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Whenever I bring up meditation, the most common response is, “I can’t do that”. Why do so many people feel that they can’t meditate? One of my teachers, Alan Finger, always says, “If you can’t spend three minutes with yourself, who’s going to want to spend any time with you?” I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true. We’ve come so far away from our true selves with distractions such as Facebook, Netflix and the latest series of The Bachelor that we no longer feel comfortable just sitting with ourselves. Most of us have difficulty quieting our minds to meditate, and often the mere thought of meditating brings on anxiety.

There is an interesting book, "The Healing Power of Meditation" I’ve been reading about meditation and it’s effect on the mind and body. It’s a collaborative piece written by multiple experts in the fields of Psycholoy, Buddhism, and health professions, such as neurology. In the portion of the book that talks about meditation and emotion, it describes the process the human body, and mind, goes through when experiencing an emotion. Emotion is a fast response and usually subside. When we say we’ve been “feeling bad all day” what we’re doing is revisiting the same emotion, over, and over. We think the whole day has been “bad” when we really are just thinking about the same thing that gave us that emotion, calling for the response again, and again.

The very thought of meditation triggers memories of failed best intentions to quiet my mind. I have a very noisy mind.

When you meditate, I want you to be hopeless. It may sound strange, but I simply want you to lose that need to drive forward that we all have. Instead of focusing on expectations and outcomes, I want you to witness what’s going on in your mind at this moment.