I admit it. I suck at meditating! I’m horrible. I can’t quiet my mind using the traditional meditations. Sitting comfortably attempting to empty my mind always leaves me asleep, and never kept me from looping over my to-do list or that shitty driver who gave me the finger after he didn’t signal.
I had told a yoga teacher about my crappy meditation ability. She told me there is, “more than one way to focus and quiet your mind. Yoga is just one. It’s about finding that thing that works with your thinking type.”
With everything going on these days, it’s not surprising most of us feel overwhelmed and stressed. It’s normal to feel disjointed even when there isn’t one more global crisis jumping on top of another. If you’ve also been thinking mediation would help, I can say it surely does. Yes! I found my way to it, and totally by accident. Or maybe more accurately, I’ve been meditating all along, I just didn’t realize it.
What is Meditation?
Meditation is a mind-body technique of focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity, to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm state. It can produce a deep state of relaxation and tranquility and eliminates jumbled thoughts that crowd our minds and cause stress.
Sounds complicated. The brain is a complex organ, after all. But it’s simple. I’ve been getting lost in time and have been finding myself through, drawing and painting since before I could talk. When that happens, stress dissipates and so do my annoying and seemingly uncontrollable thoughts. And that, my friend, is meditation. This is just one of the reasons art practice is good for us all.
And that is also why I’ve developed workshops on Art As Meditation. They’ll be online and in-person soon. We can have calm, happy days, and have made art to prove it!