“When something uncomfortable happens, we move away. When something pleasurable comes, we try to enhance it. We do not let the moments pass easily; we are subconsciously engaged in an endless tug-of-war with the way things are.”
~ Mark Epstein
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
physically or emotionally fatigued
waiting to catch a subway or board a plane
waiting for a medical, dental, or therapy appointment to begin
If mindfulness practice were only about relaxation, I would have given it up decades ago.
During my first silent retreat, I was surprised by how challenging it was to sit still and simply observe whatever entered my awareness without reacting to it. Although I had worked in the mental health field for ten years, I had never spent an entire day—let alone four—solely observing my experiences without feeling the need to perform my identity.
Instead of a spa vacation, the experience reminded me of marathon training. While there were peaceful moments and compelling insights, much of the time was riddled with boredom, agitation, pain, and a strong desire to escape the laboratory. I also experienced a few waves of emotional catharsis, which felt uncomfortable as they occurred but left me feeling lighter and more alive once they subsided.
I trained for a marathon before my first silent retreat. I could only run three or four miles when I began the running program. As the weekly mileage increased, I consistently reached a point where I felt like I couldn't make it.
My body was done.
My mind argued that we'd gone far enough.
Haven’t we covered an impressive distance?
What would it hurt to stop now?
Aren't most people still in bed?
It always made a convincing case.
However, the ability to run a marathon depended on my willingness to stay fatigued for a little bit longer than I had the week before—to feel the urge to stop and keep running. To run twenty-six miles on race day, I had to consistently embrace the discomfort of running farther than I could the week before.
In the meditation hall, it was an inverted version of the same game. My mind became exhausted with itself and would argue with my body.
Haven't we been sitting long enough?
Wouldn't it feel great to stand up and get out of here?
Who meditates this much? Is this a cult?
And yet, sitting through discomfort allowed me to see how my thoughts and feelings amplified it. I had visceral experiences of noticing the pain with less resistance. I collected direct observations of turning boredom and mild pain into full-blown misery.
It wasn't until I was back in my daily life that I realized meditation retreats are actually training camps. The first time I caught myself before panicking, I realized mindfulness isn't about relaxation or talking yourself into or out of anything. It's about preparing my body and nervous system to feel uncomfortable without escalating myself.
At the end of the retreat, I’d privately committed to daily meditation practice for two years before evaluating its usefulness. I treated it like a physical fitness training program. I decided it would be okay to miss five days a year but never two days in a row. I didn’t assess every formal meditation and treated the whole thing as an experiment that I could abandon if no tangible benefits ever emerged.
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