Morphing Meditation

I don't know about you, but establishing a regular meditation practice is much harder than I thought it would be.

My first exposure to meditation was when I was in college. I worked part-time for a small company where one of the women did TM (transcendental meditation) daily. She told me how important it was for her sanity (she had two kids and a busy life). It sounded interesting, but a little weird.

Fast forward 20 years. As I became more interested in health and healing, I learned to meditate in workshops and yoga classes. I did it sporadically, and began to get more comfortable with it. During a 3-week trip to India in 2005, I meditated more. And I started to use meditation to relax when descending in airplanes (it helps with the nauseous feeling I sometimes get). The effect is always calming and centering.

A couple of years ago, after my Reiki Master class ended, several of us sat around talking. Here was a group of women interested in the use of healing energy who were spiritual and open to exploring the unseen. We decided to start a monthly meditation group, rotating homes each month, where the host would be responsible for the type of meditation (guided, walking, silent, etc.).

Today our group has expanded not only in number but also in the diversity of our activities. We continue to meet monthly for meditation, and several times a year we have speakers on a variety of topics. These have included sound healing, aromatherapy and the use of crystals. Just a few months ago, we started a walking group in the parks of Westchester (the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Rockefeller Preserve), which, due to the beautiful surroundings, is meditative as well.

Although my daily (let's say at least 5 days a week) meditation practice did not start until after the silent retreat in September, I can honestly say that those group meditations really helped me to "practice" the practice. My meditations are typically 10-25 minutes, and since doing them, my days begin in a calmer and more thoughtful way.