In late January, my sister-in-law L sent me a link to Faith Hunter’s 30-day Meditation Challenge on DoYouYoga.com. Until then, I had no idea who Faith Hunter was (turns out she’s a famous yoga teacher). Also, I thought my capacity for meditation was two seconds. Still, I went ahead and signed up because I felt like taking life by the horns that day.
The challenge began on the first day of February. For each day of February and a couple days of March, I receive via email a video featuring Faith Hunter walking me through 10 minutes of meditation. In some, she asks me to stretch my arms way up while working on my breathing; in other videos, she makes me cross my hands over my heart, close my eyes, and tell myself all things positive. Every video is focused on a specific goal: to teach me how to think positively, to be courageous, to know my worth, etc.
I could have begun this challenge with a better mindset. For starters, I crammed three videos in one day. I wasn’t able to begin on the first day of February, only got around to it on the third day because of all the noisy things in my life. Faith Hunter must have known this would happen. The day-2 video was on breathing meditation for stress relief; day 3 was on calming the mind. Yes, she definitely knew people would be procrastinating and cramming her videos.
For the first few days, I just went through the motions. It was me following meditation instructions from a video. But then, I was so surprised to realize later on that meditating was making me calmer and more present in the moment. Sure, I was still disorganized and tended to get into strange situations–for instance, today, I hurriedly dressed in the dark to begin my day only to discover hours later, in broad daylight, that I’d put on a thin white dress over a bright pink bra with black polka dots. I spent the morning looking like Julia Roberts before she became Pretty Woman. But anyway, I digress.
Meditation has been helping me, and I’m so bowled over by this discovery. I used to dismiss meditating as a hack job to brainwash people. But the breathing exercises have taught me how to breathe properly so even if sometimes I have a hard time catching my breath, I can talk myself through it and eventually find my rhythm again. And the brainwashing part? I’ve found it’s not really so bad if it brainwashes me to be braver, to be more positive, to be more chill.
Throughout every day, I often need to go off by myself even if just for a few minutes, just to be silent and still. But a couple of weeks after I began meditating, I realized that those periods when I was alone were still full of noise. Sure, I was quiet, but I had my phone in my hand and would lurk in Facebook. Or I would reread Stephen King and fill my mind with so many words and terror. Or I would eat chips to escape being referee in a fight downstairs about who gets to use the newer badminton racket.
Meditating makes everything outside and inside me quiet. I’m learning how to exhale stress, frustration, and anger. I’m learning to be right here, right now. And somehow, I’m learning to deal with the fibro pain like Batman deals with his fear: embrace it. Meditation. What a gift.
To do: 52 