You Don’t Have Time To Meditate?

Posted on January 29, 2010 by lkaholistichealth

A meditation only takes a moment.  Giving over your focus to the moment you are in constitutes a meditation.  There, you’re done.  That was easy, wasn’t it?

With some practice, you may be able to string together several of these moments.  But take your time with it.  A good way to start is to make a conscious decision at least once per day, if not more often, to notice the moment you are in – or to gain awareness as the case may be.  Amazingly, we have a tendency to march through our day trying to accomplish many goals, crossing things off our to-do lists, and generally being efficient.  In the process, we tend to miss even the simplest of things.  Life just happens all around us but because we’re not focused on it, we miss seeing it.  Set an alarm clock if you don’t think you’ll remember to stop to notice a moment.  Let that be your signal to pause whatever you are doing and observe.  With any one or all of your senses.

An easy way to begin is to notice your breath. We take breathing for granted.  Our body’s autonomic nervous system keeps us breathing throughout the day and while we’re asleep but mostly, we never notice this.  Breath is the gift of life.  You can pay homage to your breath quite easily by stopping yourself every now and then to notice it.  We call this conscious breathing.  Take a deep breath and exhale slowly with a discernable sigh.  Do it again.  And a few more times.  You can do this sitting at your desk, driving in your car, standing on line – pretty much anytime and anywhere the mood strikes you.  No one will even realize you are doing it.  Since you breathe all day, you don’t need to set aside a special time to do it – you are already doing it, you’re simply not aware of it.  Bringing attention to the breath is the oldest and simplest way to meditate.

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Anyone Can Meditate, Even You

Posted on January 28, 2010 by lkaholistichealth

If your idea of meditating brings to mind the vision of a swami sitting cross-legged in lotus position chanting Om for hours on end, then it’s time to update your thinking.  Meditation can take on many forms.  All that is needed is some experimentation to find what works for you.  The more rules you impose upon yourself, the less likely you will be successful at meditating.

Of course, you could end up growing your meditation into something akin to the mystical swami.  But that would require great devotion and plenty of practice.  When we decide we’d like to learn how to play the piano, we don’t think that from the very first moment we place our hands on the keys that a Beethoven concerto will miraculously come out of us.  We take it one step at a time, learning the keys, the fingering, the pedals, the sharps from the flats, the chords, the scales – each piece of the puzzle finally comes together and soon enough, we are able to play the concerto.

And so it is with meditation.  If you’ve taken a meditation class, chances are you were asked to sit on the floor, empty your mind of thoughts and focus on a mantra or a vision that would help you stay focused.  Perhaps, someone speaking words of wisdom guided you in your meditation.  And the longer you sat there, the more of a struggle it became.  Thoughts of every variety kept invading your mind space.  You might have kept trying to bring your focus back only to find your mind wandering endlessly away from where you were.

Instead of starting at the end, let’s start at the beginning.  You start wherever you are at the moment.  Just recognizing and giving credence to the moment you are in right now, is a form of meditation.  So stop right now, wherever you are, and pay attention.  Look around you and notice your surroundings.  Don’t put a name or a label on the place; just see it with eyes wide open.  Now listen to whatever sounds are around you.  Again, don’t categorize them or try to figure out where they’re coming from, just listen.  Now sniff the air – what smells are there?  As before, there is no need to know what the smells are or from where they emanate, just that they are there and you can discern them.  Try swirling your tongue around in your mouth and notice any tastes.  By now you know that you don’t need to identify the tastes but just to notice their existence.  Lastly, stroke a tree, a dog, or your pants leg.  Notice how it feels.  You don’t need to know that it’s soft or rough.  You only need to know that you have felt something.

In the few moments it took for you to do these simple things, you engaged all five of your senses and focused on each of them.  And in so doing, you meditated.  Congratulations.

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My Father, Myself

Posted on January 21, 2010 by lkaholistichealth

I know, I know – it’s been a long time. I took this past year to mourn the loss of my father. He was an important force in my life. I really needed the year to grieve. In his honor, I am posting parts if the eulogy I gave at his funeral a year ago:

My father was a mensch. Mensch is a Yiddish term meaning “a person of integrity and honor, someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being “a real mensch” is nothing less than character, strong moral integrity, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, correct. My father was the very embodiment of mensch-hood.

Underneath a sometimes gruff exterior, Dad was a gentleman. Beloved by every group of people he had ever encountered, it was sometimes hard to understand as his child how so many people could adore him. What they could see was his authenticity, his desire to give of himself, to help those who were in need, without expectation of anything in return or for unnecessary accolades. He was genuine, the real deal. He walked his talk and held himself to the same high standards he expected of others.

Dad was a friend to many. But no one more importantly than his dearest friend, Sam Graff. Friends for 65 years, they shared countless pranks, laughter, and Dewar’s Scotch. After Sam moved to Texas to live with his daughter, Dad and Sam could no longer see one another. They worried about each other’s health and they spoke to each other by phone pretty much every week.  This past year proved to be a difficult one for both Sam and Dad. Sam passed away in September leaving Dad the last man standing. Dad went into the voting booth on November 4th and pulled the lever for Barack Obama. He and Sam shared a passion for getting Obama elected, progressive for men of their age. And Dad felt proud and happy to do this simple act on behalf of his beloved friend. But without Sam, Dad was never quite the same again.

Dad had gotten frail in the last few months. I quipped with him in the hospital the other day that he was looking remarkably like Mahatma Gandhi. On Wednesday afternoon, I closed the door to his hospital room and played a Tibetan singing bowl for him for over an hour – a Buddhist tradition – while chanting to him in Hindu. He had come to love these healing sounds, introduced to him by his favorite doctor. In the last several years, Dad willingly tried some new things – meditation, Hindu prayer services, extreme nutritional support, and traveling on his own. He crafted a new life out of one that had broken and left him feeling sad and less physiologically sound. And he kept on going, with purpose, with conviction, with grace. Later on Wednesday evening, after all of his children had left for the night, Dad passed ever so calmly and quietly into the void.

For the past five or six years, Dad and I have been almost connected at the hip. I am the child most like him, for better and for worse. So if I’m sometimes direct and in your face, you will recognize that I’m a chip off the old block. But also know that I’m true to my core, that I stand for decency and equality, and that I will defend my convictions with an amount of certitude that might frighten you. And then you might be tempted to say, “Just like Irv.”

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