Thoughts While Meditating
Many do not know this, but my New Year's Resolution this year was to become comfortable in silence. I have always been accustomed to living in a fast paced, loud, environment that anything less than this made me uncomfortable. Did you know that I am so accustomed to sound that even at nighttime I need ambient noise to help me fall asleep? Silence just never worked for me.
My decision to become comfortable in silence stemmed from my own realization that I was lacking in the emotional awareness department of Emotional Intelligence. In an effort to improve this area, I needed to be able to self-reflect and check-in. It's difficult to do so in a distracting environment so as a way to work my way up to emotional awareness, I decided to first get comfortable in silence and see if I can develop awareness in that process.
A client of mine turned me to Headspace. Headspace is a guided meditation app that teaches you how to meditate and helps you to turn this into a daily practice where you can build your meditative skills. They first give you a brief tutorial on how to meditate and then for your first session, you are guided through a simple 3 minute meditation. You are taught how to breathe comfortably, allowed time to let your mind wander, taught how to bring your mind back to your breath and how to relax your body as you get lost into meditation.
Meditation is such a struggle for me. My thoughts are too intrusive. I thought it would be fun to pay attention to the nature of my thoughts while I was meditating to see how I can use these to bring my attention back to breathing. Here are a few thoughts that I had just within the first three minutes
We have barely started and my back is starting to hurt. Maybe I should have sat on a chair like he suggested... ok attention back to my breath
Am I supposed to be deep breathing? Or is regular breathing fine? ... ok focus
They picked the right guy to voice this. His voice is so "non-judgey"... ok, he's telling me to inhale..focus.
Man, do I normally have shallow breathing or am I just stressed out? ...I don't think this is the type of attention I should be putting on my breath... just breathe.
How long until I reach monk status? ... long if I don't focus on breathing
I should drop my shoulders. They always tense up... drop my shoulders and breathe
Hmm, I'm liking how my body feels heavy right now... keep breathing, I can make this feeling last longer.
He's saying it's ok to let my mind wander? Why? Oh, its so that I can learn how to drop those thoughts and focus on breathing.. smart... ok, go back to breathing.
I can argue that I didn't complete meditation successfully because I had lots of thoughts during this process. However, what I learned was that having these thoughts (or any thoughts) are normal and a natural part of the meditative learning curve. What's important is that I was able to redirect my thoughts back to breathing and although the attention to breathing between thoughts was short lived, I don't doubt that after some repetition, the space between thoughts will gradually increase. What I learned in this three minute meditation is that I shouldn't be hard on myself in perfecting it right away. Like all good things, it comes with time and consistency.
I'll keep you posted with how meditation turns out!