[2020-08-21] Meditation and voluntary simplicity
I've never been good at meditation.
Breathing according to some artificial pattern—inhale slowly through your nose, hold the air in your lungs for 3-5 seconds, then exhale slowly through your mouth—makes me feel like I can't breathe.
I much prefer Jon Kabat-Zinn's instructions for meditation, which he outlines in Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life:
To use your breathing to nurture mindfulness, just tune in to the feeling of it…the feeling of the breath leaving your body. That’s all. Just feeling the breath. Breathing and knowing that you’re breathing. This doesn’t mean deep breathing or forcing your breathing, or trying to feel something special, or wondering whether you’re doing it right. It doesn’t mean thinking about your breathing, either. It’s just a bare bones awareness of the breath moving in and the breath moving out.
For Kabat-Zinn, meditation is clearly seeing what’s happening at this moment in our lives and gaining insights to enable us to face the situation and to learn as much as possible from it before moving on. It is not about shutting things out or turning things off.
I read Kabat-Zinn's book in 2013 on the recommendation of a colleague who had dealt with cancer. I was reminded of this book today by a friend who referenced it as an important resource in her own journey back to health after having suffered a serious concussion 6 years ago.
Kabat-Zinn's guidance on meditation is both simple and non-prescriptive. He writes:
It is important to know that meditation has little to do with clock time. Five minutes of formal practice can be as profound or more so than forty-five minutes. The sincerity of your effort matters far more than elapsed time.... So, if you have some motivation to practice even a little, that is what is important.
He advises readers to stop, sit down and become aware of their breathing a few times throughout the day—whether for 5 seconds, 5 minutes or 45 minutes. He maintains:
If you can only manage five minutes, or even one minute of mindfulness at first, that is truly wonderful. It means you have already remembered the value of stopping, of shifting even momentarily from doing to being.
For those less inclined to sit still, meditating while walking is an option. In this case, says Kabat-Zinn, you can focus on one aspect of your movement, such as the rhythm of your foot falls. I can relate to this as I've often found that the repetitive motion of striding at a set pace is soothing.
In addition to Kabat-Zinn's approach to meditation, I loved his description of voluntary simplicity:
It involves intentionally doing only one thing at a time and making sure I am here for it. Many occasions present themselves: taking a walk, for instance, or spending a few moments with the dog in which I am really with the dog. Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.
If I'm bad at meditation, then I'm absolutely hopeless at voluntary simplicity. When at work, I was almost always doing more than one thing at a time.
As part of my recovery—from cancer and bad habits—I will strive to achieve voluntary simplicity and to stop several times during the day to sit quietly with my breath and my thoughts.
The friend who reached out to me today and reminded me of Kabat-Zinn's book said, "While it may not seem like it now, you will learn from this process and come out the other end even better than you are now." Others have suggested that this moment in my life will be a great teacher. I absolutely agree.
Clearly seeing what I'm experiencing and deriving meaning from it—whether in meditation, walking or blogging—will be an important part of my journey to understand, accept and grow from this situation.
Photo courtesy of Amazon.ca
