Why did you first begin to meditate?
There was this guy.
On one of our early dates, he asked, “Wanna sit?” I shrugged. He set the microwave timer for five minutes and said, “Close your eyes. Notice your breath. Try not to fidget.”
I did as he instructed, peeking at the microwave clock every few seconds.
Five minutes felt like an hour. My mind raced. My breath disappeared.
I fidgeted.
While I continued to “sit” with him on a regular basis (I really liked him), I didn’t like to meditate. It felt weird, boring, and a little scary. It seemed like a waste of time. And it was sometimes uncomfortable. I wasn’t big on discomfort.
A few months later, I reached down to dry my feet after showering and my back went out. My back had been “going out” for years. I was in elementary school when I saw my first chiropractor. Untreated scoliosis, falling off horses, bad posture, and poor core stability made me the perfect candidate for back surgery. I wanted to avoid that.
I strengthened my core, aligned my spine, and tried to keep my back from going out, but the issue continued to flare, especially when I was under stress. And when you’re the only woman lawyer in a consulting firm, then become the only woman partner in a small law firm, and you hate conflict, stress is unavoidable.
The next time my back went out, that guy I’d been dating (Ed, now my husband of nearly thirty years) handed me a set of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) cassettes by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I’d already spent days on the sofa. Time for a new plan.
The MBSR postures seemed odd, not quite yoga, not quite physical therapy. Plus, MBSR introduced using mindfulness while moving, essentially meditation in motion.
About the same time, I discovered the Egoscue Method, created by former Marine Corps major and anatomical physiologist Pete Egoscue. After returning from Vietnam in extreme pain, Egoscue designed a course of gentle exercises which encourage the body to return to natural, balanced, postural alignment. The moments I spent lying with my back flat on the floor, legs folded in a ninety-degree angle over the edge of a chair, slowly raising and lowering my arms, offered another opportunity for mindfulness in motion.
Ed also introduced me to the work of Dr. John Sarno, author of Mind Over Back Pain. Sarno theorizes that stress, rather than physical injury, causes most back pain. Two people can present with identical injuries and one might have pain and the other not. Sarno proposed making an inquiry regarding subconscious negative emotions and a technique to bring them to awareness. Determined to heal my back without surgery, I willingly tried all these tactics.
Later, through a friend of Ed’s, I discovered the work of Shinzen Young. His “Break Through Pain” recordings reinforced what I had learned from Dr. Sarno and Jon Kabat-Zinn. He put it in a centuries-old context. I was already meditating; I just hadn’t thought of it that way. Jon Kabat-Zinn probably called it meditation, and I was “sitting” with Ed, but I didn’t accept that meditation was actually “doing” anything until I felt the relief myself.
I hadn’t realized how much of a story, an unnecessary layer of suffering, I had added on top of the genuine physical pain.
Practice revealed my ruminations: “How long will this go on?” and “Will I be paralyzed?” and “Ed must be so tired of hearing me complain. Surely he’ll leave.” As I learned to let those go, that left only the uncomfortable but tolerable body sensations. This combination of mindfulness practice, Egoscue, MBSR, and Sarno’s inquiry into my emotions worked. My back still spasms at times, especially if I stop doing any of these, but I’m forever grateful to Ed for introducing me to meditation and the other tools which ended the suffering my back pain caused me.
I’m also grateful to that original back pain: It led me to movement meditation. And later I would discover how movement and meditation help with emotional pain as well.
I have included more than twenty “Your Turn” exercises in the book Make Every Move a Meditation.
This excerpt is from Make Every Move a Meditation by Nita Sweeney which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.