Sunday mornings with my husband, yoga, and writing are my recipe for relaxation. I love today.
This morning in yoga we did a 3 minute meditation in the middle of class – right in the middle of the fire, in the thick of it. Part of me hesitated a little because I have been kind of avoiding my meditation practice. Then this thought came to my mind – the pose you avoid the most, you need the most. So I settled in and just sat – with my breath, my body, and the other bodies around me. I began to notice my “internal weather” as my yoga teacher and mentor, Ashley, likes to call it. As much as I wanted it to be calm and serene in there, it wasn’t. It was frantic and frazzled. But I didn’t try to fix it or stuff it. Instead I just sat with that frantic and frazzled feeling, my heart beating erratically, my stomach a little unsettled. When the meditation ended, I wanted more!
What I realized was that the more I avoid something, like my meditation practice, the more disconnected and frantic I become. This disconnect flows over into other areas of my life too – my work, my home life, my teaching. All I needed to do to feel whole and complete in that frantic moment was to just sit and breathe and feel all the feels for a second. Afterwards, I felt more connected to myself, more grounded, and my internal weather turned just a little sunnier.
I am taking this lesson off the mat: avoiding = chaos & feeling = healing.
Here is a simple meditation technique I use when I am feeling disconnected. This meditation can be as long or short as you want, whenever and wherever.
- Find a comfortable seated position where your spine is neutral and your hips are higher than your knees.
- Close your eyes and open your ears.
- Expand your listening to the entire space around you. Turn your listening toward your internal space – the internal weather.
- Breathe in and out. Imagine you are breathing in a golden mist that fills your entire body from head to toe. When you exhale, imagine you are breathing out a black mist that dissipates into white above you. Breathe in possibility, breathe out stale energy.
I hope you can take away an important lesson from meditation that your body may have been trying to tell you. And if you’ve never tried meditation or considered it as a self-soothing or grounding tool, try it! You might find some internal clouds begin to pass and the sun is just waiting to warm you right up.
xo, Kortney.
