Here writing “with Tiff,” though, she’s not really here. I just left her a voicemail letting her know I’ve started. I’m grateful for her inviting me to meditate (for me: Vipassana) and write.
I’m obviously more than ready because I’m starting to crave this time for myself. This time to drop into my body for 30 minutes, to practice not reacting to sensations that don’t feel good (ex. itching on my scalp). But to also not crave sensations that do feel good (ex. tingly sensations in my third-eye area).
This not reacting to sensations in my body is great practice for life. Because what I’m realizing more is that I hate the palpable sensations that show up in my body that are very often accompanied by a negative thought.
If I’m feeling shame about some past mistake or procrastination under pressure, my chest tightens and my breaths become shallow. When I’m afraid of disappointing someone, I feel a dull pain around the edges of my breasts. My stomach clenches when I’m about to do something new, like hit “publish” on Medium for a draft that’s been parked in my folder for over a year.
(If interested, my first Medium post I wrote and published about my experience going to a 10-Day Silent Meditation Vipassana Retreat is here.)
Practicing equanimity, not habitually reacting, is an act in detachment. It’s not ruminating over how many claps you have, even though there’s none and you’ve asked your partner to do it. It’s teaching your nervous system that it isn’t so high stakes to write, edit and publish your stories. To move the frick on and continue building up your body of work.
Meditating and Writing Go Together
Anyhow, meditation combined with writing have become my ritual. Whether it’s just journaling, or something I hope to shape into a story, a book, a blog or Medium post, it goes together hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly.
I’m grateful for my writer friend Tiff who lives in CA, and my other writer friend, Julie, for helping me cement the two together with accountability. Julie and I, after meeting in-person in the summer of 2016 in San Francisco at creativity coach, Eric Maisel’s Deep Writing workshop, have been meeting on Zoom, she in PA and me in TX, about three times a week dropping into our “15/15s” (15 min of Meditation + 15 min of Deep Requisite Writing).
Even when I lived full-time for a year in the RV, we’d meet via Zoom, FaceTime, or even text, to meditate and write.
Something about meditation calms the brain, signals safety to the nervous system, that it is, indeed, safe to write and wonder.
When I lament that I haven’t been writing, I realize as I type this that I have never stopped writing. I’m just gun shy about sharing and publishing. I’ve told myself I don’t know enough nor have the stamina to finish anything worth reading.
No more.
Now I’m determined, more than ever, to create a body of work. To write, edit, finish and publish. In all the ways!
Until this heart stops beating, it’s never too late.
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