Take a Seat

I’m being reminded a lot lately that one of the most powerful practices of mindfulness is sitting with whatever is.

Trying not to react or judge, without the need to fix or do or be, sitting is strong medicine.

• Sit with someone who is grieving a loss, soak in the sadness and the suffering. No words, just be there.
• Sit with your emotions without reprimand, even if your logical self is screaming those feelings aren’t facts.
• Sit with the trees, sit with the wind, soak in the heat of the summer without seeking a quick fix to cool off.
• Sit with the version of you that you don’t talk about much or don’t like to see, hold her hand, and support her just by sitting.

I subbed a meditation class recently where “only” one person showed up. It’s a new class, it’s common for that to happen when there is a new offering.

I had to sprint to make it on time from my full-time job to teach that class. I was still on a conference call on my drive there. I didn’t have time to eat and in my rush forgot to bring a snack with me. (And for those that follow Ayurveda, I’m a Pitta, I do NOT forget to eat, ever.)

My hormones were also on fire that day, when I drove to the studio everything in my body was screaming, “You are the flipping COO of a company, you don’t have time to sub things, why did you agree to do this?!?”

My student showed up early, I hadn’t set up or had time to scrounge up something to eat. She told me she was new to meditation, has been trying hard to be “good at it,” and how much she hoped it could help her ease the anxiety of life.

My mind shifted as I smiled at the reason I was here, my absolute favorite type of student, a newbie. My anxiety about getting to the studio and the “should be’s and could be’s,” faded away as I started to share my greatest hits of incorporating mindfulness into day-to-day life.

My student apologized at least three times before we started that she was the “only” one there. I assured her there was no place I’d rather be, and together we sat.

I taught my portion of the guided meditation, and then moved on to the prescribed format of this class, 20 minutes of silence and rest. My immediate thought in my anxious mind was to grab a book or my phone to pass the time, but something in me resisted. I instead held the space for my student, I just…sat.

I sat with that energy drain that was my day up until that point, I sat with my firey hormones, I sat with my growling stomach and my panicky desire to avoid nondoing. I sat there because my student deserved the energy of someone honoring her journey to learn what this meditation thing is all about. I sat because it was an internal battle worth fighting, I sat there and soaked in the medicine of a near-empty space.

When practice was complete I saw the shift in my student I delight in so much—the dropped shoulders, the sigh of a softer voice, the eyes of someone who has just experienced true presence. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever really meditated, I really learned something today,” my student said, “thank you for being here just for me.”

A phrase from a fabulous book I just finished, (George Mumford’s Unlocked) came ringing in my head, “the only true way to learn, is to teach.” I needed all the reminders the world sent me during that 45-minute class. I needed to remember that helping one soul experience a bit of the miracle of mindfulness is worth every second of everything it took to get there.

I needed the reminder that sitting and holding space is just as healing for me as it is for anyone I teach. That the energy we both took out of the studio that day will impact everyone and everything that surrounds us. That sitting is indeed, some of the most powerful medicine.

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