I approached my meditation with a bit of stress and distraction. I have a lot of work I need to complete today and I'm likely going to be working later than I would like in order to complete it. Naturally, working late produces a stressful reaction, so I decided that I could focus on reducing this feeling.
I meditated for 17.5 minutes a bit before 10PM. I sat in the lotus position on the ground in my bedroom. I relaxed for some of the time, but for most of it I had good posture. I decided to first focus on my breathing and then I shifted that focus to my posture. From good posture, I moved my body around, swaying from side to side and moving my upper body in circles. I paid attention to the muscles that allowed me to sway: both the ones causing the swaying and the ones facilitating my balance. I chose to do this rather than attempt to let my mind wander due to the distractions present. Essentially, there was a lot of noise from various sources and I determined that I would have the most success if I was engaging in something physical to keep my attention away from my ears. If I was a very experienced meditator, I would have went forward with my plan to simply observe my thoughts as they came to me. However, I knew that the distractions would have minimized my experience today with mindfulness meditation, so I decided to devote my energy into being mindful of my physical movement. While I felt my initial reaction of irritation to the distractions, I decided to filter these reactions. I decided that it was not worth being irritated with these distractions and that I should simply let my irritation go. I decided that allowing such trivial things would not be conducive to my health, and that my goal of greater control over myself could be advanced through this practice.
Overall, I felt like I made progress today. The distractions actually proved to contribute to my goals. I felt like focusing solely on the practice of control over my mind was a healthy exercise, and I would like to expand on it in further meditation exercises. In addition, I found the focus on my posture to be interesting. I enjoyed the increased mindfulness of my body. However, I would like to research further into the benefits of this before I substitute mindfulness practices over this. I'm glad that this session helped me with my goals, and I hope each following experience does, as well.
When you hear the "noise" in your house, try to hear without listening. Imagine that you are my age, well beyond your time with your family. You have moved on to a different life, perhaps even having kids who have already left for college. You may look back on these "noisy" times with fondness, wishing you could relive them, even if for a few seconds. Imagine from that older perspective being able to see your family as it once was. After imagining this for a moment, hear the "noise" again and see if you are more mindful of what it is and is not.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'm going to try that today.
ReplyDelete