I have been trying to practice meditation regularly in Bangladesh. There were a couple weeks that were too cold for me to get out of bed in the morning, so I slacked off. Now I have been slowly getting back into it.
As any meditator knows, meditation is difficult. The goal is to try and calm or still your mind. The problem is our minds are constantly racing. For me, my mind often wanders to an idea for a new blog to write, or what I need to accomplish that day/week/month. There are so many things to think about and so little time to think! Yet, I know that when I can accomplish even a few minutes of meditation in the morning before I do anything else, my days seem to go much smoother. I am more ready to face other people, can accomplish more work and just tend to have happier, calmer days.
There are so many different techniques for meditation. Sometimes I will try to sit for short periods, multiple times throughout the day so that I can try different techniques. I usually start my morning with a chakra cleansing meditation. This morning I chose to focus on my breath. I used a form of pranayama where the exhalation is twice as long as the inhalation: 4 sec inhalation= 8 sec exhalation. This allows you to completely rid the lungs of all the stale air before bringing fresh, clean air in. As you slow the breath, you also begin to notice the heart beat slow down and the mind becomes calm.
I kept with my breath pattern and began to clear my chakras. About the time I reached my heart chakra I noticed the sound of an even drumbeat at about 1 beat/second. Rather than getting annoyed with this potential distraction, I allowed the beats to help me stay in tune with my breath and complete my meditation practice. Had I been a bit newer to meditation, I might have allowed those drum beats to annoy and agitate me bringing me out of my meditative state. However, as I have progressed in my practice, I have been trained to focus on sounds only as sounds without attaching to them or being distracted by them. In this way, the drumming actually helped my meditation by matching the pace of my breath counts.
The drums belonged to the Bangladeshi Army who was practicing right outside my window. We live in the Cantonment area and are right next door to the Army base here. I have a feeling this may be a regular occurrence and I happily welcome it in to my meditation practice.
As any meditator knows, meditation is difficult. The goal is to try and calm or still your mind. The problem is our minds are constantly racing. For me, my mind often wanders to an idea for a new blog to write, or what I need to accomplish that day/week/month. There are so many things to think about and so little time to think! Yet, I know that when I can accomplish even a few minutes of meditation in the morning before I do anything else, my days seem to go much smoother. I am more ready to face other people, can accomplish more work and just tend to have happier, calmer days.
There are so many different techniques for meditation. Sometimes I will try to sit for short periods, multiple times throughout the day so that I can try different techniques. I usually start my morning with a chakra cleansing meditation. This morning I chose to focus on my breath. I used a form of pranayama where the exhalation is twice as long as the inhalation: 4 sec inhalation= 8 sec exhalation. This allows you to completely rid the lungs of all the stale air before bringing fresh, clean air in. As you slow the breath, you also begin to notice the heart beat slow down and the mind becomes calm.
I kept with my breath pattern and began to clear my chakras. About the time I reached my heart chakra I noticed the sound of an even drumbeat at about 1 beat/second. Rather than getting annoyed with this potential distraction, I allowed the beats to help me stay in tune with my breath and complete my meditation practice. Had I been a bit newer to meditation, I might have allowed those drum beats to annoy and agitate me bringing me out of my meditative state. However, as I have progressed in my practice, I have been trained to focus on sounds only as sounds without attaching to them or being distracted by them. In this way, the drumming actually helped my meditation by matching the pace of my breath counts.
The drums belonged to the Bangladeshi Army who was practicing right outside my window. We live in the Cantonment area and are right next door to the Army base here. I have a feeling this may be a regular occurrence and I happily welcome it in to my meditation practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment