I started using mindfulness meditation as a way to deal with my ADHD before I even knew what to call the practice. Nights in middle school, I would count my breaths until I fell asleep. When I was trying to do work and was losing focus, I would look out the window, focus on a tree or cloud or something outside, and breathe.
As life got more stressful in college, I used the same technique to let the stress pass me by. Focus on the breathing. Again, meditation before it had a name. Then in medical school, the name was provided. And all that changed was the discovery of my place.
What's interesting to me is how my place changes as I need it to. During family medicine, when my stress reached its peak, all my pain was in my head. My brain was playing tricks on me. Anxiety overran my existence. Thus, my place was the eye of the storm. It was a yellow tree in the middle of the forest, brain-like in its shape.
It protected me as I lay in the fallen leaves, sinking into their mattress.
Then, I did yoga for stress management for a while. During that time, my place began to elongate as I did. I sit beside a waterfall, surrounded by nature. My stress, anxiety, negative thoughts are leaves that I place in the water to watch flow away.
It cleanses me as I hear the water moving beside me. It is so peaceful.
Today, as I was walking, my place morphed again. This time, it was powerful. Crushing the anxiety, fear, anger out of me as the waves pummel the rocks below.
I needed the power to break the parts of me I no longer wanted. The pent up rage over petty, insubstantial events. Each little thing that had eaten away at me over the weeks was crushed beyond recognition in the power of the surge below me.
And when the hatefulness, the anger had subsided, when the calm returned, I too could go back to a different place. The places are fluid. One can become the other as needed. When the anxiety needs to float away like red balloons, then the tree is my haven. When soul cleansing is needed, it's the waterfall that moves the stress from my body. When anger fills me, then only the ocean can save me. In each situation, a different place is needed for protection.
Yet, the one constant is my breathing. Always the same. "Re" when I breathe in, "lax" when I breathe out. A simple mantra that transcends all situations and has become part of my life. Slow and steady breaths from one day to the next. When I get to tripping over myself, I return to my breaths, slow down, and enter the present moment, fully aware.
