My first encounter with Meditation came over 30 years ago, when 'Mindfulness' was not even a twinkle in the eye of a Boddhisattva. In those days, meditating came with a side serving of hippy clothes, squatting on a cushion in front of some kind of altar, and with the scent of Patchouli ( or cannabis) in the air. I was just not that sort of Elephant.
A college friend asked me to keep her company at a drop-in Meditation group in Notting Hill. We pitched up, we meditated in very relaxing surroundings, then headed home. I didn't think much more about it...but the seed had been sown. When ME got it's hooks into me 3 years later, I took up TM ( Transcendental Meditation) which I did faithfully every day for years, with short meditations 'on the hoof' as I improved. Meditation helped me to deal with pain, and to be more emotionally stable. It also enabled me to 'recharge' more readily when I had 'overdone it'.
As I got stronger, I began attending meditation drop-ins a couple of times a week, at Brighton Buddhist Centre This place became my 'home- from- home'. I did day retreats, took part in a basic course on Buddhism, and spent Christmas Day meditating there.
Over the next years Prayer started to replace Meditation...as life became very difficult, trying to balance working with health problems....and so I stopped.
I had thought that living with constant pain would 'let me off the hook' from having to meditate again, but...I have just signed up, and over the next 3 months I will be doing this course:
Mindfulness For Health
with the aim of coping better with the constant pain.
Vidyamala Burch ( the founder of Breathworks and this course), has developed a way to meditate when you are in pain and feeling awful- she should know. Her story with injury and pain goes back decades and lives with constant pain and has to use a wheelchair. I can heartily recommend Vidyamala's book: Living Well With Pain and Illness This book has slowly worn down my resistance to having a regular meditation practise again.
So in the coming weeks, I will be doing 2 x10 minute guided mediations twice daily, as well as other Mindfulness exercises. There is no patchouli oil, no hippy cushions and no excuses...
How will I get on? We will all have to wait and see...
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