Training the Monkey Mind
Teaching meditation in every single one of my yoga classes is mandatory. I feel if the student doesn’t have the opportunity to learn and practice meditation I am performing a dis-service to them, to the practice, and also to myself – a vow of a yoga teacher.
My Yoga teacher Seane Corn once said, “Make your practice an offering, a meditation throughout the whole of the practice.” I never forgot her words, and after all these years, countless classes, thousands of hours of meditations taught, and in my private practice… I still have great meditations and awful practices, personally within.
I am inspired when a student comes to me explaining how their mind was all over the place. Like a crazed monkey swinging from branch to branch, with each a new thought. My only response is “Me too!!” With the biggest enthusiastic smile I can offer. Knowing that we are exactly the same no matter how many hours I/we have so called logged time on the cushion.
My favorite inquiry is concerning the statement or the idea of teaching oneself to blank out one’s mind. I’m not sure where this false statement came from. The many teachers and books I have studied have written and instructed that the mind is beautiful and precious, but it also can be filled with hurt and anguish. It can also contain the craziest memories and old stories and conversations of years gone by.
Within its beauty it is like a mad projection screen with a film that is never-ending, some beautiful visions and some so graphic and horrendous, it would never be allowed to show in public anywhere. So this practice of meditation is expansive, some use the breath to focus on, some use mantras or even a prayer to the God of their own understanding.
However, the place of peace lies in the breath or whichever form you are using, so that the thoughts are pushed back. As if, the movie projector is still running, and the images are still going, but there is this soft hum, this realization that the movie showing will always be there, but we can choose to look away, and to focus on the breath or technique used. So the voices, and the images get turned way down low, and the movie might become somewhat of a blur.
A realizing that it’s ‘ok’. We can choose to stop playing the movie at any time, or perhaps just be a witness to it, observing the movie, without condemning self or fantasizing about a certain moment in time. Being the observer. Allowing to choose to stop letting the thoughts control you. And within that moment, we are present.
Realized perhaps for a brief moment.
United within Grace.
Peaceful.
