My Feelings on Guided Meditation

The ten or 15 minutes of a guided meditation at the end of each yoga class is a contemplative thing for me. I think too much about the meditation itself, but I must admit that it’s time allotted for relaxation. So I take advantage of the fact that my time on a mat means a moment not to think about outside plans and tasks. However, I end up filling my mind with the words being spoken to me, telling me to imagine a light, or at other times think about “melting into the earth”.  I start wondering about the idea of a sparkling light traveling through different parts of my body and how that light is supposed to help a particular area.

I’m wondering if, in some subliminal way, this light is healing, or if it simply allows me to put some attention to my throat or abdomen as it travels down to my toes. Maybe it’s just a way to not neglect or take for granted those body parts that we don’t always think about but use everyday.

When we identify each part and, in a sense, permit our foreheads to relax, our jaws to relax, our wrists…and so forth, we become more aware of those muscles. It’s like my wrists are a different entity from my chin and that I need to give them each their own time.

I do appreciate this type of attention to specific parts of my body, but each time I go through a guided meditation, I really do think about them, as opposed to going into a meditative state. To me, a meditative state is an unknown feeling of incredible bliss, which I don’t believe I have experienced in a room full of people. I have heard others in my class snore because they are so relaxed that they go into sleep mode. I cannot do that. And honestly, I don’t want to because I feel that meditation is very intimate.

At times I wonder what time it is in the darkness of the room, I know, I’m so strange. Once, I became quite uncomfortable. My eyes moved back and forth fairly rapidly under my lids and I could not wait to be done with meditation. That was an unusual day; I must have wanted to go and do something else right after yoga. Like I said though, that only happened once and I still can’t explain why, but now I just allow myself not to be hurried. I just occupy my mind with the curiosity of meditation that takes the space of stress or worries, and I can accept that.

[tags]meditation, relaxation, attention to body parts, restfulness[/tags]