Hillary Oat Healing: 28 Day Meditation Challenge

Meditation is the one simple thing we can do to support physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Simple, but not easy, as they say. Why is that? All we are asked to do is sit quietly for a period of time. While it doesn't seem hard, it can be challenging to "do nothing" amid the myriad of responsibilities and distractions that go with everyday life. That is why meditation is called a practice. We work at it everyday not to get better at meditating, but to bring us benefits of health, wellness, spiritual connection and calm. If you decide to accept the challenge, it just might change your life. This is first part in a 28 day series to inspire and support your meditation practice.  Even in the midst of disturbance, the stillness of the mind can offer sanctuary. - Stephen Richards  I had a friend who was an avid meditator for years. Knowing her, you could tell there was something different about her. Her life wasn't unique, full of ups and downs like the rest...

  Meditation is not a task to be mastered, it is an awareness of this moment, just as it is. The feedback I get indicates one of the biggest obstacles to a meditation practice is the belief we are not good at it. We don't like feeling incompetent so we don't meditate. We believe that if we were good at it, we could sit and immediately turn our minds into cloudless skies, effortlessly free of thoughts and filled with inner peace. It would be lovely if that were true, but then it would not require "practice". Here's a little secret: We can't ever be good (or bad) at meditation. Once we start a meditation practice we will wonder what being "good at it" even means. Meditation is not a task to be mastered, it is an awareness of this moment, just as it is. Osho suggests that instead of struggling against the mind by trying to forcibly calm it, we instead need to become an observer of the mind.  Just like someone sitting by the side of a river watching ...

  "It is as simple as this. Leave everything you know behind." - David Whyte When you are sick, or after surgery, everyone says it gets better after day 3, That is true for meditation as well. It will get better after day 3, or 4 or maybe 27, but it will get better! When I go to the gym and start on the cross trainer, the first couple of minutes feel terrible. I am panting, my muscles are complaining and I am tempted to stop. Its too hard. But I keep going! In another minute or two, it feels better and I am glad I didn't quit. Its the same with meditation. We are training our minds to do something new, like a sweet puppy, and it will complain. Let it complain. Breathe. Pat those thoughts on the head, come back to awareness of your body and breath. Tell yourself you will meditate one more minute or one more day. Remember our plan is to sit 20 minutes a day. Sit on a pillow, or sit on a chair. Hang out the "do not disturb" sign. Silence the phone. Close your ey...

By now you have become aware that all those thoughts are not going away. Myth Buster #2. Here we are at day four and we are noticing that no matter how well-intentioned we are, the thoughts just keep on coming. Minds think, like lungs breathe and stomachs digest that guacamole you had for lunch. The good news is that meditation teaches us the discipline to choose where we place our attention. Myth Buster #2: We are not our thoughts. There is a saying that asks "who is watching the watcher?". Without getting too technical and putting you into a sleep meditation, let me just say that we have consciousness, and that consciousness is not our thoughts, it is the Watcher, the witness, the observer. Meditation invites us to get acquainted with that greater part of ourselves, and to learn the discipline to be able to choose where we put our attention. Once we know that we are the captain of this ship, we will never again be unconsciously railroaded by crazy, scary obsessive thought...

  Sometimes life gets crazy busy and meditation, the way we planned it, just can't happen. Don't let a hectic schedule derail your commitment to sit. You know how it goes, chores, demands, and assorted other distractions pull us left and right making it easy to lose our focus and intention to meditate. Even in these Covid quarantine times, there are still kids, home schooling, home jobs, cooking and laundry to deal with. Some days are just exhausting made even more challenging by the lack of social contact. There is an old Zen saying that says "meditate one hour every day unless you are too busy. Then meditate two hours." Sure, easy to say but when? How? I know, that things go more smoothly when I take the time to meditate. So KISS it! Keep it simple, sweetheart. Avoid getting frustrated by allowing meditation time to fit into your life, rather than trying to make life fit your plan. We can surrender, wave the white flag, and fit our practice in when and where we ...

  All the benefits of meditation are an outcome, not the goal of the practice. - Ajanta Suri, Yogi Press I started this meditation challenge year ago because I read a really terrific book by Henry Shukman called One Blade of Grass. A Zen Memoir. The story inspired me to renew my meditation practice and made me curious about it. Most of us are aware that a practice will lower blood pressure, relieve stress, provide inspiration and support well-being on mental, physical and emotional levels. But if benefits are by-products, then what is the deeper purpose? Why are we doing this? The experts seem to agree that the deeper purpose of meditation is to help us discover our true selves as the pure consciousness that we are; to drop the baggage of possessions, identity, fears and separation through which we see the world. The purpose is to be here now , fully present in the moment without the "brain shortcuts" that keep us separate. Our brains are amazing machines. It's ability ...

  Meditation is not spacing-out or running away. In fact, it is being totally honest with ourselves.” – Kathleen McDonald We are one week into our practice and by now you may have had some different experiences when you sat down to meditate. Maybe nothing happened except you were sitting, and aware of the surface that supported your butt, your breath, and the sound of the refrigerator going on. Bravo for you! It may not seem very exciting, especially if you are hoping for enlightenment, but that is exactly the experience to shoot for. Sometimes, however, you may have a sense of spacing out, losing awareness of yourself and your body. It is a common belief that meditation, if we are doing it "right", should offer us a blissful out of body experience. If it happens, you may feel like you are finally getting somewhere and "going deep" into meditation. But are we? Where is it we think we are getting? There are those who strive to find that spaced out feeling, Some beli...