Blissful Present

Meditation is just another way of noticing and a little bit like magic. It brings us, just as we are, into the present moment, just as it is. This freedom is a place I call “Here and Now.” It is a land well known by young children and plants and animals; it is a place and possibility root, a place where we feel connected to the greater unfolding story. Sometimes, when our minds and bodies are busy, we forget how to get back. But all we need to do to return again is to notice the world around us. We don’t need to sit down, or stop what we are doing. We don’t even need to close our eyes. Let’s open our senses instead. 

- Julia Denos in her children’s book Here and Now 

My mind got busy when I woke up this morning. The minute I got out of bed, I was busy thinking about what this day might include. 

Planning my day got interrupted with my morning shower. I managed to actually feel my toes as I buried my soapy fingers between them, held them apart as I wiggled them around. That was a moment of presence in the body. But as soon as I stood back up, my mind was off thinking about other things. 

After dressing, my mind was busy with reading news off of my phone and setting up my news app, and then reading about the pundits' comments about the most recent political debate. My mind was busy thinking about how difficult and uncomfortable all that debating made me feel. 

I was busy thinking about the recipe for the split pea soup I had decided to make, and even while I was drinking my coffee, I began, in my mind, chopping up the vegetables, getting them in the pot. I was busy thinking about all sorts of things. 

I even got busy reading about the process of writing memoir. I began thinking about how I described characters and how I could go back and review and revise some of those characters to make them come to life better on the page. 

I do a quick check of email, and think about setting up my schedule for the following week. I realize that several hours have gone by with me thinking about this and that, and doing this and that. I resolve that I absolutely must go out for a walk to get my exercise. I step out onto the terrace, gulp some of the still cool morning air, and get busy again thinking about how a morning glory has managed to infuse itself into the climbing honeysuckle in the pot next to the door. I decide to leave the one blooming flower there and deal with pulling the vine out later. And then, finally, after a few breaths, I realize I need to sit and meditate, if even for just a few minutes, before going out for a walk. 

But then I get busy thinking about needing to warm up and get my pelvis moving better before I walk. So I do a few wiggle movements and stretches to wake up pelvic sensitivity and awareness. And then I finally sit myself down on the old couch that awaits on my terrace. As soon as I sit, I put my full attention on allowing my body more space and time to breathe in. 

And that is the moment, the moment when I arrive in the day. 

The air comes into my nostrils, into my lungs. My upright body invites it without restriction. As the air comes in, my diaphragm descends, my lower ribs expand, and my belly lets go. And the movement of expansion, widening, descends all the way down my abdomen, into the place of tightest holding right around my sacrum. And I feel it give. 

Here. Here, I am finally in the moment with myself. 

Breathing out, for now, is just a letting out of air. But breathing in is an ecstasy. 

I let it take its time to come in and fill me. And a split second later--no, a few breaths later--I realize that the color of the brightening day is growing radiance through the leaves of the coleus that has grown huge in the pot on my terrace. The next few breaths bring me back to the kinesthetic sensing of a radiating vibration, a tingling, an expansive sense in my chest, a tingling in my hands and feet, a melting in my neck. 

I fall in love with this moment. 

Once again fall in love with my body, my body's exquisite awareness. I feel a huge gratitude for all the wisdom that I have learned from movement teachers and meditation teachers--all the examples of colleagues and friends...all the reminders that this present moment awareness, and the sensory bliss that it most often brings for me is what makes life continue to be worth all those hours of overthinking and struggling. 

Another breath, a deeper softening. I see now how my mind wants to take off on another flight of self-important thinking. I feel how my body's sensations become a refuge from my thinking. I breathe in again, trying a little too hard to recreate the former breath, and let it go, and again allow a natural slow deep inhale to increase the pleasure of this moment. 

I record this moment, take time with it, make sure to notice it. I intend to use this moment: to infuse it into my touch when I am with a client; to radiate it into my whole body when I with my lover; to cast it as a spell throughout the whole room full of expectant students when I am teaching.