The last women’s meditation, I wasn’t feeling it. And that’s okay.
It started off wrong. As a gluten-free individual in a world of free sandwiches, I rely on salads. This salad, however, had wheat berries and croutons mixed on in, and there weren’t allergen statements on anything else to ascertain safety. The event took a safe, familiar salad and made it toxic to me. I recognize the privilege of being served a free lunch at work, and I don’t want to complain, but this made me sad because the salad they usually have is delicious. Why mess with a good thing?
Anyway.
The actual meditation started out fine enough. The theme was “excitement” and the leader asked everyone what they were excited for this month. The obvious answers (family, food, time off) popped up. Someone got close-to-personal as her voice quavered as she said “I’m not feeling excited right now, and I am having trouble trying.” I said giving gifts, because I like doing that and it’s not too personal of a statement to share with a room of strangers (friends/family would get a different answer :)* When someone at the end of the circle said “making gifts” (emphasis spoken), I felt immediately that I had an enemy (aided by the fact that this particular person never acknowledges outside of that room that we have been in the same room many times). She was one-upping me. Okay, fine. Don’t let the negativity stick.
Then the instructor began, telling us about how excitement manifests not only in positive ways, but that when our systems are ‘excited’ by stress, we feel it, and we feel it too when our systems are defeated and succumb to the rest and relaxation when we are sick or just over it. I appreciated that she talked about how she was feeling under the weather and stressed over an upcoming final project she has in her yoga teaching program. She’s a human, and I like when people share more than just the positives.
She lost me after that. She guided us through a meditation about the seasons, and what we wear/eat/do during the seasons.
….um, what? How is this exciting? Not that she had to perform for us, but I didn’t see the connection to excitement at all. I was too excited to pay attention to her!
But, whatever! I was there, and that’s all I could do. Instead of judging her (or really even listening to her enough to get annoyed by the meh-ness) I just did my own thing and thought about what I actually needed right then. And I had that. I had a colleague sitting next to me, I had a warm and sunny space. I had a job and coworkers I love waiting on the other end. And following this disappointing event, I had a great conversation about real shit.
I had lots of positives going on, but when the facilitators invited everyone to share their follow-up feelings, I passed. My positive feelings had nothing to do with what just happened. In fact, I felt not positive about that. My nemesis had only one word, “free,” said with a smug smile. And this part of the event always irritates me. It feels like a performance, and an easy line of delineation for who the meditation “worked for” and who it didn’t, aka a line between those who are “in” and those who are “out.” The person who started off by conveying her fragile and unexcited state was yet unchanged as well.
The same day, I went to kundalini, because it had been weeks and I kept making excuses not to go. The movements were physically challenging, and I had fed myself not enough, not nourishing food (see: the two bags of chips I ate for lunch). Also, the class was directly after therapy, so I was already mostly depleted.
Needless to say, it was an off day.
As I gave up midway through almost every exercise, I was surprised to find myself still happy. I thought about how typically, I would have been pissed at my subpar performance. I thought about how annoyed I get when people (usually dudes) are too loud or off-key with their breathing or chanting or singing. Instead, I realized that there were so many off-key singers that even I couldn’t calibrate my voice. I couldn’t even carry a tune for the very basic chants, and yet. How different that I was okay just to show up to class. To be in the room. To be.
At the end of the day, after a full day of being slightly off and when I tried to show up for arguably too much, I was totally accepting my limitations! Killing the mindfulness thing!
Hooray!
If my nemesis ever decides to show up to my precious yoga class, though, I might snap. (And I accept this about myself.)
*This specific reason for excitement is no longer applicable due to the three-week gap from when I started writing this to the actual completion. Really gotta write more often.
The Angry Librarian 