Meditation has never come easy for me. It forces us to be still, to stop the thoughts in our mind from bouncing around in our heads. It forces us to pause and listen to the sound of our own breathing. In short, meditation is like the period at the end of a sentence. There should be a brief pause before we pick up again and go on with our lives.
Right now we are all being tested to see how we can cope with this mandatory quarantine. Maybe you're home alone working behind a computer screen trying to keep some semblance of normalcy. Maybe you're in a house full of family members all trying to find a groove and routine that albeit will ultimately interrupt one another at some point. Maybe you got laid off and are now just trying to live day-to-day and make sense of it all. Maybe you're out there still on the front lines, protecting the peace, saving lives, keeping supplies coming and going so the rest of us can still have what we need to function. There has never been a better time than now to find that pause, that literal period in the day, to stop thinking, stop moving and just give yourself 10-20 minutes of care. It's free medicine for the soul. We would all be wise to take it.
I've come to look at meditation as the moment when I can just rest and reset. When my anxiety is churning or I find myself unable to focus, I take a few minutes, close my eyes and just breathe. If I'm especially tired, it truly is a Godsend to just be in one place with no agenda but simply just to breathe. I came across this free 21-day guided meditation offered by Oprah Winfrey & Deepak Chopra. Their voices are soothing, the intentions and messages of hope and strength are encouraging and the few minutes I get to either sit or lie down quietly at the start, end or middle of my day have made a huge difference in how I cope with all these changes in our world too. Today when I finished I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw were the new, green buds of life on the branches of a tree outside my living room window. I appreciated having the moment to just sit and awe at nature, ever evolving, promising renewal despite the biological battle that's waging right now across our country. I'm truly grateful for the clarity that a few minutes of meditation can do for my spirit right now.