It is indeed a radical act of love to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Meditation is not necessarily a technique that we learn to put in practice to get a given result.
It is more like a self journey towards ourselves, an acknowledgment to stay attuned to what is, to get to know ourselves better without the expectation of an end result, without agenda or competition, without trying to get to a place where things are better and/or make more sense to us.
Meditation is the experimentation of the inner knowledge that we meet ourselves as we are and the awareness that we take steps forward to focus our attention on the natural flow of the being. When practicing meditation, we experience the sensations in our body, feel and hear the chaotic chatter of the mind, we become aware of the slipping away of our attention and pause to get it back in the body. All this in the company of the preset moment.
Non judgment and self-kindness are helping during meditation time. Through these two resources, we become more curious to open spaciousness and sit with whatever comes our way.
Awareness of what is: through meditation, we connect to ourselves with all our senses, we simply breathe and eventually understand that what is is ok, that with mindful presence we have a choice to fully live in the here and now and acknowledge the uniqueness of the now.
In time, with patience and kindness towards ourselves, through curiosity and openness to what is, we start seeing the reality as it actually is and not through the filters of our past experiences or of our expectations and imagination.
For some, to experience meditation is to sit quietly and connect to the flow within. For others, meditation means bringing to life a state of being through different activities that make us feel at home with ourselves (dance, art, cooking, knitting, hiking, photography), and, yet, for others, meditation means to simply and fully concentrate on the present moment no matter what is going on at that very moment.
Our concentration, coupled by the breath, help the body relax, slow down the chatter of our mind and brings a soothing and calming awareness inside.
Once we decide to start practicing our way of meditation, we are opening endless doors to experience it. The more we pause and become aware of our breath and sit quietly, the better we help our brain to rewire differently, to get out of the automatization response and to see things from different angles and perspectives.
If and when we become comfortable enough to pause, to use our breath as an anchor to be able to sit with our feelings or with whatever comes our way, the path to meditation becomes a unique tool to connect to everything around. This path connects ourselves to the awareness that there is little room to control the change (which is the only constant in life) and helps us become more mindful of the spaciousness inside and helps us find that rooted trust inside and become resilient and appreciate our life one step at the time.
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