“Start again. Start again.” This is the phrase of S.N. Goenka’s that I constantly have playing in the humdrum of my mind. When I first took the ten day Vipassana course in 2007, I had really no idea what I was getting myself into; I had signed up for a meditation course that my younger brother exhorted me to take, so I just went into it, head (definite pun intended) first. 🙂 It was a difficult and challenging time, but I managed to derive some discipline to help tame my mind.

At that time, I didn’t have a yoga practice, and it was interesting to dive deep into a meditation practice — looking back, it would have been nice to do it in the logical order — learning yoga (which prepares our body physically for extended periods of seated meditation) to allow for the nice transition into true meditation. What is meditation? It’s an awareness of this very present moment. Like Eckhart Tolle says, “Be Here Now,” embodies very simply the act of meditation. We can quickly figure out what our mental states reflect based on the content of our thoughts: if our thoughts are more past based (with a negative angle), we tend to lean more towards a depressed state; if our thoughts are more future focused (with a negative angle), we tend to lean towards an anxious state; and if our thoughts are more present here and now based, we tend to embody peace and calm. Next time you meet with another person, try to observe their energy and notice how you feel around him/her — depressed people tend to be sluggish, anxious people tend to have a lot of nervous energy, and calm people tend to be just that — content with the moment as it is.

One of my developing goals as a yoga teacher is to teach children meditation — I believe that violence of all kinds is borne in the mind, and if we can teach our little ones the practice of observation and letting go at an earlier age, it will lead to a more peaceful world.