Lessons from 7 Years Failing to Meditate
Rewind the clock 7 years, and we’d find me as an impassioned 23 year old rock climber. In retrospect, I see that I hoped climbing would be the way to find both myself and meaning (turns out, it wasn’t). Around that time, I became aware of meditation as another method for the same goal.
As that year’s climbing season wound down in Yosemite Valley, I took a “dive in head first” approach and made my first foray into meditation at a 10 day silent meditation retreat at a Vipassana center in North Fork California. (A notable exception to silence is allowed for 1x1 Q&A sessions with the meditation guides). After a few days acclimatizing to the sleep schedule, I did my best to attend the 10+ hours of scheduled meditation each day.
It’s hard to translate exactly what I experienced in such a headspace… Joy, sorrow, pain, deep healing, tension, release, anger, peace, frustration, patience, impatience, the entire spectrum of emotion were visitors.
I wish I could claim that I emerged from that retreat a changed person. That it was the birth of a daily practice.
Nope. It was the beginning of 7 years of me struggling to meditate consistently.
Habit tracking sheets, journals, the Daylio app were all employed. I’d get streaks for a few weeks or months, but my resolve would inevitably deteriorate.
As the world has gone sideways, this year has been a year of deep reflection for me. I began a yoga teacher training (YTT) program in January which was a catalyst for my meditation practice, for personal growth and built a foundation for enduring transformation of my consciousness. It may be cliché, but if you talk to anyone who’s gone through a YTT, they’ll likely report something along those lines.
At this point, tracking meditation has faded in importance. It’s baked into my waking process. Admittedly some days it requires more discipline than other days to sit down, and God knows, my mind is still a rambunctious landscape of tangential thoughts wrenching my attention from the present moment.
I’m not saying to cultivate a mindfulness practice you need to go through a yoga teacher training. I am, however, hopeful that these key lessons I learned through years of failure can help you:
By far the most important thing: short meditations regularly are far more useful long ones occasionally. Decide on a length of time and cadence that is workable for you. That might be as short as a few minutes. Build meditation into your schedule instead of trying to “fit them in” on top of everything else. This is a subtle but important distinction! Look for opportunities in your existing schedule. For example, right after waking up or adding it onto something you already do regularly like a workout. Gradually over time, you might notice a natural desire to lengthen your sits. To start, commit to your practice. And remember, it’s a practice, not a perfect.
Have mindfulness be a mindset that is incorporated as often as possible throughout my day. If meditation exists in isolation (eg: the attitude of “I will SIT and MEDITATE and get my MINDFULNESS for the day NOW”) the practice is both empty and wayyyy more challenging to complete. Instead, consider weaving mindfulness into the fabric of life itself. Take 1 mindful breath every now and then (in fact, why not take one right now? Really feel that breath through your whole body). Wash the dishes and JUST wash the dishes. Count breaths as you take a walk. Take a moment and rest in the gaze of your lover. Use your notification sound on your phone as a bell of mindfulness instead of a bell of distraction. The application of true presence is literally endless.
Lean on community. Even though meditation is an internal practice, having others around who are also committed to mindfulness can be a powerful force-multiplier. This could be as simple as texting an accountability buddy weekly or sitting with others during your meditation practice. I’ve found that meditating in a group is especially helpful to lift my energy and have more discipline with my practice.**
Consider a mantra.*** Mantra translates to “tool of the mind” or alternatively, “crossing the mind.” If you think about it, we’re always running a mantra. It might be an anxious “Oh shit oh shit” or whatever our habitual story is about life. By utilizing a self-affirming and uplifting mantra, we literally replace depleting thoughts with ones aligned with our true intentions. Mantra is relatively new for me and I am working with the Pavamana mantra.
Last is a potentially difficult self-inquiry. In regards to mindfulness and presence: “what are you committed to?” If I took an honest look at myself for much of my 20’s, the answer would have been “I’m committed to depression and mercurial moods.” I didn’t dig in my heels and take a stand for freedom from these phantom thoughts. Moving forward, my commitment is to liberating myself from the dark machinations of my mind. And a manifestation of that is my practice of mindfulness and yoga.
To close this out on an encouraging quote, here’s a little nugget of wisdom from an important person in my life whom I’ve never met: Ram Dass. Although he passed away last year, many of his teachings are preserved in his podcast Here and Now. In this episode, he’s noting the presence of a heavy thought and what to do about it:
“I note the heaviness and instead of figuring WHY am I heavy, which is just going to feed the whole issue. I know that its not necessary to be in that state, that I’ve closed down/contracted, and then I want to come back into spaciousness. Then it’s Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram – when you’ve invested in your method because you know the method brings you out of those places then you call on your method in that moment, and it becomes an almost automatic process that’s mediated by one thought – I’m stuck – and then the next thing is Ram. There’s a pull to stay in the contraction - and then the deeper commitment to being free asserts itself.”
All the best, and much love,
Wei-Ming
*Vipassana meditation retreats are a beautiful donation based curriculum. You can’t actually even donate until afterwards. You’ll be housed for 10 days, fed twice a day and of course, learn about meditation in a beautiful setting with fantastic facilitators.
As far as I’m aware, they are entirely donation supported, and you must be have attended a retreat in order to donate. Personally, I really love this approach to sharing the practice of meditation. If you can get yourself to a Vipassana center, you can learn regardless of your means to pay.
**One resource to consider: Meditate Together. Every hour, on the hour, Monday-Friday, our community is there to sit with you. I have been serving as one of the many volunteer facilitators for over a year now, and the community meditations never fail to lift my spirits and help me remember our true inner nature of peace.
***A fantastic introductory resource for learning about and choosing a mantra is the Mantram Handbook. It explores the method of mantra, the history and different faith’s chosen words.