Spiritual First Aid
Dear Kay,
My life is so busy. I work full time, I have two school aged children and a working spouse. It is so hard to find time for myself and to commit to a regular meditation practice. But I know that it could be helpful to me because I am often so wound up that it hard to focus and relax even when I find the time, especially when I am wanting that special time to share with my family. What do you suggest?
Signed,
Looking for Relief
Living today in the 21st century , we are constantly being bombarded by the message from the media and from our culture, “Do more”. Life is certainly not simple now, but we humans have gotten in the habit of making it more complicated.The practice of meditation should not be a complication, but offer a means to simplification. This is what I suggest as starting place. If at this time you cannot see how to practice 20 – 30 minutes each day, then you can begin with a few strategic mini-meditations. These moments of awareness, mindfulness and simply "showing up" for yourself are a great way to begin to learn to de-stress and to become more tuned in to the benefits of meditation. They provide reinforcement and the building blocks of an internal dialogue that gives you a much needed break. Remember that sometimes the greatest stress comes from the thought that we have no control or can’t change something. These are things you can choose to do.
Here are three of my ideas for your mini-meditation practice. Good luck! K
Putting yourself “On Pause”
Pick a time just before you are getting ready to change venues, a transition time between home and work for instance, or after lunch when you are going to a meeting or just after the children begin their homework.
Resist the urge to rush on to the next thing. If you are in your car, turn off the radio and the engine and take a few deep breathes. Be aware of your body. Is it tense? Can you breathe and stretch a little? Can you listen for a moment and feel the beating of your heart. Can you wait long enough for it to slow down? Close your eyes. Feel the temperature around you and the air against your skin. Feel alive. Take a moment to be grateful for something in your life- if only for this one moment of quiet. Put all unnecessary thoughts “in your briefcase" so to speak before getting out of the car or moving on. Set the intention of being fully present and aware as you walk each step toward your destination. Feel the ground under your feet.
This short practice allows you to “show up” fully- bringing the disparate pieces of yourself together in a more integrated way. You arrive feeling whole instead of scattered, empowered instead of frantic and off balance.
Visualization is another way to “reset” frazzled brain and body circuitry. I like to think of it as like re- booting your computer. A simple way to do this is to imagine yourself in a place that you feel peaceful, happy and supported. This can be a real location that you have visited or one that you imagine. What you are doing is creating your own little movie. Scan the screen that you create in your mind. Hear the sounds of the place, the details of the landscape or room, the way your body feels. Try to stay in this place as long as you can mentally. If you find your mind drifting off to thoughts of problem issues, just go back to looking around your getaway place. Relax into how it feels to be alive and aware in a place that you’ve created that has everything you need to support you.
A third option for a mini meditation is do a standing meditation. In the Native American path, the Four Fold Way, the standing meditation is part of showing up- the Way of the Warrior. In this practice of non-doing, we set the intention of calling forth our full presence and power-mind, body and spirit. I like to call it “ Shifting into Neutral.” But don’t be fooled by the implied passivity of that title- for the practice allows the fullness of our whole selves to stand at ready.
This standing meditation was taught to me by Dr. Jay Dunbar, who is the Director of the Magic Tortoise Taijiquan School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This is how you do it. First you stand in a comfortable quiet place. Your feet should be about shoulder width apart. Allow your awareness to focus on your feet firmly on the ground. In your bare feet or in low-heeled comfortable shoes, try to experience all the parts of your feet on the floor: the outside, the ball of the foot, heels and the toes. This is your platform, your place of grounding. The next thing that you want to focus on is your ankles, allowing them to remain loose and soft and to feel a connection with your feet as your attention moves upward. Relax your knees. You want them to be loose, just slightly flexed. Tilt your pelvis slightly forward so that the lower part of your back straightens out with your tailbone tucked underneath. This gives you a little space between the lumbar vertebrae. You’ve now formed the basis or platform for the rest of your body and for your spine. You can then focus on the idea of stacking each vertebra, one by one on top of the other. Move your focus to your arms. They are bent just slightly out from your body so that they form a very soft curve away from your sides like a pair of parentheses. Lower your shoulders.
Next, imagine that there is a string attached to the very top of your head and that string is stretched upward toward the ceiling. This allows you to move your head upward, and again make space between the vertebrae of your neck and your back. Now, you are completely integrated between the grounding of your feet and the attachment to the air above through your head. Your focus now is simply to continually scanyour body and notice any places that have tightened up again or have gotten out of balance. Pay attention to your feet, your knees, your pelvis -softening all the muscles around each of these bone structures and allowing yourself to be as relaxed as possible. Breathe. Relax your shoulders again. Try this for five minutes and extend the time if you can. Feel the energy within circulating freely in your body. Bring yourself to one more level of relaxation, letting go and then open your eyes. When you are done take a little stretch.