So, I made it through week one!  The closest I came to skipping meditation was on Tuesday, when we got home late from a friend’s Birthday celebration, and I tried to meditate lying in bed before falling asleep…I didn’t fall asleep, but I’m convinced it’s harder to keep your mind from wandering when you’re sleepy…for some reason I feel like it should be the opposite, but go figure!

Tuesday afternoon, I opened the book to read chapter two and prepare for the second week of the challenge.  Haha, I think the best description of my emotions upon reading the exercises was, dismayed!  I was finally sort of getting a handle on this meditation stuff!  I mean, it’s not like I’m good at it, but I know what I’m supposed to be doing while I’m sitting there, and some of the time I manage to do it.  Now I’m supposed to notice SENSATIONS and spot the difference between those sensations and my mental comments on them??  I just felt overwhelmed.  I thought meditation was supposed to be simple, if not exactly easy!

I’m not one to give in, though.  I squared my shoulders, sat my ass down, and…noticed sounds around me.  Promptly got a song stuck in my head.  Noticed my breathing.   Stuck with that ok…and then spent the rest of the time second-guessing whether I had been properly ‘dragged away’ from the breath by a sensation, or if I just noticed it but could have stuck with the breath…mostly I noticed a mild burning sensation in my back where the muscles were tired of keeping me upright.  In the future I may try sitting on two pillows instead of one, so at least I did learn something!   I’ve got the rest of the week to play with this and get it sorted.  I’m looking forward to giving the walking meditation a shot!  ‘Doing the Dishes Meditation’ was reeeeaaaally hard!!  I can’t imagine having an easy time meditating while doing something; my mind is just GONE!

Oh, but the yoga instructor in me knows what that means…the poses that challenge you the most, that are the most frustrating, the ones you silently pray the teacher doesn’t do this class…are the ones you need to work on the most!

I’ll let you know if ‘Doing the Dishes Meditation’ gets any better as the week goes on.

Live Omily,

~em