Meditation Class

I've been meditating on my own for a while now, almost two years if I'm remembering correctly, but I'd taught myself to do it from things I'd read in books, so when the opportunity turned up to take some formal instruction, I thought it was likely to be worth doing.

The first class was Tuesday night. I wasn't at all sure what to expect, which is usually a Good Thing where I'm concerned, allowing me to keep a truly open mind. The bottom line is that this is definitely worthwhile. I've learned that I'd undervalued the importance of physical position while meditating. Not that I was previously sitting in weird positions or anything, but I'd thought that any reasonably comfortable position would be fine, and that meditating was really more about my frame of mind. In fact, I found that correcting my physical position allowed me to get into the right frame of mind more quickly and made me far less vulnerable to distractions. So far, so good.

I also learned that preparing to get into the right frame of mind was important. This matters because I usually spent the first five to ten minutes (and sometimes more than that) of sitting just clearing my mind, and preparation saved me a lot of sitting time in that respect. It doesn't make a great difference in my practice, since I'm using yoga as preparation and always did that before meditating anyway, but my mental approach is a bit different.

The other really new element is journaling about that day's meditation after finishing. I'm not sure how well that's going to work out when I return to a regular work schedule, but I'll do the best I can. My teacher is fond of asking us to try to find words for experiences that are generally hard to describe. I think the reason for it is at least partially to help the student focus and really understand the experience.

My previous meditation practice seemed worthwhile to me, but I've already been reminded again of the degree to which I was just scratching the surface. I hope the coming classes are as educational.