Jan 02 2009
Meditation and Motherhood
Trying to meditate while lying down feeding the little one back to sleep is just impossible - I’ve tried! One of my new year’s intentions is to put more time into meditation, which has, understandably, fallen to the wayside quite a lot this past year. So tonight I was sitting there, meditating by candlelight in front of my altar, and it was getting quite wonderful when after about 20 minutes, he woke up.
Lately, possibly unsettled from our time away, the Pibler seems to be sleeping in 20 minute segments rather than 45 minutes to an hour, (as if that wasn’t bad enough). So, I got up from my cosy position, swatting away thoughts of irritation, and resolved to keep meditating…but inevitably, lying there, my brain just started whirring again. I suspect I’ve trained myself to the sitting cross-legged position (or ‘easy pose’ in kundalini yogic terms, but often anything but easy as back pain sets in!), and anything else is far more conducive to sleep and worrying!
I got him back to sleep, went back to my mat, and fifteen minutes later he got up and walked into the bedroom! It was quite cute - as was his hugging (or giving a ‘cuggle’ as he says) my stone Buddha yesterday, and asking me to ‘cuggle’ it too! But I gave up and took him downstairs, put him in the sling and he’s back to sleep now.
I seem to be in a cycle of not writing very much at the moment. I’m still doing a fair amount of ‘free writing’ , but nothing structured. I like this blog by a lovely writer, Heidi, who shares about her journey to be more in tune with the cycles of life, and not force herself to keep being ‘productive’. It’s so true that we often define ourselves by how much we have to show for our day. I’m grateful to motherhood for giving me so many opportunities to learn this lesson, of being gentle to myself. Right now, it feels like a time to go inward and meditate more, try to find clarity on my path, rather than busily creating outward things.
