How I Came to Embrace Sitting

I’ve been a yoga teacher for over a decade, and it’s taken me this long to finally embrace meditation. I went through a vipassana retreat several years ago. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life. It was also one of the most amazing experiences. I came out of it understanding that I and only I was responsible for my own suffering and pain…that I had a choice. I also came out of the retreat with the intention of making meditation a regular discipline. I believe this lasted about two days.

I’ve never embraced meditation. But lately, it keeps being suggested to me in myriad forms — people, books, my own inner wisdom. A part of me understood that this was the key to my salvation. But part of me rejected it wholeheartedly. And so three weeks ago, with the aid of the wisdom of my friend Nina, I began sitting again. And this time, I sat with no focus on the breath and no intention to mind my thoughts. Rather I sat and just listened.

I listened empathetically to that child deep inside all of us. I heard her anger and her fear and her sadness. And for the first time, I didn’t try to console her or make it better. I just let her feel. Sometimes I would pry a little and try to see what was underneath the emotion. But when I found myself too much in my head, I immediately went back to her and just listened.

Perhaps all people meditating find this place. Perhaps I just wasn’t ready or didn’t have the tools to really listen, to create a space for her, for me, to feel angry and sad and fearful and rejected.

So much of life is putting on that face, that front. It’s silencing those feelings that society deems “negative.” But they need space, too.

And for now, that space is my meditation. In a perfect place my meditation would hold all of the range of my emotions; and there are times it does. But for now it is mainly a space where I express sadness and anger and fear. Ironically, as I express these I am not sad or angry — I just am. Most often I am fearful in the pit my stomach. But I know there’s something there and I’m getting closer.

And ultimately, the excitement far outweighs the fear. My meditation is a journey, an adventure. For the first time I’m passionate about meditation because I finally see a real benefit for me, personally, as opposed to meditation being a “should.” I’ve found a space where I can truly express all of me, and in that expression come to love, and perhaps finally accept, all of me.