Close-up of white pebbles stack over blue sea
I’ve decided I’m horrible at meditating. I know all about the benefits, but up until now I haven’t been able to just do it. I know I have plenty of time to do so.
I learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) a few years ago hoping it would help digestive problems I was having along with relieving some stress. Nothing works if you don’t do it, so I obviously can’t blame anyone but me.
Last night I signed up for a refresher course. Today I started practicing what I already know.
TM really is amazing, you can’t mess it up, you can’t do it wrong and you can’t break it. It also has incredible benefits. It relieves stress,helps you work with more clarity, it allows for better academic performance, it lowers blood pressure, it helps lower your risk of heart disease, and it makes you smarter.
Today while I was meditating I tried to quiet myself and noticed at first my breath was pretty shallow, almost like it was painful or I was really nervous about messing this up. Slowly, I relaxed and my breath got deeper and I could feel I was utilizing more of my lung capacity. I could feel things shift and I started paying attention to my heart. I could feel it more than I could hear it, and I started thinking about all of the amazing things my heart does for me. I tried to pay attention to see if I could feel blood moving in my body.
A thought occurred to me while I was doing this. Why do we only focus on the outside of our bodies and completely ignore the inside? Afterall, there would be no outside if the inside doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s as if they were completely separate entities. We all know we are supposed to eat healthy and exercise, although so many people don’t even do this. But do any of us really think about how much is happening inside of us just so we can walk around every day. It’s incredibly amazing.
We don’t ever think about the incredible amount of communication that is constantly at work inside of us. We should think of our internal communication inside more like fiberoptics, if part of the line is kinked; the signal gets lost.
I think if we all just started and tried to sit down for 5 minutes closed our eyes and paid attention to how we breathe it would be such a great start. Try it, you might surprise yourself.