Thoughts from Practice: It doesn’t have to be perfect

This week has been one of those when I have been kind of swept away by life. I have kept up my practice but it’s definitely been more in the background this week. I’ve noticed myself getting stressed and thinking about all the things that have to be done. Getting swept away by the stream of thoughts, instead of remembering to sit back and observe. The important thing is that eventually I managed to recognise that I was swept away and take a step back and observe even if it’s just for a few seconds means that my practice is still having an affect even when it feels like I’m not paying it enough attention.

In previous times, a week like this might have been a reason for me to give up and stop practice for a while. Now I can recognise that I’m still doing my best. Instead of putting pressure on my practice be perfect I can accept that this week might not have been amazin, but I’m still doing it so it still counts.

On Friday I had no energy after a busy week, but initially I still wanted to do all the things that I hadn’t had time to do earlier in the week. This meant that I was not doing anything productive, but I wasn’t resting properly either because I was getting worried about all the things that I wanted to do but didn’t have the energy to do. Eventually I gave up the idea of doing anything that day so that I could rest properly, accepting what was there instead of fighting against it.

I think there are two things that I will take away from this experience, the first is a more positive one: that is I managed to listen to my body when it was telling me that I needed to rest. Hopefully in future I will do this without spending the extra time fighting against it. I know that historically I’ve spent a lot of time resisting what my body is telling me so it is going to be a process of listening and accepting what my body is telling me.

The second thing that I have recognised is the idea of rest being synonymous with not doing anything and this is an idea that I need to change. Rather than seeing rest as not doing anything productive and therefore something to be avoided, I need to recognise that rest is an important part of life and therefore a valid way of spending time. Especially as I know getting enough rest can be one of the ways that I make sure that I stay healthy which means it’s even more important right now.

Calm App and Making My Practice a Habit

Image shows a woman looking out of the window, holding a cup, it’s raining and on the window is the text: find the love you seek by first finding love within yourself, learn to rest in that place within you, this is your true home. Sri Ravi Shankar

After my experience with Headspace I didn’t think I would bother with another subscription app, especially one that is mostly voiced by one person. However, earlier this year I tried Calm and I decided to subscribe. One of my favourite aspects is ‘The Daily Calm’ which has a different focus for each meditation. Some of the techniques might be similar, but there will always be a different angle, which suits me because it is a mixture of familiarity and difference, which helps me stay consistent, at the end of each meditation there is a quote to consider. (One of my favourites is shown in the image)

I admit that spending money on a meditation app has previously been something that I judged myself for, as it seems a bit unneccessary when you know the basics of meditation. I felt I should be able to build a practice for myself without needing to buy into anyone else’s products. I have never been able to build a habit around meditation before with or without an app. This has meant that all previous money spent on meditation apps has been a little guilt inducing, like the classic gym membership you buy and never use.

I have been using Calm for around five months now and I can’t remember the last time I missed the day. It could of course be because of lockdown and having extra time to build things into my routine. I think there is another major reason though and that is: I don’t hold myself to a specific time to meditate. I have ideal times, for example if I’m not working that day then I will try and meditate as soon as my PA leaves in the morning, but if that doesn’t work I just keep trying to find space in my day. Normally this is directly after I’ve had support because that is when I’m at my most settled and therefore ready to meditate. There are other times when I will notice I’m feeling stressed and if I have the opportunity I will stop and meditate. On some days I meditate more than once a day, but my aim is simply to meditate at some point in my day.

Aside from the variety of meditations that are available, the other part of the app that I found really useful is the Sleep Stories. Over the last couple of years I have always used audiobooks to try and help me get sleep, but they haven’t always been successful. My experience with the Sleep Stories is that there have been only a few occasions where I have heard the end of the story. Even when I have been feeling restless and doubtful that I would fall asleep, it feels like they might have discovered a secret formula.

If you’re able to keep up a varied, consistent, and enjoyable meditation practice without the assistance of an app, great. In the meantime if like me you struggle with consistency in your practice then I recommend giving Calm a try.

Self Compassion: An Ongoing Journey

This week has been a mixture of experiences, as are most weeks at the moment to be honest. One element of it is been that I’ve been struggling with tiredness and staying present because of the heat. I’ve been trying not to be one of those cliché British people who moans when it’s too hot at as well when it’s too cold. There’s been part of me feeling uncomfortable rather than just sitting with the feeling. In other parts my life I have found my practice has started to make a difference to how I relate to certain things, so I can focus on sensations in my body, rather than getting dragged away by my usual tendency to over analyse. Thinking about resistance and experience it seemed like a good time to talk about my experiences so far with self compassion.

A friend introduced me to Kristin Neff’s book on self compassion about 5 years ago. At the start I was sceptical, at the time I thought that if I lost that critical voice inside me I might become lazy, even though writing that now seems a little bit silly. Still I have to admit that I struggle with actually being nice to myself and judging by Neff’s research other people do to.
Self compassion is something I have been coming back to in various ways and gradually I have been getting more comfortable with the idea of it. During lockdown, I decided that one of the things I could do with my time was trying make self compassion practice part of my routine and so I got myself the self compassion workbook by Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer.

The exercise I have been doing this week is around self compassion journaling, which involves taking an occurrence in the day where something went wrong or you felt some self judgement and applying three elements of self compassion to it. The Three elements are mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. Here is how they work in relation to keeping a self compassion journal:

Mindfulness: where you try and bring balanced awareness to what happened and whatever is arising from it.

Common humanity: think about other people going through this situation. This is to combat the isolation we normally feel when something goes wrong or is going badly.

Self kindness where you write yourself some kind words about what has happened. I find it useful to think about what a friend might say, as that can stop my inner critic getting involved.

One thing I wanted to note about this process, particularly in relation to common humanity, is its important make sure you don’t think about things in a way that belittles your own experiences emotions and feelings. It’s about getting a balance between recognising that what you going through is difficult while simultaneously recognising that other people go through difficult things. So although these are set out as three separate steps, in reality they are all interlinked because I think in order to get the full benefit of self compassion you need to ensure that you always bringing self kindness and mindfulness to what you are considering.

Today is day 5 of journalling about incidents in this way, the workbook suggests that I do this for at least a week but so far I’m finding it really helpful so I think I will keep going for longer than that. This is only chapter 3 so I will be revisiting this in future weeks as I get further into it.
If you want to know more about self compassion https://self-compassion.org/ it can be found here and the link to the workbook that I’ve talked about is also shown lower on the same page.

Hurry Up and Meditate by David Michie

Image shows screenshot of Hurry Up and Meditate by David Michie in the BorrowBox App

I came across this book when I was looking for some inspiration that would help me recommit to my meditation practice. I listened to this as an audiobook, having realised that I wanted to get more seriously back into my practice, as is usual with me I decided to see if there were any books out there that would help me with my motivation. I found this book on the BorrowBox App from Manchester libraries, it’s really good to see resources available for free and in an accessible format.

This book focused on why you should meditate and had a lot of information about different types of meditation. One thing I did like was that it mentioned doing ‘spot; meditations throughout the day. That is when you find a small amount of timeto meditate, or just take a few mindful breaths, say when waiting in a queue (or he mentions when you go to the bathroom which I thought was a bit odd!) The idea is to use these little pauses to spend some time with the breath which is definitely something that I try and do whenever I can (although not in the bathroom it has to be said.)

I didn’t find this book massively inspiring. I would probably only recommend it to people if they wanted something that was focused on the scientific benefits of meditation. It also had a lot of focus on meditation as a complementary therapy when you’re going through an illness which again may be useful as a focus to other people.

I thought this book was a little bit repetitive and not the most accessible as it focused on specific postures. I think my main takeaway from this book was that there is value in meditation even if you only do a little bit every day and even though you might not notice changes straight away, your practice is probably still making a difference in the background. As someone who’s been meditating on and off for five years now and normally only for small amounts of time (10 – 15 minutes) I definitely think this is true for me.

My favourite meditation book remains quiet the mind by Matthew Johnstone, which I still regularly go back to. I reviewed that here:https://moreinclusivemindfulness.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/starting-out-a-book-that-really-helped-me/

Do you have any favourite meditation books that you recommend? I would love to hear about them.

The Empty Mind Myth

ID: a cartoon of a buddhist monk sat on the grass in a lotus position above his head is an arch of visual noise to represent busy thoughts. The text underneath reads: The mind will do what it wants to do. Observe gently

One of the things I hear a lot when people talk about meditation is how they find it impossible to stop their thoughts or empty their mind. I can understand why people think that this is what they need to do when meditating, but the truth is and as anyone who has ever tried to meditate will probably know it’s impossible to stop your thoughts and the more you actively try to do that the harder it will get.

My meditation experience really changed when I realised that the aim of practice wasn’t to stop your thoughts but to observe them. This means that what you’re aiming for is kind of a middle ground between not thinking (the impossible) and getting really involved in your thought process (most people’s default setting.) This leads me to one of my favourite meditation techniques which is noting. This means sitting watching my thoughts and regularly noting what’s foremost in my experience. The idea is to note things in quite a broad way, for example I would note sound rather than saying traffic or sirens.What I love about this practice is I’m not expecting to be able to keep observing my thoughts. I’m accepting the fact that I will get dragged away at some point, but every time I realise and note what’s happening that is a little boost.

Over time this practice has allowed me to see my thoughts as less real, meaning just because I’m thinking something doesn’t make it automatically true. One of the most important phrases in mindfulness (for me) is ‘thoughts are not facts’ which can be very difficult to remember sometimes but this practice is one of the best ways to remind myself .

This whole idea of watching thoughts was reinforced by one of the meditations I did this week which was on the theme of being a witness to what is going on in your mind and body and not identifying with things too strongly. My take away from all this is that if I keep working on observing and witnessing thoughts, with the hope of creating a little distance from them, I will eventually learn to hold things little more lightly. This applies to meditation practice to as my experience is that the lighter we hold the idea of what meditation practice should be the more enjoyable it will become. It is called practice after all, so just allow yourself to explore and figure out what meditation feels like for you and what techniques work well for you, without getting too focused on the outcomes.

Coming Back to the Breath

First things first, if you are reading this thank you. A good friend recently pointed out that my relationship with this blog is reflective of good mindfulness practice, your mind (in this case life) might drift away from the breath (or this blog) but if you stick with the practice you will cometo back the breath (or the blog)

Image shows is a photo of June she has very short brown hair (lockdown haircut!) green eyes and is smiling wearing a black t-shirt and her pc is on the desk in the background.

It would be an understatement to say that it has been a crazy few months, right? There are a million things that I could say about it but you will have heard them already needless to say I hope you’re staying safe and well and you’ve been finding your own ways to look after yourself, whether that’s with all without assistance. Over the last few months my relationship with mindfulness and meditation has been very mixed. Some weeks it has been a really helpful tool and I’ve noticed it making a real difference, giving me a little bit of distance from my thoughts, when they would usually feel really solid. Other days I haven’t wanted to go near it at all, despite knowing that I will probably feel better if I did I haven’t been able to drag myself onto my metaphorical cushion. (metaphorical because I don’t have a meditation cushion just the wheelchair cushion that I sit on every day all day.)

In the more recent weeks I have been finding myself able to keep up a regular daily practice and feeling quite lifted by it, which is why I find myself back here putting one word in front of the other, hoping that it will have the same effect as when I manage to focus on one breath and then another one and then another one.

So please take a deep breath and come along for the next part of my meditation journey.

Gif shows an alternately expanding and contracting multicoloured circle with the words inhale/exhale in the centre.

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Mindfulness and my cat

Bowie guarding his kingdom

 

We all know that cats are very independent beings and this can be especially true for certain breeds. My cat Bowie is a Norwegian Forest Cat. This means that he is a massive fluffball but it also means that everything has to be on his terms.

For me this means that whenever he chooses to give me any affection or spend time on my lap I feel very honoured, I’m also aware that it most of the time unlikely to last very long and so it can be a great opportunity to practice some mindfulness especially if he decides to run off again in 5 seconds! His fur is really soft and velvety so I like to focus on that and stay as present as possible. Sometimes when he is happy to hang out I will make him the focus of a loving-kindness technique (More info on that technique here: Be Kind)by wishing him well and happy.

Making sure that I focus on him in this way allows me to bring both mindfulness and gratitude into my life on an almost daily basis and I think because it’s focused on another being it can sometimes make it feel more powerful.

Have you tried being your pets into your mindfulness practice? Let me know in the comments.

Have headphones, will meditate.

I know there’s some debate about whether needing headphones to meditate is a good thing and I don’t personally use headphones when I meditate at home even if I am using an app. This week however I have found headphones really useful in terms of allowing me to make sure that I am able to make meditation a priority no matter what I’m doing in my day.

I spoke last week about how I enjoyed being able to fit meditation in as part of my commute and I have been able to continue that this week. Sometimes it’s been hard not to be led away from what I’m doing by all the distractions that are around me and other times I found it reasonably easy to follow my breath. When this happens it definitely makes it easier to do the next practice and see meditation as something I want to do rather than simply something to tick off my to-do list.

I also went back to meditation class this Thursday and although I struggled with some of the ideas that were discussed as it was quite strongly religious this week, I always find the centre to have a really calming atmosphere which seems to make it an easy place to meditate.

By far my favourite meditation practise this week though happened on Friday lunchtime where I was able to grab my headphones and go outside for a short break and meditate for five minutes in the sun. It was really lovely and I found myself able to really appreciate the warmth and sunshine as we can all see that we heading into autumn and we might not be seeing the sun for much longer, at least in this part of the world.

All in all it’s been a great week for varied but consistent meditation and I hope it continues.

What about you? Have been meditating this week? Let me know in the comments

How meditation fits into my life

I’ve talked about the app Buddhify before and at the moment there travel meditations really help me fit meditation into my day. Meditating while travelling can take a little bit of getting used to, but if you manage it can actually turn a potentially stressful time into a focused chunk of time. Personally it gives me an extra boost knowing that I’ve used my commute well and it means that I’m heading into work in a positive headspace.

I try and do more formal meditations a  couple of times a week at least. I  haven’t been great at fitting these in, which is why I wanted to head back to meditation class so that I knew there would be one definite time in the week where I would getting a sitting practice in.

Over the last couple of years I have also been attending Quaker meetings and while I definitely don’t see this as part of my mindfulness practice it has definitely changed my relationship with silence completely This has meant that I was able to keep that skill of sitting with my thoughts even when I wasn’t finding time to regularly practice meditation.

How does meditation fit into your life? Let me know in the comments.

Back at Meditation Classes

Last week I went back to a meditation class. I probably have been back once since I stopped regularly updating this blog. So much going on in the world at the moment I felt like I needed reminding that the thing I have control over is my perspective,  Serendipitously that was exactly what the class focused on, beginning with a short breathing meditation and then moving onto a longer meditation. We focused on the idea that it is only our view of something that makes it good or bad. Which makes me want to quote Hamlet: there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so…

I realise that it’s been a ridiculously long time since I updated this, there are two things I would hope that this blog might do:

One is to demonstrate that whatever barriers you might face to meditation they can be removed by using a little creativity and perseverance.

You don’t have to sit in a specific posture to be a meditator and neither do you have to have a perfect meditation session in order to get something out of it. In fact, some people say the more turbulent sessions, that is the ones where you constantly get distracted and have to bring yourself back to the breath are the ones that end up being the most useful.

The second is the reason why am posting again after all this time and that is to try to get into regular practice again: so I will be talking more about what I do each week to make meditation and mindfulness a regular part of my day.

How do you fit meditation into your life? Let me know in the comments

On that note, I’m off to do a short practice.