Blooming Flower, Sleeping Puppy

I began with Hatha Yoga practice at a Yoga studio. The mat delineated my space. The instructor led with words and demonstration. Listening was essential, as every class was different, impossible to predict what would come next. Focus was essential, for alignment and for balance.  There were no mirrors.  It was necessary to learn breath and posture from within. Soon I found myself closing my eyes, the better to feel my way.

Eyes closed, holding a posture, breathing into it, maintaining stillness and focus...I felt my body transforming its inner landscape. Bones, muscles, nerves, breath made subtle movements, making small adjustments and opening inner space.  My body was a time-lapse video of budding flowers opening into blossoms. Opening silently, peacefully, gloriously. 

Amid this peace, my mind receded into the background.  With physical peace filling my body, my mind stopped scanning for things to worry about.  On the mat, thinking just became — unnecessary.  I found that I don’t need to be thinking with my mind to be. 

My mind is not me, after all!  It is available to me, but it is not me.  And as an available tool, resource, or partner, it could use some improvement. 

To my developing inner-vision, my mind appeared quite like an overexcited puppy, startling and barking at every movement and sound, sniffing and chasing and chewing and digging, jumping out of its skin! Of course, this is to be expected of a puppy let loose into the big, wide world.  To develop into a reliable companion and champion working dog, this puppy needs plenty of training.

No wonder I had believed I never could meditate.  The little I’d heard about meditation had led me to think it required using the mind to quiet the mind.  A puppy cannot train itself!  On the yoga mat, I’d found another part of me, a part that could become a good trainer.  

I began practicing meditation by being still, breathing, and envisioning a sleeping golden retriever puppy curled up on a comfy mat.


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