When I was young, I thought that meditation was some kind of communication with a spiritual being where you left your body and had some divine revelation. I pictured a guru sitting in a dark room, candles lit around her as she basked in the silence and let some unseen aura envelop her. It seemed like a skill that some people were just born with. The thought of sitting still for more than a minute with nothing to do but listen to my thoughts seemed extremely boring and, quite frankly, impossible. So when I was thirteen and began to experience my first symptoms of Panic Disorder, and my sister recommended that I meditate, I was caught off guard. I wasn’t good enough for this. I wasn’t in touch with myself or some spiritual world enough to come to some drastic conclusion by sitting in silence. And then one day, I started practicing.
(Photo Courtesy of Burst)
Meditation, like anything else, is an art that can be mastered through practice. When I first began practicing, it was only in moments of extreme need, when I needed a guiding voice to slow my heartrate and calm my nerves. But as I began to practice meditation more regularly, I found that I suddenly began to adapt a sense of mindfulness into my everyday life. Sometimes, it’s as simple as noticing what it feels like to pick your feet up and walk forwards or paying attention to the sounds you hear but normally don’t acknowledge on your daily walk to class. Sometimes, it means carving ten minutes out of some part of your day to sit still and bring your attention to where you’re holding tension in your body. Whatever it is that works for you, incorporating these habits into your daily routine can have strong benefits on your mental and emotional health.
Let’s be real, in college, especially at such a high achieving school like Furman, everything is go go go. We never take time to sit back and just be. To let ourselves feel the things we’re feeling and just be present. Everything is about the future. We have to meet the deadlines for our papers. We have to apply for that internship. We have to tend to our extracurricular commitments. We never take time to just return our attention to the present. And we could all benefit from doing so. And the truth is that we’re all capable of doing it. You’re capable of doing it.
It turns out that my early ideas of meditation weren’t so wrong after all. It is a communication with a spiritual sense of self. At times it does feel as if you are leaving your body, and it often does produce meaningful thoughts that would be hard to come to among the distractions of life. But I was also wrong. I was wrong that I wasn’t good enough. Wrong that I couldn’t practice this art of awareness and stillness. In fact, I learned that anyone can. And in the stressful, trying days of college workloads and social and extracurricular commitments, it’s worth trying. Even if only a few minutes a day, the practice of meditation builds a more mindful attitude. And a more mindful attitude leads to a more peaceful life. As a wise person once told me, “You cannot change life. All you can change is the way you react to it.”
If you’re interested in learning more about the practice of mindfulness and meditation, contact Meghan.slining@furman.eduto learn more about a Mindfulness Course offered at Furman every semester.