Meditation

As I reflected in My Story, I began mindfulness-based meditation when I was fourteen, a freshman at Saint Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.  I slept in a dorm with about fifty other students.  Because I struggled with elite college preparatory courses, I often had to study at night in the stairwell under the Exit lights.  When I would finally go back to bed I had to turn off my mind in order to fall asleep and survive on six hours of sleep per night.

I would get into bed and would sit in a traditional lotus meditation position with each foot resting on the opposite leg.  My hands would rest palms up just in front of me.  Because I was a member of the Glee Club, Father Auburt would have us stand against a wall with our right hand on our diaphragm.  “Breathe in through your nose and FEEL your diaphragm moving out, as you exhale through your nose feel your belly going in!  Again! Do it again!  Good!”  

Actually, I would like to have you sit upright in a chair and practice this diaphragm breathing.  Remember to always breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth.  Some teachers of mediation have you alternate your breathing through the nose and the mouth, but I have found that those who breathe through their mouth find it more difficult to relax.  When you breathe through your mouth you are dropping a significant amount of C02 into your blood stream and not allowing enough oxygen to the brain thereby increasing anxiety.

Sit upright in a chair with your feet grounded on the floor.  You may want to take off your shoes.  Again place your thumb right in the middle of your rib cage (your solar plexus) and drop your hand down onto your diaphragm.  Pay attention to the movement of your hand as you take a breath in through your nose and gently exhale through your mouth.  You do not have to take in deep breaths or hold them for some time.  Just breathe naturally and allow your breath to fall into it’s own natural rhythm.

Now as you continue your breathing, focus on your thoughts.  Our minds are created to be thinking machines, but when we are meditating we want to turn them off.  “I can’t turn off my thoughts they are on all of the time!”  You have control over your thoughts.  Here’s an exercise I do with my patients to prove it to them.

“Think about something that is causing you stress or worry.  Are you thinking about that issue?  Hold onto that thought.  I want you to shift your focus and imagine a white bowl full of yellow lemons sitting on your kitchen counter.  Can you picture that in your mind there?  Good!  Now I would like you to imagine that next to the bowl are a wooden cutting board and a serrated knife.  Do you have that image in your mind?  Great.  I would like you to imagine taking a lemon, placing it on the cutting board and cutting it in half.  Were you able to imagine doing that?  Describe in detail what you see!  Now during the exercise with cutting the lemon did you think about the thing that was making you stressed and worried?  No!  See you do have control over your thoughts.

Let’s return to the breath meditation.  As you continue to breathe if your mind wanders bring it back to your breath, allowing yourself to go deeper into a state of peace and relaxation.  If something comes to mind, acknowledge it, (be mindful of it) but then imagine that you take that thought and put it on a white cloud and let it float away.  If your mind keeps coming back to it, jot it down, and come back to focusing on your breath.  You may need to bring your mind back to your breath a million times when you first start to meditate.  Do not fret over this, there are Tibetan monks who have been practicing simple mindfulness meditation for years!  There is a practice effect to all types of meditation.  The most important thing is to Just Do It! ©Nike