by Maria Banfield
Let me paint you a picture of how I remember it. I was flat out of luck. I felt as if I had done 12 rounds with mike Tyson and that, no matter what I did, it was never enough. I had bills piling up and I had borrowed from friends who needed their money back. I was going downhill fast – financially, physically and mentally. I was stuck in a job that I didn’t like and knew I was never going to get the rewards for everything I was doing. It was hard and I was under pressure. Yet no one seemed to realize or, if they did, they didn’t say anything.
I had tried the usual things to try and overcome my self-doubt but I had reached an apparent dead end. I tried lots of new ideas but none of what I tried did any good. Meanwhile, my life was becoming more and more stressful.
At the end of the day trying to get to sleep was a trial. My mind was a constant buzz. All my thoughts were of doom and gloom. Negative thoughts about work kept creeping up on me. My social life was non-existent.
By chance I came across a newspaper clipping that caught my attention. It was an article on the power of meditation and how it can change your life. I was extremely skeptical. How could meditation help get me out from under the boulder I was under?
Even so, I found a local class and decided to give their starter lesson a try. But it didn’t work for me. Maybe my skepticism got in the way. Maybe I made the mistake of expecting immediate results rather than allowing it time. Maybe it was a simple case of wrong timing; simply, that I wasn’t ready for it.
Fast forward a few months and I spotted a notice, advertising a 6-week mindfulness course at my local gym. Something told me that my experience would be different this time. I arrived at the class feeling a little apprehensive because of my last meditation experience but there was a difference this time. I felt open-minded rather than cynical. Also, having done a little research on mindfulness, I no longer expected instant results. I now knew enough about the practice to understand that it is no quick-fix, self-help process, that it is much more subtle than that, and that it requires great patience.
Our first session involved a body scan lasting 30-40 minutes. We were given thin rubber mats, invited to take up a comfortable position on the floor and then our attention was directed towards specific body parts – starting with the toes and slowly working up to the head. If our minds wandered, we were asked to simply recognize that our thoughts had strayed and to bring the focus back to the part of the body we were focusing on before. I didn’t find it particularly easy. My mind wandered quite a lot and, at one point, I caught myself just as I was about to fall asleep. From all this I concluded that my first body scan hadn’t been too successful. But the teacher soon put me right. In the “inquiry” which followed the meditation, the teacher explained that minds will always be wandering and that the aim of mindfulness is not to stop thoughts altogether. Instead, the mindful thing to do was simply to notice that thoughts are bubbling up. The same applied to noticing that I was about to fall asleep. The mindfulness was in the noticing. In the noticing, I was being aware of my present moment experience. I left the first class feeling that I was beginning to grasp what mindfulness practice was really about.
During the next week I applied myself to home practice with a firm resolve and I found myself keenly anticipating the next class. In week two we practiced a simple sitting/breathing meditation. It was the simplicity of this meditation that took me by surprise. Sitting in a chair with my back supported and my hands resting on my lap. I was invited to become aware of my breathing, simply noticing the in breath and the out breath. As with the body scan, whenever my mind wandered, I brought my attention back to my anchor – the breath.
I now incorporated this meditation into my home practice, so I would alternate between body scans and breathing/sitting. Halfway through that week I was in the washroom at work and looked in the mirror. I noticed I was smiling to myself. This wasn’t too familiar a sight to me. At that moment I realized that, while my problems and dilemmas were still there, I somehow felt much lighter, as if I was relating to the difficulties in my life in a new way.
In subsequent weeks, we were introduced to other kinds of sitting meditations and to mindful movement (a kind of light yoga). Then, in week five, in a sitting meditation, we were invited to “turn towards difficulty”. This marked a big turning point for me. I was conditioned to doing everything but “turn towards” when faced with a difficulty in life. I would run away from it, distract myself, any number of strategies. But turning towards? Why would I want to do that, right?
But the simple meditation taught me that the difficult thought or emotion has already arrived. By “turning towards” it, I am simply being with my own experience, rather than wishing it away. This was a hugely important lesson for me.
In the months following that 6-week class, I’ve managed to maintain a regular practice and the benefits have been massive. I have learned to simply be and that’s a revelation to me. A few of my old problems are still around but, again, I’m learning to relate to them differently. Rather than feel hopelessly submerged in debt, I mindfully approached my bank and asked to talk. They were very understanding. I took a long look at my job situation and realized I needed to change. So I applied for a new job, and got it. These days I actually wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work. I’ve become much more sociable. All round, I feel like I’m travelling lighter.
When I look back, I realize that I could so easily have given up after that first meditation class I attended. And my life would be so much different now. Thank goodness for the patience I found that enabled me to give it another go. Because mindfulness has transformed my life.
Maria Banfield is a guest blogger and fitness lover. She enjoys contributing to websites that help individuals to grow. She currently writes for the leading website Fitandheal.com
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Hi I’m billy bob joe
Great Article!
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It’s so great to hear some one else’s story about turning towards the unpleasant things that are coming up in life. Seems wrong at first but man does it help. Thanks for sharing your story!