Since my first child was born I have been waging a war with life to get enough sleep. I am defiant about the amount of sleep I need. 9 or 10 hours a night is best. First infants nursing, then toddlers with night terrors or colds, then perimenopause with sweats or insomnia, then depression with its ever-present list of personal failures have presented themselves as combatants. I've tried to be graceful about this war, but it has felt like a war and not a dance, with the attendant post-traumatic stress. I'm up now…how long will I be up? If I'm up too long, how will I get through tomorrow? Not every night, perhaps, but enough to make an impact.
It's two mornings now I've woken up at 6 and I'm excited enough about this whole new process that I got up and set up a meditation spot. Maybe it's just that I had to go to the bathroom but I felt a bit as though my body was cooperating in this effort to inch myself toward a disciplined life. I put a folded blanket down with a bolster on top and a candle in front, and started the sitting meditation cd.
I liked being up in the quiet of the morning. I'm more the type who clings to the pillow till the last minute so this is new. I liked the fleece blanket around my shoulders. In class our teacher suggested having something warm to put on while meditating and showed us a beautiful red shawl of chenille or some other wonderfully soft warm yarn. It was woven in damask-type pattern of subtle tone on tone and had long tassles on the ends. She lifted it around herself and it hid her knees and little meditation stool in a regal pooling of drapes and folds. Perfection! I had an un-meditative moment of shawl envy. More than a moment, because thoughts of where I could find or when I could make a lovely shawl for myself were part of the thought parade during my meditation. Is it meditating when you look forward to this time you're setting aside because it is so handy to have time to think? I think not.
I didn't like the way my face was scrunching its way every few minutes into a resemblance of Mr. Magoo eating a lemon. This didn't happen when I was lying down. I felt as though I were in one of those breathing machines, too. So laborious! Like a robot simulating a human, I was pressing air out and gasping it in and yet not, well, breathing. I tried different postures…slumped couch potato, yoga diva spine…finally I tried kapalabhati breathing a bit. I've always liked doing this in yoga class. Breathing lightly, breathing deeply, nothing seemed to convince my body it was getting the oxygen it needed. This lasted the entire 45 minutes!
This blog was given glorious attention in my thoughts during this time. Also how easy it would be to make some meditation stools (with a little help from Steve), whether my daughter would be well enough to go to school today (not yet), and where the cats were when I heard some scuffling outside. When the muffled voice on the cd asked "Do you know where your thoughts are?" and affirmed that observing without judgment and letting them go still qualified as mindfulness, I observed that although I don't mind sitting, I don't seem to be settling. Still, going up to make sure the kids were up and getting ready I felt calm instead of dread and that at the very least is a good thing.
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