Sitting In Silence: Inviting The Stillness (Part 1)
Almost every week someone asks how and why I got interested in meditation in the first place. I’ve given this question a lot of thought; yet, I don’t really know if I can pinpoint a specific reason. Curiosity was a major factor. What was this seemingly strange activity that only certain people did which consisted of sitting cross legged, holding circles with their fingers rested on the knees and uttering this “om” sound? They say they ask, because no other physician has ever brought up the subject with them. It almost borders on irrelevance; however, it is anything but that, especially during the past year of living through the COVID situation.
For many of my patients, their meditative practice not only saved them from insanity, but more importantly, it also opened the window for self-discovery into their internal coherence of purpose. Wherever they were in their life’s journey, the ability to participate in deep personal reflection opened internal doors to be able to re-evaluate the meaning of their lives and rediscover their life’s passion. Many of them took this opportunity to make significant changes in their lifestyle at the work and home front as a result of having increased mental and spiritual clarity.
Over the years, many individuals come in with health issues that have gone on for months or years — fatigue, stress, depression, anxiety, headaches, neck pain, back pain, leg pain, heartburn, bowel issues, weakness, insomnia — and the list goes on. In order for me to help improve their quality of life, I decided to seek out alternative options that may be invaluable. As it turned out, bringing in meditative techniques ultimately proved crucial in engaging the individual to thrive for the first time in years, for some of them, decades.
The first article I remember finding that links scientific evidence to the meditative process was a 2011 Harvard study on how 29 minutes of daily sitting in meditation grew brain material in the prefrontal cortex compared to those who did not over the course of time. And, test subjects who did not know how to meditate prior to the study, but subsequently learned, exhibited the same degree of brain growth in areas of problem solving and cognition. I was so absolutely floored by this finding that I posted this on my waiting room board.
At first, not many seemed very interested in this mind-blowing article. I wasn’t surprised. After all, my own journey in discovering the meaning of the “M” word started as a slow, investigative process, which subsequently unfolded into something that continues to bring profound meaning and purpose into my daily decisions now. It gently guides me to make choices that align with things I love to do that also to permit me to be of service to others.
I learned that although there are different ways to experience meditation, for me and others who have found its secrets, simply sitting with ourselves quietly and allowing the mind to wander and make noise, hold the very key to understanding who and what we are, and the very reason why we are here. It seems as if it were just yesterday that I realized the incredible abundance of ideas and other forms of knowledge I am able to receive each time I sit in silence and how these insightful messages arrive in whispers.
My journey of discovery of meditation first began years ago when I asked a friend what the term nirvana really meant and how did that connect with meditation.
“It’s the highest state of enlightenment, when you know everything there is to know,”
was what he told me. At the time, his answer gave me little to go on. Fast forward to some years ago, I decided one day I was going to wager myself and do a 100-day challenge on learning to meditate via quietly sitting still. I looked upon this as a huge challenge, an experiment of sorts.
Everyday I’d sit for one full hour and then journal any insight that came to me. I had attempted to learn repeatedly by reading on-line articles, accessing websites, books, magazines, and watching YouTube. The majority of the tutorials emphasized the necessity of sitting with the legs crossed and to vocalize a mantra. They stressed the importance of breathing a certain way. The mantras threw me off and breathing a certain way was disruptive.
Time and time again, I failed miserably. Either my relaxed phase would be interrupted by my attention to breathing appropriately or my legs would go numb from sitting with my legs crossed. So, I repeatedly started and stopped until I finally gave up, figuring this was something for other people.
One day I found that nothing in life made any sense to me. I guess I was going through “a phase.” Once more my thoughts drifted back to visions of trying just one more time to learn meditation and that perhaps herein lies all the answers I’ve been looking for. Weirdly, this sitting still bit I discovered with time, was by far the simplest yet also the most difficult type of meditation. It requires you to be devoid of movement distractions. We tell kids to sit still all the time. Have you tried? It’s not that easy— to sit still. A few minutes into it, you begin to think,
”Oh wait, I don’t have time to sit and do nothing,” or
”I have a laundry list of things I have to do today,” or
”I don’t think that’s going to happen for me,” or
”My project idea is not going to go through next month,” or
”What should I eat for dinner tonight?”
It seems as if our worst nightmares come when we are quiet and still. Many of my patients and clients have told me over the years that they have attempted to learn how to meditate but that as soon as they close their eyes, their mind starts to talk and show them things they don’t want to hear or see from the past or future.
These images and memories are what most of us would label as unpleasant reminders, triggering avatars within us that regret the past or dread the future. Remember that the past is like a room in your house that has all the pics of yesteryear. There is no movement here anymore; what’s done is done and over and collects dust. The room of the future has all the pics that mostly change depending on what is done in the space of the present time. But, there is no movement — yet.
For me, these days, my meditative practice is intimately peaceful. It’s like having my own personal room of answers and solutions to questions and problems, respectively. The last time I almost reached for the phone to call my best friend for her thoughts on an issue I was having was 3 years ago. No one can answer your questions better than you and no one other than you can solve your problems.
On a typical or non-typical day, I may be faced with 2 very different options, and my decision will be life-changing. Anyone else other than me will have a distinctly different perspective and will choose an option that best matches his or her current level of conscious awareness. It drives the people around me mad when my answer frequently is,
”I don’t have an answer yet but I’ll meditate on it and get back to you.”
The answers you seek do not come to you in the form of any spoken language. My best description is that suddenly, the best idea just shows up as if your gut intuition kicked up several notches. People will ask you how do you know? You marvel at the brilliance of such a solution and swear you’ve just witnessed a miracle. That’s how it is.
And, if the answers don’t show up, know that when the universe is ready to let you find the answers, it will, and it will be at the moment when you are no longer looking or are least expecting it. I find that it helps when I do a quick prep before I do the sitting. I set forth questions and problems to which I’d like answers, feel deeply grateful for everything, and then I release my need to know.
An active thought of needing to know creates a restrictive wall, one that says you have imposed a deadline that needs to be met. The universe conspires to help us reveal our answers sometimes right after we complete the sitting and at other times weeks after. Remember that we think we control our lives by we really don’t. We only control how grateful we feel in any present moment. It is said that if there were such things as bad or good, right or wrong, then the right thing to do will always feel lighter and easier as it is aligned with your life goals and frequently brings forth an outcome that benefits at least 3 or more people, the more the better.
Remember that when you think you’re too busy to have time to sit quietly, after you’ve sat quietly regularly for a time, you will realize all the things you had been busy doing are no longer there. Changes in you create changes in your surroundings which is the natural order of things.
Business consultant and philosopher Srikumar Rao has said that words such as “bad” or “good” are only labels we create to assign judgment and opinion to events and that suffering does not begin with the event but rather as soon as we label that event as terrible or bad. In other words, our sadness and unhappiness originate from what us between our ears rather than the actual event. He encourages us to reflect upon this.
Transformative tasks:
1) Find a comfortable chair or sofa in a quiet place and sit up. Avoid resting your head on a pillow. Place your hands comfortably on your lap.
2) Set some goals such as saying out loud that you are clearing out stress and things that no longer serve you and allowing feelings of heaviness to be released.
3) Then, set an intention to let go of all expectations and that you’re ok with whatever outcome you get.
4) You can set a timer with a gentle alarm for one hour and see how long you can sit and allow the mind to wander. Close your eyes, breathe in slowly through your nose imagining all that is good in your life and then out through your mouth as if you are releasing all the heaviness built up in your body. Try sighing into the exhale as if to really get rid of heaviness. Do this 3-4 times and then just sit quietly. After one hour, you will repeat the breathing as above, stretch out your limbs, open your eyes slowly and come out of the sitting.
5) Remember that whatever unpleasantness shows up in the mind, it is just trash coming up and being thrown away.
6) Certain thoughts may be annoying or stressful but they will not kill you. Look at them and see if there was a lesson in them or simply agree to just release them to the trash dumpster.
7) If you become physically antsy, just open your eyes and realize where you are right now and not where the mind was taking you. This is the egoic mind bodyguard (discussed in previous newsletters). Feel grateful for your heartbeat and being alive and then try closing your eyes again and continue sitting through the hour.
8) Journal your results. What did you learn? How long were you able to sit this time? Were you able to look at all the things coming through and realized they had nothing to do with where you were or what you were doing (just sitting with your eyes closed)? What can you do differently next time to facilitate an even more successful meditation?
9) Remember to continue journaling your daily gratitudes, wins, dreams, and next steps.
(Part 2 will be published next week. We will go into more detail with meditation troubleshooting).
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For more information please check out our website at www.amayamedical.com
Thank you for reading!
Celeste Amaya, MD