On the third day of meditating, I felt like I reached a new level of bodily awareness. The strangest sensation overcame me in the middle of my guided session — I began to feel as though my body was made up of one single cell rather than billions of them. This probably sounds a little crazy, but I swear it’s true! My hands were resting on my legs, but they didn’t feel any further away from me than the section of my back that rested against a propped up pillow. It was pretty remarkable — but then again, maybe I was just losing feeling in my legs because I had been sitting cross-legged on my bed for so long…
Either way, I definitely felt a lot calmer than I did before I started meditating. As soon as I began to take deep breaths, I felt so much more relaxed. Ordinarily, we go about our day-to-day lives without acknowledging our breathing, because it happens whether we think about it or not! I think one thing I will take away from meditating is that I will remind myself to take deep breaths if I am ever feeling stressed out during the day.
Something else I observed during this session was that it was not necessarily a bad thing that there was a little background noise while I was meditating. I could hear the barking of my neighbors’ dog, the whoosh of cars driving by my house, and the electronic beeps of my mom dialing the telephone. I found that listening to these sounds with my eyes closed actually allowed me to go more deeply into my body and mind. I think it was because I recognized that the things causing these sounds were happening separately from me, and that I could listen to them and just accept them as a part of my meditation session. I think we as humans are often so affected by the outside world that we forget that there is so little we can do to change the way things are. I am not in any way advocating that we should just sit back and do nothing if something about the world seems wrong or unjust to us, but I personally believe that the sooner I realize that I cannot control everything around me, the happier I will be.
I will continue to practice meditation in my spare time because it has taught me to focus present moment the same way it has taught me to focus on my breathing. To again quote Eckhart Tolle, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” I strongly recommend Headspace for anyone thinking of beginning meditation!
-Ally Donovan
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Getting More Headspace - Day 1
Getting More Headspace - Day 2
Photo Credit: Bhudda Bokeh via photopin (license)
