Restoration: Day One

A backstory first… in college, I took a semester course titled Zen Meditation. I had a couple toss-away credits that were paid for as part of my full time studies, and I decided to spend them between concert band and a random class to learn something completely unrelated to book academics. Of all of the courses I took, Zen Meditation has stuck with me.

Do I have a solid meditation practice? Nope, not at all. Have I tried? Yep. Do I stick with it? Nope. But… but… I find that I can use the breathing techniques to calm down when I need to. I understand how to calm myself, and how to allow thoughts to pop up and then drift away when I need to slow down. Those techniques I learned thirty years ago definitely came in handy this morning because my brain did not want to cooperate with me.

The Open Journal Club was kind enough to show her physical work on this project, so I will do the same:

My biggest takeaway this morning was my thoughts about how my brain is working – and what it is doing – when I slow down. All of those little thoughts really are like withdrawal symptoms. Tossing anything out there to get me back moving, back into the chaos I often find myself mired in between work, parenting, and all of the other things of daily life. The thoughts are so random – so non-sensical sometimes. Why would I care about how the office space looks like that my company left a year ago? I can understand the thoughts that come in about what I have to do today. The “don’t forget” and “did I do XYZ” and all that. The others – it’s pure resistance to slowing down.

Clearly I need to plunk my butt on a zabuton and start some breathing exercises again.

(do I even still have my zabuton anymore? Pretty sure it got ditched during one of the September 1st Boston chaos moves…)

Happy Monday all… may we all find time to just Be for a while.

– Mel.