Burning Impurities of the Mind
Hello MyYogaPal Community,
Welcome to the July blog with the theme of tapas. Erin Donovan, a regular blogger here, shares with us something very important to help us slow down. Her practical and sensible style of describing meditation draws me to want to take a meditation class with her, but until then here’s the next best thing…
Tapas- Burning Impurities of the Mind So You Can Slow Down
by Erin Donovan
Western society thrives on busyness. How much can you pack into a day? How long is your to-do list, and what are you getting done so you can go on to the next thing? Our society celebrates pushing, completing, and working on the brink of burnout. As a result, it's easy to rush through your life without being truly present. When this happens, not only does every relationship in our life suffer, but our mental health also does. In addition, when stressed out and overwhelmed, we can begin negative self-talk, self-judgment, and set unrealistic expectations of ourselves.
So, how do you begin to teach yourself to slow down and burn the impurities of your mind? This is where meditation comes in. If you're thinking, "I stink at meditation, I can't stop my thoughts!" Guess what? You're not supposed to stop your thoughts. It's impossible to stop your thoughts because we're always thinking! But that's a good thing. It means your brain is healthy and doing its job.
One of the many benefits of meditation is learning how to slow down. Through meditation, we learn how to breathe and focus on our breath. When focusing on our breath, we learn how to bring ourselves into the present moment. Really, the present moment is all we have. We can't waste our time looking in the rear view mirror, over-analyzing every decision we've ever made that we now classify as "wrong" because it's terribly harmful to our mental wellbeing. We also spend so much time worrying and feeling anxious and overwhelmed about the future when we have no idea what will happen. (This is huge for me!)
The remarkable thing about the brain is although we are always thinking, we can only have one thought at a time. We might have a lot of rapid thoughts, but we're still only thinking one thought at a time. Something that I've witnessed not just through teaching but as a longtime student of meditation is most people don't think they're "good" at it, especially when they're first learning how to practice. We seem to have this false belief that we're "supposed" to be doing something or achieving something. That is 100% incorrect! All we need to do is simply breathe and be present in the moment. That's it. If you can breathe and focus on your breath, you can meditate. The rest is merely building a practice that works for you.
I think it's important to know that there does not have to be rules and it doesn't have to be complicated. You don't need hours a day. Try 2 minutes. Then work up to 5 minutes. Then maybe 8 or 10 minutes. The point is to try to make it simple and doable. If you can do that, you will reap more benefits than ever imagined. I promise it gets easier. Through consistency, we can begin to "burn the impurities of the mind," which will help us slow down, become present in our lives, and feel more balanced.
