.  Chills me out.  

The Lessons

I find that I’m refocused, again, now on gratitude… and reminding my kids to do the same with a daily gratitude journal practice for us all.  I am seeing things more big picture.  My rate of speech when I talk to my kids is slower.  My fuse is significantly longer and my angry “high” level is not as high.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have my moments, but my rebound back to chill is way quicker.  It has helped me to connect again to my body…and I can now feel when I’m amping up.  I also finally remember how it feels to be calm (how ridiculous, but I genuinely think I was in such a haze of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion over the course of the last decade that I didn’t actually even know where my center point was… is that insane??  It really is…but that’s honest and that’s real.)  

AND…it’s helping my kids!  My youngest, at age four, is my most eager meditation partner.  She will sit still for the longest time, silently.  My boys, ages 9 and 6, benefit most from it when they are out of control….it almost seems like the person who I finally bring in to sit with me when they are emotional and not grounded is COMPLETELY different from the person who leaves the meditation/quiet time with me.  My tween is resistant but warming to the idea when she sees me often meditating early in the mornings before school.  She has been waking up early to sit with me while I’m doing it…even though she claims she isn’t doing it herself ?.  YouTube has some great ones for kids, as does the Calm app (and, bonus, they are broken down by appropriateness according to age), and I’m sure many of the other apps do as well.   

I wanted to put this concept out to a larger audience because, in talking to friends, many have been appreciative when I bring this up because they had dormant meditation practices and apps that were taking up space on their phones that were unused….but they just needed a reminder.  Some have never done an ounce of meditating and have shared with me sheepishly that they didn’t even know what to do.  And I want to remind you… neither did I.

I share this purely because if you’re like me and maybe have been a little hesitant or eye-rolly about meditating….perhaps you feel you are too busy or too tired, too pregnant or too swamped at work, too busy planning a wedding or caring for older loved ones, too preoccupied with an upcoming promotion or coaching a child’s sport or remodeling a home or selling or buying a house or dealing with a sickness or injury or or or…. it’s probably meant exactly for you.  I just have the mindset that I can’t not share something if I know it could help….even at the risk of sounding like “that girl.”  ?   I use the Calm app, but I have family and friends who like Headspace, 10% Happier, Aura, Insight Timer, or Meditation.Live.  I suggest downloading one or some, doing a free trial week and seeing which one works best for you. Ten minutes.  We ALL have ten minutes, really.  I’ve meditated now anywhere and everywhere.  As a passenger in the car for road trips, in the grass, basket swings, inside, outside, on the couch, on the floor, in a chair, in a bed… it doesn’t have to be perfect or pretty or silent or airy or pristine.  But please give your mind the gift of stillness.  And keep showing up.  I promise. You will be amazed.  

(And many thanks to Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati for the quote used in my title).