Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

practice time at home every day. Forty-five minutes
seemed long enough to settle into stillness and
sustained attending from moment to moment, and
perhaps to experience at least tastes of a deepening
relaxation and sense of well-being. It also seemed
long enough to allow for ample opportunity to engage
the more challenging mind states that we ordinarily
hope to avoid because they take over our lives and
severely tax (when they don't overwhelm completely)
our ability to remain calm and mindful. The usual
suspects, of course, are boredom, impatience,
frustration, fear, anxiety (which would include
worrying about all the things you might be
accomplishing if you weren't wasting time meditating),
fantasy, memories, anger, pain, fatigue, and grief.
It turned out to be a good intuition. Most of the people
coming through our clinic have willingly made the
almost never easy adjustments in the day-to-day
conduct of their lives to practice daily for forty-five
minutes at a stretch, at least over a period of eight
weeks. And many never stray from that new life path.
It not only becomes easy, it becomes necessary, a
lifeline.
But there is a flip side to this way of looking at things.
What may be challenging but doable for one person
at one time in her or his life may be nigh impossible