Meditation Musings

I've been thinking a lot about meditation lately, or at least the practice of it. I'm a firm believer that anyone can meditate and it can be done in a variety of ways. There is the "sit still and just breathe" practice or the "be mindful while you do something repetitive" practice. You can lay in bed and calm your mind before bed or focus on bringing your energy down into your heart space for a few minutes.

But what has me thinking is that I haven't been in a consistent meditation practice for many months now. The thing is, when I do meditate consistently (consistently not constantly) I feel better, calmer, more focused, and like my baseline starts at a lower hum. Like my anxiety level starts from a lower threshold when I wake up in the morning. The problem is that I know all these things yet I've put my meditation practice into the "should" category instead of the "lights me up" category. And I've been trying to live my life from the "lights me up" category as much as possible.

Perhaps part of my hesitation is just that I've stopped and now I have to start again. Starting any consistent practice is daunting. If you miss one session you've scheduled with yourself your anxiety is higher the next time you think about doing the task and the likelihood of follow through is even lower.

Perhaps part of my hesitation is fear. Fear that I won't follow through, or that it won't be as rewarding as it was before, or fear of being consistent and making a commitment to a daily practice. Ah yes, good ol' fear of success...

Perhaps I need to just sit down for a few minutes and do it. Just start with two minutes because that is what I tell everyone to do. Meditate two minutes a day. Anyone can do that. Doesn't have to be a perfect two minutes - it just has to be a 120-second-long two minutes.

Just sit and breathe.