Meditation Monday

I'll talk a little more about the trial this past weekend and the drill team in another post later this week, but I'm going to start my theme of Meditation Mondays to sort of do a weekly check in as to how the meditation is going with or without the dogs. At the moment, I am leaving the door open to the room that I meditate in and the dogs are free to come or go as they please. I'm not forcing them to stay with me. What I have found is that they need about five minutes to settle down and get into their own comfy spots when they follow me into the room. What has surprised me, is that Bess is the one who has spent the majority of the time with me. I kind of thought that Heffner would since he is more of the one who needs to be close to me. On the other hand, Bess is the one who likes to cuddle and try to crawl into my skin. So I guess I really shouldn't be all that surprised.

Last Thursday was actually a really good day. Heffner left about half way through, but Bess lay lengthwise along my legs with her back up against me the whole time. It was kind of nice to have something to focus on. I put my hand on her chest so that I could try to sort of sync up our breathing. We did have it for a short period of time. She is now quite consistently staying in the room with me for the whole duration of the session.

I have learned two things so far. 1) My mind is quite busy and it all too easily drifts off into a thought of some sort. I know that with time and practice, quieting the mind will become a little easier, but right now it's like constantly swatting at gnats buzzing around my head. 2) Caffeine is VERY bad for keeping the mind quiet. On Friday and then again today, I had some caffeine. I actually cut myself off a few weeks ago mostly because of my head cold and I wanted to keep myself hydrated. Then I decided to keep going with it because I was able to keep a clearer head. Well, I had a Coke (my primary vice other than the dogs) on Friday and today and it was ridiculous. Trying to keep my mind clear and just stay focused on my breathing was really difficult. I didn't feel like I accomplished a whole lot on either one of those sessions. Thankfully the days without caffeine went a lot better.

I'm looking forward to getting better at this and hopefully being able to more consistently work the dogs into it. We'll see.