meditation for nerds and overthinkers.
As I’ve written about in The Prologue, I can pinpoint the day meditation practice entered my life. But I’m not as clear on the specifics trajectory from that point to here. Somewhere along the way I started listening to podcasts and reading books and studying the philosophy and the science and pragmatic implementation. I can’t recall finding those resources, or the sequence it happened. But I took a deep dive into everything I could find on this new discovery of mine.
That’s what I do, by the way. I study. I’m a nerd, and I learn. It’s my most natural way of being in the world. It’s how I approached motherhood and it is definitely how I coped with my child’s Down syndrome diagnosis. I absorbed all the data I could about it.
When I go and gather all this good knowledge, I then, frequently, feel compelled to share it. I am as much an educator as I am a meditator or a counselor.
So here goes — sharing the good knowledge.
Ultimately, mindfulness meditation is about growing awareness to what is happening in our own minds, recognizing it, accepting it, and letting it exist exactly as it is — alternatively called “letting go”.
Modern humans, as a species, are classified as Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo - human being; sapiens wise, discerning. That’s who and what we are. The species that knows - and knows it knows.
Our humanness makes us the perfect candidates for mindfulness.
Before I was a mediation practitioner, I was a therapist. Specifically, I was a cognitive behavioral therapist. There is so much similarity between these modalities - recognizing habitual thought patterns and no longer allowing them to weave into a story that carries one away.
A very long time ago, in college, a friend tried to teach me to meditate. She advised that I visualize a single point of light behind my closed eyes. She assured me that if I focused on that light, and cleared my thoughts, I would see cool trippy visions.
It didn’t work.
One of the reasons mindfulness resonates with me, and works for me, is because I don’t have to clear my mind. Aside from being a nerd and a learner, I am a chronic and prolific overthinker. Clearing my mind is definitely not an option. But learning to become aware of my thinking is within my reach. I share this point when people tell me they can’t meditate because they can’t focus on “nothing”. No one is asking you to.
Most of the studying I have done has come from two main sources - they run parallel to one another and there is a good amount of overlap. First, I have read the books of many Western practitioners who have studied in Asia and other parts of the East in various Buddhist traditions, or Western practitioners who have studied directly under this first group of people. The other avenue has been Western practitioners who are psychologists, counselors, and psychotherapists and who have adopted these ancient practices and adjusted them to fit American psychotherapeutic ends. Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Lama Surya Das, Dan Harris, Stephen Batchelor, Mark Epstein, Kristen Neff, among others.
Within this latter cohort also is Jon Kabat Zinn. His name was first shared with me by my therapist and he is the practitioner that established Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in the United States. This is credited with opening the doors to research and empirical, scientific validation of meditative practices as a therapeutic intervention in the US. This is important because I talk to individuals all the time who are initially put off by meditation because they aren’t, don’t want to be, or assume they must be Buddhist in order to meditate. Or because they don’t feel a connection with the spiritual, “woowoo” of it all.
MBSR stripped the woowoo away, without deviating from the core teachings, and in doing so made this practice far more accessible to Western sensibilities.
I add all this detail in recognition that there are many paths to meditation and there are many ways to implement it in one’s life.
An analogy I’ve used in the past, and which is apt to illustrate how mindfulness works for me, is that of walking with a dog. I once had a dog that hated being on the leash and she would pull until my arm were nearly out of the socket and my hands hurt from grasping the leash. Thoughts can be like that, as well, grasping, striving, pulling and demanding. With meditation, thoughts can be like a puppy traipsing in a field, joyfully bounding from spot to spot but without demand or condition. With curiosity and light and ease.
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For anyone seeking to learn to meditate or more about the foundations of meditation, I hope you’ll join us on Leap Day, February 29 ~ we get a bonus day this year and what better way to spend it than learning a new skill!
