January 29th, 2012
Last week when I was at Miraval I was doing research for a chapter on meditation. As part of it, I naturally attended as many classes as I could
And I made a small, but rather profound, discovery.
I usually meditate in the afternoon. My energy just seems to sag then. I should live in a country where they have siestas. So I use my meditation as the chance to recharge my batteries and get myself refocused for the rest of the day. It’s not a bad use for the time and it wor… so I’d never thought that much about doing it differrently. Most of the time I use a tape so it’s a guided meditation about whatever theme I’m in the mood for that day. Loving Kindness. Healing. Creative Visualization. Simple Relaxation. It varies.
The miorning meditation at Miraval is (surprise, surprise) in the morning and it’s a mindfulness meditation. In other words, the instructor doesn’t talk to you much. She simply guides you into with a small focus on breathing and then it’s all about simply being in the moment. Noticing sounds or bodily sensations, letting thoughts pass by like leaves in a stream. It’s silent and still. Mindfulness is considered a bit harder than a guided meditation…..there’s no canned speech to keep pulling your attention back when your mind wanders.
But I found the morning meditations profound. I’m not sure if it’s because it was a different type of meditation. That was probably a factor, as was the great ambient energy of having an instructor and other people in the room. But I suspect the biggest change was the time of day.
I’m a morning person. I like to work then. I’m fired up and focused. It seemed silly and counterintuitive to take a time when I already feel good and meditate, which I’ve always used like an emotional bandaid. Besides, my mind is at it’s most active then….geared toward work and checking off my to-do list for the day. And when I sat at 8 am at Miraval, my mind was indeed extremely active, bouncing around like a sugar-jazzed toddler. Did I pack my shoes for the 9 am aerobic class? Did I remember to return that call? Wonder what omelet they’ll be serving at breakfast?
But once I got on the other side of that monkey mind stuff I felt more lucid and calm than I’ve felt in a long time. And there was a real post-meditation high, something I don’t get a lot. On the last day the group was small and full of fairly experienced meditators so the leader said we would go a little longer. It still seemed to fly by in a flash and when she dinged the Tibetan bowl to bring us out, I was surprised. I said “That seemed fast” and she shrugged and said we’d gone 45 minutes.
45 minutes is a pretty long sit. Over twice what I do on my own and besides, I flatter myself that I have a pretty good internal clock. No matter what I’m doing or how engrossed I am, I rarely lose total track of time. So I was shocked….and I was happy.
The challenge, of course, is to keep it going at home. I’m doing it first thing in the morning now and I’ve set myself a little ding on my iPhone so I won’t get lost in a mindfulness meditation. I can’t say it’s been as powerful as it was at Miraval,but I want to try this new way for a while and see what it yields.
So what does all this have to do with writing? A lot of writers meditate, I believe, and there are definite similarities between mindfulness and the headspace you need for writing. Writers don’t always think about their books, at least not in the way that non-writers think we think about them. We don’t sit with a fist to our mouth and a furrowed brow. When I speak to groups and classes, someone usually asks about plotting, or “working it out” or”making choices” and of course we do all those things. But a lot of times it’s not conscious thinking. It’s more like mindfulness. We hold the open space of our mind and let the book come into it. Every writer I know has had some variation of this experience: He’s come to an impasse, written himself into some kind of corner. He’s thought and thought about how to fix it. And then he lets go of thinking about it, and at some point – maybe a week later, maybe a month – the answer comes to him in a full blown vision.
Meditating is a bit like that. We try not to hold on to thoughts. To notice them and let them go. But in the absense of actual thinking something else awakens, a new way for the mind to be. The post-meditation high I got in Arizona was a bit like the high I get after a great day of writing. I didn’t necessarily work something out, but something definitely worked its way through me.