Next week, I start a meditation teacher training. It's a 100-hour online course that will take place every other weekend from March until early June. I'm really looking forward to it, though I'm also a little nervous as well.
I've practiced meditation for at least a decade now and have recently returned to daily meditation, typically somewhere around 20-40min a day. It has made a noticeable improvement in my stress levels and has helped ground me in my present experience.
When I tell people that I've been practicing meditation, I will sometimes get the response of, "That sounds great but I cannot meditate!" While I would never try to talk someone into meditation who isn't interested, I often feel that this idea of being unable to meditate typically comes from a misunderstanding of what meditation actually is. In popular culture, meditation is typically viewed as a way of emptying your mind of all thought. You find some perfect bliss state and attain enlightenment! Ah, nirvana! This is not meditation, as nice as that sounds.
Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said, "Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality." This means that meditation is not about avoiding the difficult thoughts, feelings, or sensations that arise in our mind-body. It's about learning to change our relationship to our experiences and approach them with gentleness. When we practice meditation, we do not avoid anxiety, stress, fear, or any other thoughts/feeling that arises; we welcome them and befriend them. When we sit down on our cushion or practice walking meditation, our demons are right there with us and overtime we make our demons into our friends.
I typically practice sitting meditation, which is commonly described as "mindfulness meditation." When I do this, I bring with me my stress, my anxiety, my to-dos for the day, and all of the other things whirling around in my head. When I meditate, never once am I able to just empty my head of these things. Instead, when I find that I have begun to get swept away with these thoughts and feelings -- going down a hole rabbit hole of worry or planning or dreaming -- I simply say to myself, "Oh, thinking," and bring my awareness back to my breath. With these words, "thinking," I am saying "Oh, hello, thoughts. There you are." Then I let those thoughts or feelings go. Sometimes I have to do this 50 times over the course of 20min.
When people meditate and find it difficult, getting caught up in their thoughts and feelings, their perfectionism sets in and they will feel like they are "failing" meditation. Grade F. If you've ever felt like this, I want you to know: you're not failing. In fact, this is meditation! Meditation is focusing our attention on our present experience, getting distracted, noticing that distraction ("thinking"), and then returning to the present. That is it. Again and again. Over and over for how ever long we wish to meditate. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's more difficult. On the days when it's more difficult, I like to remind myself that it probably means I needed that meditation session even more.
People, right now, are so often dissociated from their own bodies and experiences. We're so burned out and busy that we can't always tell what we feel or need, and when we do know what we feel, it can be so negative that all we wish to do is escape. We turn to our phones, or wine, or weed, or anything else to keep ourselves from feeling the bad feelings.
I believe meditation is one tool that can help us with this. It helps us to gain awareness of what we're feeling and observe those feelings without attachment or aversion. That is why I've chosen to take this class. Like learning First Aid, I hope I can use this skill to help guide others back to themselves and be able to make friends with their demons. Again and again. With love, and gentleness, and kindness.
This was originally shared in my monthly newsletter in March 2025.