Tag Archives: Meditation

What Is the Difference Between Mindfulness and Meditation?

Both of these terms regularly get tossed around on this blog. I recently realized that I’ve never defined them or talked about the subtle differences between them. It’s high time to change that!

Meditation Is an Action

Meditation requires you to arrange your body in a certain position and actively clear all of the thoughts from your head.

It is a deliberate pause in your day that has a specific beginning, middle, and end. Think of it like brushing your teeth or doing some other routine

This isn’t something that can be multi-tasked. When you meditate, it is the only thing you’re doing at that precise moment in time. There’s no room for distractions or breaks during it.

Sometimes it even requires you to willfully continue to keep your mind clear of thoughts and focus on your breathing if you’re having a lot of trouble.

Mindfulness Is a State of Mind

Mindfulness, on the other hand, does not require this level of focus. It is about remaining aware of what’s happening to you at this precise point in time without living in the past, worrying about the future, or passing judgement on what I’ve observing.

I can and have practiced mindfulness while standing in line, listening to the rain patter against my window, waiting to hear the results of medical tests, feeling annoyed by a careless stranger who wasn’t paying attention to where he or she was walking, and watching a dog chase squirrels at the park.

There are usually other thoughts floating around in my head when I practice mindfulness. As long as I remain focused on whatever is happening in the present moment and aren’t making judgements, I allow my brain to think whatever it wants to think.

Often it begins to focus on the details of the room, park, store, or other place where I happen to be that day. I like the thrill of noticing little things in those settings that many people overlook like the color of a pet’s leash or how many pigeons were wandering around while they waited for someone else to feed them. I usually tend to rush past those things myself, so slowing down enough to pay attention to them is a wonderfully healthy thing for me to do.

You Can’t Have Meditation without Mindfulness

The biggest reason why I file the meditation posts under mindfulness here is that you can’t meditate without first learning how to be mindful. Every time I pause and pay close attention to my surroundings, I get just a little better at meditating as a result.

There is something so joyful about seeing how mindfulness affects my meditation practices. As I’ve mentioned in the past, meditation is something I struggled a lot with when I first began practicing it.

My mind really hated the idea of sitting quietly and doing “nothing” for any length of time. Learning how to quiet it without physically sitting down and participating in traditional forms of meditation was eventually how I learned to slide into this practice.

Mindfulness became a habit for me long before meditation did.

(Incidentally, I’ve also pick up some fabulous ideas for poems and stories as well by watching people! You’d be surprised by how much you can learn about writing dialogue as well as human nature in by quietly observing how they interact with each other in public. Perhaps this should be the topic of a future post? What do you think?)

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The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Meditation

There are certain stages people seem to go through when they first begin meditating. Today I’m going to walk through them with you, so buckle your seat belts and prepare for a fun ride.

Stage 1: Confusion

A lot of guides make meditation sound so easy. Sit down somewhere comfortable, close your eyes, and clear your mind, they say.

Sitting and not thinking is going feel really weird and confusing in the beginning, though. This isn’t normally how people behave. Our minds really aren’t used to it, so they need some time to figure out what is happening. While they adjust, you might feel confused or like you’re not meditating the right way.

Don’t worry, though. This is all part of the process.

The desire to move your mind or your body is strongest when you first start out. I know that I still get the urge to open my eyes or wiggle a limb when I’m meditating. In fact, I just wiggled my left foot as I was writing that last line. The mere thought of sitting perfectly still was enough to make me want to move.

This is why I recommend guided meditation for beginners. It is so much easier to stay still and stick with a routine if you have someone telling you how to breathe or which parts of your body you should focus on relaxing at a particular point in the process.

That outside guidance also reduces confusion. You don’t have to worry about where you are or when you’ll be finished if someone else is gently nudging you along.

I’m not going to be recommending any one particular guide here because I haven’t found one that is well-rounded enough to meet my expectations. I jump among a few different products depending on how I’m feeling on a particular day and what I can find online for free.

These things work well for my purposes, but you might want to take a different approach to the question. If one single program meets most or all of your needs, that’s great!

Stage 2: Boredom

This is so boring. Why aren’t I getting anything out of it?

One of the biggest reasons why I had so much trouble getting into the habit of meditating when I first tried it out is that it didn’t seem to be doing anything for me. I’d sit in mental and physical silence for X amount of time without feeling any different at the end of a session than I did beforehand.

Like losing weight, learning a new language, or beginning the long journey home after completing some kind of sacred mission, though, this isn’t the sort of thing that you’ll see quick results for.

Don’t concentrate on the end goal. Focus on your task at hand especially if nothing seems to be changing. This is how it is supposed to be. You will get better at it as you go along.

Yes, it’s going to feel repetitive and mundane some days. This is completely normal and not anything to be concerned about in the least. Boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this case. Your brain will adjust and so will you if you give it some time.

I also think that our technology-obsessed society would really benefit from learning how to handle being bored again in general. I know that I get restless more quickly than I used to because my smartphone is so accessible whenever I need a distraction.

The nice thing about meditation is that it will give you the opportunity to sit with those feelings without trying to find a solution for it. Sometimes boredom can’t and shouldn’t be fixed.

Keep plugging along at it.

Stage 3: Thoughtlessness

There will eventually come a time when you clear all of the thoughts out of your mind and no new ones will rush in to fill their place.

It’s hard to describe what this kind of experience is like because there are no words or thoughts at all when you’re in the middle of it.

Have you ever woken up just as your final dream of the night was leaving your memory for good?

It feels like a calm version of that.

You’re dimly aware of your own existence and of the fact that something special is happening, but you don’t have any conscious feelings about any of it.

The other metaphor I like to use to describe it is that it is similar to floating around in a little bubble. All of your needs are being taken care of, and there is nothing you need to do, say, or think at the moment.

It is peaceful and invigorating all at once, although neither of those words come to mind when I’m in this state.

Even now this isn’t something that happens to me every single time I meditate. Some days I can’t clear my mind out fully for whatever reason, and that is okay. The nice thing about meditation is that there is no punishment for doing it “incorrectly.” The simple act of trying is enough, and there will always be another day to sit down and see if your mind is more relaxed.

One of the things that made me stick with meditation over the long haul was the fact that there’s no such thing as failure here. It is what it is.

This leads me to the last stage…

 Stage 4: Peace

Meditation can have some nice benefits for people who practice it regularly.

I recently took a break from meditating while healing from an accident. The (thankfully mild) injury I sustained during it prevented me from moving in certain ways, and the discomfort of it was also enough to cause a distraction when I attempted to quiet down my thoughts for those first few days.

There is peace to be found once you settle into a regular rhythm of meditation, though.

The first time I saw the picture on the right, I giggled.

The second time I wondered about how long the subject might have been meditating before she was captured in this precise moment.

Look at how relaxed the muscles in her face are. A small part of me wonders if someone could have gently placed the hat of leaves on her head while she was meditating without her necessarily noticing or caring what was happening.

I still see the humour in this shot, but it also reminds me of how I feel after some mediation sessions these days. It is so relaxing to open your eyes after 15 minutes of perfect stillness and slowly grow accustomed to the sights and sounds of our world again.

It will be fascinating to see how this develops the longer I practice meditation.

If you haven’t given it a try yet, I highly recommend doing so. This is one of the most positive things I’ve ever done for my mental health. I can’t praise it enough.

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How to Meditate in a Noisy, Crowded Place

Over the last few weeks I’ve been practicing something that doesn’t come easily to me at all.

My spouse enjoys the energy of the crowds at the mall. He likes wandering around during the busier parts of the day and year. Here in Toronto we often have special giveaways, promotional booths, or other events put on by various companies to draw attention to their products.

As you might have already guessed, I am not a huge fan of this pastime. There is nothing relaxing to me about being surrounded by so many strangers in such a loud, bright place whose only purpose is to sell things to you that you don’t even necessarily need.
Last month I decided to take a new approach to the time we spent at the mall. Would it be possible for me to meditate in a busy mall? Would I ever learn to enjoy spending time there? Could I be as peaceful at the orangutang on the left in that environment?

The only way to answer those questions was to give it a try.

How It Went

Luckily, I had many opportunities to practice mindfulness at various malls this past month.

The first time I tried it I was sitting in a small food court that is nearly always packed full with people. There was so much background noise that I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. The sounds of clinking dishes, chairs scraping against the floor, and dozens of private conversations were all going on at once.

One of the reasons why I dislike that kind of environment so much is that it’s impossible to pick out individuals sounds or conversations. They’re all so muddled together that my brain can’t make sense of any of it, and that annoys me.

This time I ignored my urge to think about the background noise. Instead, I closed my eyes and let it all wash over me. It felt sort of like floating down a river. You can’t control where the current goes, but you can choose to relax and allow it to carry you downstream.

The most interesting part of this experience for me was how well this metaphor worked for me. I hadn’t realized how much energy I was putting into figuring out what all of those noises meant until I consciously chose to stop interpreting them for a little while.

The food court I sat in for my second attempt at meditating in a noisy place was larger and busier than the one I’d previously visited. I kept my eyes opened this time for the sake of comparison. This experience didn’t last very long due to reasons that I’ll explain in a minute.

The other attempts I made to stay mindful at the mall happened under less controlled circumstances. I was usually walking in a crowd while trying to get my mind to slow down and focus on what was happening in that exact moment. This is something I’ve had a lot of luck with when walking outdoors at the park or in some of my favourite Toronto neighbourhoods, so I wanted to see if it would work just as well at the mall.

The Results

The first trial was the most successful one. That food court was slightly quieter than the other places I chose. Closing my eyes and purposefully allowing all of the sounds I was hearing to pass through my mind without trying to decode them also helped. It will be interesting to see if I can recreate something similar to this experience in the future.

Keeping my eyes opened in the second experiment didn’t work well for me at all. Food courts have too many distractions in them for me to stay focused on what I’m doing, especially when they’re as crowded as the one I was in. It will be interesting to see if I can reduce the amount of stimulation in this environment by focusing on a particular object the next time I try this. I’ve been thinking that something small and inconsequential like a soft drink cup might be the perfect thing to rest my eyes on if I want to keep them open in the future.

I was surprised by how little I enjoyed the experience of walking through the mall while trying to clear my mind. After thinking about it, I suspect it was because there weren’t any signs of nature there. Trees, bushes, flowers, and small animals are soothing to me. I was also so busy trying to avoid running into other people that it was difficult to keep my mind clear of thoughts.

Have I become a fan of wandering around the mall for the sake of having fun? No, I haven’t. I don’t think it’s ever going to become my idea of a good time, but this was still an interesting and worthwhile experiment.

Everyone feels uncomfortable in certain places or situations. There’s definitely something to be said for learning to relax in an environment that isn’t your cup of tea.

I’m looking forward to trying this again in other noisy, crowded places soon. It will be fascinating to see if I can get better results next time. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to hear what your experiences have been with meditating or staying mindful in less-than-ideal circumstances.

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Staying Mindful During the Holidays

santa-claus-christmas-beard-celebration-41963We’re quickly sliding into the busiest time of year for retailers and shoppers alike.

I’ve been spending some time watching strangers rush around at the mall lately. If you’re not struggling to find those last few presents, it can be a fascinating way to use up half an hour or so of your time.

There are people who seem to love the thrill of shopping and jumping from one event to the next, people who are unbelievably stressed by all of the things they’re expected to do and to attend, and people who barely give any outward indications of how they feel at all.

If I could gather them all in the same room and talk to them about remaining mindful during what is the busiest time of the year for many people, this is what I would tell them.

It’s Okay to Say No

Several years ago, I unintentionally overheard a woman talking about how tired she was of buying presents for so many different people. She had no idea what to get for any of them and didn’t enjoy the process of searching multiple stores to find something that they might not even end up needing or liking.

I wish someone could have told her that it’s okay to say no to gift exchanges, parties, reunions, and other events if they don’t bring anything positive to your life.

There’s a decent chance that at least one other person in that group feels the same way and is wishing they could find a way to simplify their life. Mentioning how you feel could be doing them a big favour!

Even if you turn out to be the only one who wants to stop or change how things are being done, being honest about what you’re feeling in this exact moment is still a good idea.

Don’t Forget to Breathe

I have a meditation app that prompts me  to stop and focus on my breathing for one minute twice a day.

reflection-water-canal-mirroring-70574Since I started using it, my average resting heart rate has gone down a little bit. I’ve also been feeling more peaceful than I was before I began this habit.

You don’t have to spend a great deal of time meditating in order to benefit from it. While I am definitely planning to get back into longer sessions in 2017, it’s nice to take these short breaks and focus on the moment regardless of where I am or what I’m doing.

I am not a big fan of the huge crowds that form at this time of year. Meditation helps me relax when I’m in a situation where I’m surrounded by them.

Ignore the Hype

One of the other things I dislike the most about this season is how hard advertisers push to convince us that buying stuff is the secret to happiness and family harmony.

While I understand that this is a critical time of year for their bottom lines, ignoring the hype is an important part of staying mindful during the holidays.

Since I don’t have cable, Youtube is where where I see most of the ads in my daily life. A while ago they started forcing viewers to watch at least a portion of them before you could watch certain videos. There are times during the year when I’m willing to watch them, but I’ve been trying to cut down on how much time I spend on that site because I really need a break from advertisements for a while.

The nice thing about reducing the number of ads you see is that it can also reduce your number of must-have items. For example,  I find myself wanting fewer electronic devices and specialty food items when I haven’t given companies a lot of opportunities to market them to me.

Sometimes what you tune out is as important as what you tune into.

May the holiday season be a peaceful and joyful one for all of you!

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Mindfulness and Medical Procedures

In saying this, your mind is your biggest ally going into surgery. Your body and mind are very powerful machines–resilient and built for healing. Read on as we discuss the idea of “mindfulness” and share how you can pull the plug on negative thought patterns to set yourself up for success.

Source

Without giving away any specific details, I know a few people who are currently going through various medical situations. Earlier this year I went through my own brief round of testing to rule out a potentially serious illness that turned out to be nothing worrisome at all.

Big WorldMy experience was a drop in the bucket when compared to people who were or are seriously ill. In no way am I trying to say that being tested for a specific ailment is anything at all like being treated for an actual disease or injury.

There’s still the anxiety of not knowing what tomorrow will bring, though. It can easily become overwhelming, especially for those of us who already have a tendency to worry. Searching the internet doesn’t help. If anything, it can make the waiting process worse because of how easy it is to find the worst case scenario online. Somehow those sites even make the common cold or twisted ankle sound scary!

The link I shared above is about joint replacement surgeries, but the advice in it is universal. You could use the same techniques with a broken bone, chronic pain, depression, or any number of other health issues.

I’ve blogged about my complicated relationship with mindfulness and meditation before. Walking meditation works nicely, but it’s difficult for me to sit quietly and meditate for more than a few minutes. (Those of you who are good at it have my deepest admiration!)

With that being said, one of the biggest benefits of these practices shows up when you’re anxiously waiting for news. There is little anyone can do to speed up the healing process, and there’s nothing we can do to make medical test results come back faster. Sometimes you simply have to sit and wait  for days, weeks, or months until you know what the future holds for you.

In these moments, mindfulness and meditation would be worth their weight in gold if they had a physical mass. There is something soothing about living in the moment and accepting that you don’t have the answers and you can’t control what is going to happen.

Do you meditate or practice mindfulness? If so, I’d like to hear how they’ve affected your life.

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The Downside to Living in the Moment

Last weekend my better half and I visited a mall that I like to think of as Toddler Alley. As you might imagine, there are 4391* malls in Toronto. This particular one seems to specialize in giving young families a safe place to walk around in when the weather is uncooperative.

The first time I noticed the little boy was when he threw himself onto the floor with a loud wail. He was about two and clearly had hurtled past the outer rim of his patience.

“It’s frustrating to be that age,” I said quietly once we’d passed him. Drew nodded. The boy was so young that living in the moment was all he could do. The problem with that is sometimes the present moment is exasperating, painful, gruelling, or overwhelming. Without being able to see the big picture, all he could assume was that life was terrible and that things will never get better due to the developmental stage of life he’s currently experiencing.

It also made me think about the heavy focus on living in the moment in my meditation routine.

I understand the purpose of it. It’s a valuable tool.

Yet I wonder what makes it so hard for some adults to do it. I tend to struggle more with bridging the gap between what’s happening right now and how things might change in the future. It’s easy to assume that everything will stay the same, whether you’re currently experiencing the best or worst times of your life.

When things do change, I’m often surprised. Intellectually I know that life is full of change, but in this particular instance I empathized with that little boy. Living in the moment isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.

*Or something like that.

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My Meditation Confession

Copyright (C) 2001, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Copyright (C) 2001, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

I’ve talked a lot about meditating on this blog over the years.

It’s something that appealed to me even back when I was a Christian and thought doing it might be spiritually dangerous. My mind has always been so full of thoughts that there was something wonderful about taking occasional breaks from them. It’s not that my thoughts were frightening or annoying. They were just always there.

My first attempts at meditation failed. The instructions were so simple, yet I just couldn’t sit and do nothing for more than a minute or two. The whirr of the air condition would suddenly become annoyingly loud. My left knee would itch. I’d wonder if I’d turned off the stove after making breakfast.

If my body couldn’t move, my mind would be sure find a way to make up for it. No sooner would one thought be pushed away than another one would take its place.

I tried again and again. The books I’d read about it said this was common, but I never discovered the benefits in it that everyone else seemed to find.

All I did was sit and notice things I’d never thought about before. Occasionally I’d complete a short session and actually clear my mind for a little while. Usually this didn’t happen though.

Two things shifted in my life that made meditation work better:

1) I downloaded a guided mediation app on my iPhone.

Yes, some of the guides say cheesy things. There are other programs that only focus on relaxation and calming your mind, though, and I’ve found a lot of benefit in paying attention to them. They work especially well when I’m sick or when it’s too hot (or cold) outside to do a lot of walking.

If I’m left to my own devices, my mind will wander all over the place. That’s just what minds do.

2) I started noticing what I wasn’t thinking when I took walks.

In a word, nothing at all.

Walking doesn’t require any thinking unless you’re checking to see if a street is safe to cross. Even then, the flow of other pedestrians can often guide me across busy roads.

My body is happier when it has something to do, even if that something is walking down a flat, even street where nothing exciting is taking place. Just the act of moving is enough to give me the motivation to clear my mind.

I used to think that the only proper way to meditate was by sitting cross-legged in silence. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing that, of course, but I’m happy to say that I’ve found better alternatives for myself.

 

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A Song for Meditation

This is 8 minutes of pure relaxation. I’ve been using it in my daily meditation and thought my readers might like to give it a try as well. If the video doesn’t show up, click here.

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Secular Meditation Update

About six weeks ago I blogged about my earliest experiences with secular mediation. Today I’ll be sharing an update on my progress.

A Confession

To be honest, I don’t meditate every day. At the beginning of this experiment it was something I did fairly infrequently and I am now slowly folding it more and more often into my schedule.

When I was a kid the idea of praying and reading the Bible every day was drilled into us. I never did those things either.  Doing something simply because one ought to do it doesn’t appeal to me. As selfish as this may sound, I need more concrete reasons to adjust my habits.

The Nuts and Bolts Of It All

Meditation, when it is portrayed at all in the media, tends to show people sitting down and concentrating. This isn’t something that has worked for me yet. My mind wanders, my toes itch, my bones creak and I have the urge to do anything other than sit cross-legged with my eyes closed at that particular moment in time.

Two things do work for me: lying down and relaxing as many muscles as possible (including my brain, although I don’t think that is technically a muscle 😉  )and clearing my thoughts over a nice long walk. Either I need to be completely relaxed or my legs need to be free to roam around to reboot my brain, so to speak.

Results

My natural state is to worry just a little more than the average person; true relaxation isn’t something that comes easily. These tendencies will always be part of who I am, I think. Some people struggle with a short temper, others have a propensity to gossip or to feel envious of what other people have that they do not. If there are any perfect people in this world I have yet to meet them.

My intention with meditation, then, isn’t to change the foundations of my personality. Actually, I started this without any real sort of purpose at all. I’d simply heard so much about it and wanted to know what all of the fuss was about.

So far I can say that I’m learning how to relax, release worrisome thoughts, and how not to have to think through everything that has happened or could possibly happen. I’ll always be someone who lives in thought, of course. I wouldn’t be the same Lydia without the ability to imagine what could be a thousand ways from Sunday but I don’t worry about it as much any longer. Things will happen that I wish hadn’t happened. Thinking about them cannot change the outcome. Things will cease to happen that I wish would stick around. Thoughts won’t change that either. I can even bring about this sense of detachment sometimes now when I’m not meditating. Thinking about the act is enough to spark a shift in my mood at least occasionally.

This is a definitely a welcomed change. I hadn’t realized in the past how tense I was – not always, of course, but enough that now that I’m beginning to see how to live more calmly. I wonder what other grooves are dug into life with our habits?

New Goals

Now that I’ve seen some positive results from this experiment, I’m ready to try meditating more regularly. I’m still uninterested in the religious aspects of it but wouldn’t mind reading books or watching online clips that talk about the history behind it or of other meditation techniques.

Those of you who meditate or who are good at creating new habits: do you have any suggestions?

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