When I first decided to learn how to meditate, I had so many questions.
Did meditation mean complete silence?
Was I supposed to somehow stop thinking?
Did I have to sit there constantly telling myself, Come back to your breath. Come back to your breath. Come back to your breath?
I really didn’t know.
What I eventually discovered was that, for me, meditation is anything that takes me out of the noise of where I am and brings me into a calmer place.
Sometimes that place is silent. Sometimes I’m surrounded by people.
Sometimes I’m on a treadmill, walking, and the rhythm of my body becomes a walking meditation.
I’ve learned that meditation can happen almost anywhere, at almost any time. It doesn’t necessarily require a perfectly quiet room, a special cushion, or even closed eyes.
When I was first learning, someone gave me an incredibly simple place to start:
Light a candle and stare at the flame.
That was it.
And to this day, there is something about staring into a flame that brings me right back to the art of meditation. I can stare at something, become completely present with it, and find myself entering this place of peace.
I do the same thing in nature.
I might choose a tree, an animal, a leaf, the water, or some tiny object that catches my attention. I focus on it. I observe it. I let myself become still with it.
For me, meditation is almost like getting into a zone.
It is creating enough space inside myself to listen.
It allows me to receive whatever messages I believe Spirit may be trying to show me. Instead of running around trying to figure everything out, I become quiet enough to notice.
And I’ve realized how important that time alone with myself is.
It grounds me. It levels me.
It helps me do hard things without every hard thing immediately becoming overwhelming or anxiety-ridden.
Meditation became especially important to me after Casey, my dog, passed away.
I needed a way to sit with myself.
Sometimes I literally had to say, Okay. I am going to do a meditation now, because otherwise I would have kept moving. I would have been running around at a level nine or ten—or maybe living permanently at an eight—without ever stopping long enough to ask myself:
What am I actually feeling?
Why am I feeling it?
What is this feeling creating around me?
What energy am I carrying into the world?
Those questions became part of another practice that has changed my life: the self-check-in.
After Casey died, I did a lot of them.
I would stop and check in with myself. If everything I found was sadness, negativity, heaviness, or thoughts that felt like they were pulling me downward, I knew I needed to sit down and meditate.
If I checked in and felt grounded, solid, peaceful, and okay, maybe I didn’t need to stop. I could keep moving.
That distinction became important.
Meditation wasn’t something I had to force myself to do because I had decided that “people who meditate” meditate every day in some particular way.
It became something I could use when I needed it.
And the self-check-in helped me know when I needed it.
After something major happens in your life, there is so much value in simply stopping long enough to ask yourself where you are.
Not where everybody thinks you should be.
Not where grief says you should be.
Not where social media says you should be.
Not where yesterday’s version of you was.
Where are you right now?
That awareness has helped me create a life with less anxiety and more peace. It has helped me become more productive, more loving, more compassionate, and more capable of reaching other people because I have a better understanding of what I am carrying when I reach them.
I can ask myself:
Am I spewing negativity without even realizing it?
Am I moving through the world from a place of love?
Where is my energy focused?
Where is it going?
Am I doing what genuinely feels right for me, or am I doing what looks right to somebody else?
Before I learned how to check in with myself and become still, I think I was kind of a wreck.
I didn’t know where my energy was focused.
I didn’t know where it was going.
Half the time, I didn’t even know exactly what I was feeling.
Now I can stop. I can check in. I can listen.
And then I can decide what my body, heart, soul, or Spirit is telling me I need.
Sometimes I need movement.
Sometimes I need nature.
Sometimes I need silence.
Sometimes I need to walk.
Sometimes I need to sit with an animal or stare at a tree.
And sometimes I need to do absolutely nothing except be with myself.
That combination—self-check-in followed by intentional stillness when I need it—has helped me create a much more peaceful life.
So if somebody asked me today how to start meditating, I wouldn’t begin with a bunch of rules.
I wouldn’t tell them they need to clear their mind.
I wouldn’t tell them they need thirty minutes of silence.
I wouldn’t even tell them they have to close their eyes.
I’d tell them what someone once told me.
First step: light the candle.
Then sit down. Watch the flame.
And see what happens when, for just a moment, you give yourself permission to be still.
