Remember when you were a kid and you would simply stare up at the clouds, trying to make out shapes?
I used to do that when my family would go on long car trips (after fighting with my brother got boring). I’d lay down in the backseat and just gaze at the sky, my mind quiet and empty, picking out elephants, boats and faces. I would watch the telephone wires, dipping and winding their way past our minivan. I would watch the trees swaying in the wind and wonder what kind they were.
And that’s all I would do. I wouldn’t be simultaneously checking my email on my phone or writing up a to-do list in my head. I would just be.
Turns out, that stillness of mind was actually meditation – real, natural, simple meditation. I’d been doing it this whole time, and I just forgot.
During my yoga training I’ve been lucky enough to work with Shomer Zwelling, a yoga and meditation teacher in Williamsburg. He has studied meditation in Nepal and India as well as around the U.S. and is absolutely brilliant.
He’s been a part of my very early meditation experiences, and he made me realize just how natural meditation is. A lot of people think they’re not doing it right when they have a thousand thoughts bouncing off each other, when they are unable to stop the chatter, when their minds are unable to find stillness. They wait for some big “Aha!” moment to let them know they are doing it “right.”
But that is meditation. It’s YOUR meditation, during that moment, that instant. There is no wrong or right way to do it.
When it comes to meditation, you’re essentially relearning something natural you forgot about. When we’re young, our minds aren’t clouded with to-do lists, with complicated relationships, with careers and big decisions. But as we grow, our range of mindfulness becomes smaller and smaller, until we forget what it’s like to just be in that childlike state of innocence.
And same goes for the physical practice of yoga. Shomer shared a story about his eight-month-old grandson who, right there on the changing table, went into happy baby, grabbing his feet and rocking back and forth. Now, at two years old, he easily pops into a bridge in order to change his pants.
As we grow older, we limit our range of movements. We learn to contain our physical energy, we begin sitting in the same pose for long periods of time, we resist movements that make us seem childlike.
Yoga and meditation teach us to let go and undo the limits we’ve placed on ourselves. It allows us to recognize our fears – our physical, mental and emotional fears – and let them go,
I used to do that when my family would go on long car trips (after fighting with my brother got boring). I’d lay down in the backseat and just gaze at the sky, my mind quiet and empty, picking out elephants, boats and faces. I would watch the telephone wires, dipping and winding their way past our minivan. I would watch the trees swaying in the wind and wonder what kind they were.
And that’s all I would do. I wouldn’t be simultaneously checking my email on my phone or writing up a to-do list in my head. I would just be.
Turns out, that stillness of mind was actually meditation – real, natural, simple meditation. I’d been doing it this whole time, and I just forgot.
During my yoga training I’ve been lucky enough to work with Shomer Zwelling, a yoga and meditation teacher in Williamsburg. He has studied meditation in Nepal and India as well as around the U.S. and is absolutely brilliant.
He’s been a part of my very early meditation experiences, and he made me realize just how natural meditation is. A lot of people think they’re not doing it right when they have a thousand thoughts bouncing off each other, when they are unable to stop the chatter, when their minds are unable to find stillness. They wait for some big “Aha!” moment to let them know they are doing it “right.”
But that is meditation. It’s YOUR meditation, during that moment, that instant. There is no wrong or right way to do it.
When it comes to meditation, you’re essentially relearning something natural you forgot about. When we’re young, our minds aren’t clouded with to-do lists, with complicated relationships, with careers and big decisions. But as we grow, our range of mindfulness becomes smaller and smaller, until we forget what it’s like to just be in that childlike state of innocence.
And same goes for the physical practice of yoga. Shomer shared a story about his eight-month-old grandson who, right there on the changing table, went into happy baby, grabbing his feet and rocking back and forth. Now, at two years old, he easily pops into a bridge in order to change his pants.
As we grow older, we limit our range of movements. We learn to contain our physical energy, we begin sitting in the same pose for long periods of time, we resist movements that make us seem childlike.
Yoga and meditation teach us to let go and undo the limits we’ve placed on ourselves. It allows us to recognize our fears – our physical, mental and emotional fears – and let them go,