2012 Meditation

I’d gotten out of the habit of meditating. So, on New Years Day, I took the opportunity to reintroduce it into my life in the form of a Daily Morning Ritual, which also includes a twenty minute joint-mobilizing movement sequence and twenty minutes of breathing reduction practice.

The first few times I sat, I was relaxed and it went fine, but I was aware of the time passing and of not being comfortable and I didn’t ever really disappear into the meditation like I remembered doing in the past.

Then, I switched my technique and got out my old mala beads. After completely going through the whole string of beads and mentally repeating my mantra, I focused on circulating my attention through my chakras.

Except for the first day, which was an anomaly (perhaps due to the novelty and excitement of getting started again), I was impatient as I sat. There was even one morning when my body was strongly fighting being still, and I was restless. I actually got up and turned the timer off with about three minutes left. The time after that, I was going to do the same thing, but I noticed that there was only about 13 seconds left, so I just went back to my seat and waited it out.

As the days went by I got more and more patient and went deeper in. In fact, the last few times seemed to go really quickly. Although I still found myself wondering when the timer will go off after some point. But all in all, the twenty minute period is feeling shorter and shorter.

Yesterday (two weeks into this daily practice), I finally sat for twenty minutes and was aroused out of my meditation by hearing the timer go off. Basically I was immersed in my meditations. What I mean is that my mind, being out of practice, did wander now and then, but I was focused on meditating the whole time. And rather than getting lost in the thoughts of my life, I was able to observe that I was getting distracted and get right back into my mantra. 

Today I chose not to use the timer, so I don’t know how long I sat for. (and actually, I laid in a corpse pose rather than sitting). I know the best advice is to meditate the same way every time, but I had to follow a strong impulse to do it differently this morning. I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed a nice meditation and had that feeling afterwards that I had been somewhere far, far away.

Next week, I plan to go back to sitting and after doing that for a bit longer, I hope to enjoy a deeper comfort with my practice.  Then I will begin to re-visit the Yoga Kriyas from my big yoga book. It was while practicing the Kriyas that I have experienced my most  vivid, strange and colorful meditations.  But the Kriyas are so complex and taxing, that I didn’t want to start doing them again until I had a good base of experience behind me. 
I think three weeks should be sufficient. I’ll blog more as I progress.

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