“What do you want to do this weekend?” I ask my little girl. “Mom, please stay home and relax,” she replied immediately.
It’s the bank holiday weekend. I was away the previous weekend. We both know exactly what we wanted. Let’s just hang out together and do nothing.
relieve stress
As part of my coping strategy when things were really difficult, I went to London with my parents and daughter for a few days and took a meditation course. Transcendental Meditation (or I’ve heard it described as something like Jerry Seinfeld).
Immediately, I noticed a difference in my stress levels.
Specifically, I felt like a layer had formed between me and the stress of my life at the time. A late jacket, and I was a soak tank. As the course progressed that week, I felt the stress leave my body in waves. I wanted green juice, fantasized about it, and drank 3 bottles a day. I think it was a concrete example of how meditation started moving in my system for the better.
I continued meditating. It’s not as evangelical in devotion as it was in the beginning (twice a day, 20 minutes each time), but it was regular enough to help when things felt overwhelming.
But there was one thing I always struggled with. Advice to meditate first thing in the morning before doing anything. Understood. It’s completely well-intentioned. There’s no need to go through a day without the benefits of lower stress levels and an increased sense of well-being that meditation can produce.
i am a single parent
But what if you have children? Probably the first thing you notice when you wake up is that a small child is on top of you, maybe on his face. And if you’re a single parent, you don’t have the option of relying on someone else to start your day right after you wake up, which is necessary to run a young child and school.
Do you want to set an alarm and be done before the kids wake up? Trying to relax while listening to the sound of your child waking up somehow is the opposite of meditation. I speak from experience.
And my very wise yoga teacher Lou Hogan explained the differences she saw between men and women meditating. Waking up early and going out on your own to start your day with a meditation practice is not an option for many women.
But also how it ignores a different kind of meditation: the female kind. You don’t sit alone, away from your thoughts and environment (though I’m not denying that).
But it’s more immersive and delves into our immediate environment. In short, pottering. Organize your drawers (not because you have to, but because you want to), bake or chop bread, garden, read, meet friends, go for a walk.
Rather than shutting down, we become more “present in the moment” while at the same time detaching ourselves from everything else going on around us and within us.Things you should do, not housework or work want to do.
As Lou says, it is what it is.
“I’m relaxing at home,” said my four-year-old daughter.
This article was first published in 2019
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