Meditation has recently becoming a very significant part of my life and I could not have discovered a better spiritual, emotional, mental or physical outlet for my own well being. I tend to do, feel and think a million things at any given moment and I always just told myself that I functioned better when my life was busy. But in reality, that was simply what I convinced myself to believe so I could justify the way I was living my life.... or rather the way I was sometimes not living my life. Life is busy, and my life is no exception. Between working part time, being a stay at home mom, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, paying bills and housework, it's a big commitment. Add in the constant juggle for balance between being a mom, wife, friend, daughter, sister etc and I began to feel like there was never any time left for me.
It has been through restorative yoga over the past year that I have learned how to achieve mental silence. Although I had practiced many other types of yoga over the past five years, I always just viewed them as another fitness class. But restorative yoga is the farthest thing from a physical workout as it is restorative to the body, not physically draining. My first class it took me almost the full hour to finally achieve mental silence without my thoughts racing, the next class it happened a few minutes sooner, then a few minutes sooner until I was finally able to enter that calm state of mind within several minutes of the class. Heck I even catch a few zzz's in restorative yoga now. I value this quiet mind set as a place of sanctuary in my crazy day and it allows me to re-evaluate what is important to me.
However, sometimes fitting in an hour long evening yoga class just sometimes doesn't work as a mom. Between the hours of 5-8pm, it can be nothing short of hectic when there are kids to feed, bathes to run, tantrums to tame, dishes to wash and lunches to make. So that's when I turned to my own meditation practice. First I attended group classes to educate myself of the basic principals of meditation, and then I started meditating at home. Since meditation is a personal journey there is no right or wrong time or place to meditate. It can be as simple as 5 minutes every morning and night or as long as an hour spent in deep meditation. It was easy for me to fit in meditation on my own schedule and it has made a huge difference in my mood and sense of clarity because it starts and ends my day with clear intentions.
Meditation has shown me that time isn't going to slow down in my favor, because time is not created or allotted to each person differently. We are all given the same 24 hours in a day, so it's ultimately up to us to choose how we balance that time. I always found myself stretched in a million directions with my thoughts, my feelings and my sense of responsibilities. My problem wasn't that I didn't have enough time, but that I didn't have enough focus, therefor I wasn't making time for the important things. I didn't prioritize my life, and it led to a lot of 'busy work' that never really minimized my seemingly endless To-Do List. Rushing, stressing and over thinking just left me feeling emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally drained. I wasn't nourishing my soul and it took its toll on my mood and my relationships. I wasn't honoring myself with what it needed, and in such a face paced society we live in, what it needed was simple peace and quiet. And who wouldn't want to make time for that? If you can't find 10 minutes a day to recenter your body and soul, it's even more reason to start.
You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour. -- Old Zen Adage