ARGH Meditation from Amy Caldwell
September 16, 2020
by Amy Caldwell
Ask anyone who practices meditation regularly and they’ll tell you: it’s never the same experience when you sit. Sometimes you experience stillness in your body, but not your mind. Sometimes you experience inner stillness, but not in the body. Sometimes it’s both, sometimes it’s neither.
As COVID-19 continues and tensions run high, consider trying this acronym for your meditation practice: ARGH!
A: Allow – give yourself permission to sense, think, feel – and meet yourself with compassion.
R: Relax – use tools such as deep breathing and yoga practices to help you relax.
G: Gather – be kind while gathering your attention on whatever is needed, your breath, your conversation, or the task at hand…
H: Help – help one another. Allow yourself to be helped AND help those in need.
“An emotion like anger (that’s an automatic response) lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it is triggered until it runs its course. When it lasts any longer…it’s because we’ve chosen to rekindle it.”
– Jill Bolte Taylor, author, In My Stroke of Insight
Remember that your meditation practice is simply practice. Instead of focusing on something you can’t control (the quality of your experience), try to focus on what’s immediately accessible (like noticing the present moment and slowing your breath). When we do this, we can take our practice off of our mats and into our daily lives. <3