This entry was posted on February 21, 2014
Like with most things, I go through phases of practicing daily. Meditation is possibly the only practice that I come back to time after time and always feel better for it.
Recently I’ve been doing my two minute meditation a lot but it’s not been giving me the same benefit as before. So today I decided to up it to 10 minutes and sure enough at around 9 minutes I felt my whole body relax in a way that only happens when my mind is peaceful.
What this tells me is that if I can’t relax in 2 minutes, I need to give myself permission to sit in meditation for longer.
The length of time is almost irrelevant except that it tells me how I’m feeling. When anyone has asked me recently how I am, I beam from cheek to cheek because life really has been good to me. But the fact it takes me longer to relax tells me that on some level I’ve got more stress in my body that usual.
Meditation doesn’t seek to understand why my body feels tense, it just allows me space to be peaceful. It allows me a pause in my day which carries on for ages afterwards.
My 2 minute meditation is a breath focused meditation. I breath in for a count of 3 and out for 6. I gently allow my lower belly to rise and fall and my only focus is counting and feeling relaxed.
When I tried to do that today my mind was racing so much more than usual that I decided to just sit and watch my thoughts. No judgement. Not engaging in the thought. Not opening my eyes up and writing down all the tasks that popped into my mind. It was like watching a child fight going to sleep. I just sat and watched my mind squirm until it had nothing left to squirm about. Then ahhhh… Then I felt peaceful and I still feel peaceful.
I use Insight Timer because I love the feeling of meditating with others, even if they’re not in the same room. Plus they’ve got some nice gong sounds to bring us out of meditation.
We’ve only got to give ourselves permission to relax and then we reap the benefits for ages afterwards. I give myself permission to feel this good!
Tell me your meditation experiences in the comments.