Today I started my morning practice with 30mins of gentle stretching, getting the grit out of the body, my preparation for meditation. It felt so good.
After stretching, I settled myself on the mat, in a supine position, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, about hip width apart, and then slowly I let my knees rest upon each other. I felt a lovely connection to my breath and felt my body softening.
But before long I found myself in an industrial steel works, well that is what it felt like! The sound was deafening, and the busyness was palpable. As I instruct my students, I now instructed myself to return to the rhythm of the breath and as I did, I found that my thoughts were infiltrating my every breath. My practice was getting hijacks by ‘noise’!
It occurred to me that this reflected where my mind has been residing these last few days as we are once again standing on very unsteady ground and it is unsettling for us all. We all react to this unsteadiness in varied ways.
My reaction? For the first time in a long time, some old friends came visiting, you may have met them: Fear and Anxiety. I refer to them as friends because that is how I prefer to see them, not as the enemy. I will not say I was pleased to see them, but they certainly were not unexpected.
While we cannot control our external world, we can control the way we react to it. This is the time to really embrace the practice of Mindfulness, being in the present moment. I’m not going to say it’s easy, as I found this morning at the ‘Steel Works’, but we can all do it.
Fear comes from ‘future thinking’, the what if’s, the lack of control. Peace comes from being in the PRESENT moment and feeling it completely. This is where we are, right here, right now. And even if there is discomfort in the present moment, lean into it with a warm and kindness. In this moment, you are safe, you are cared for, and you are loved. Breathe into it with a sense of gratitude.
As you breathe in, breathe in life…... as you breathe out, let there be an acceptance of that life.
For those of you wondering how my meditation finished: I stayed with the intrusion of ‘noise’. I listened to the ticking of a clock, and felt the warm of Lucy snuggling into me, and allowed the unfolding of the experience. That is the practice.