Today is day 6 of my 30 day meditation challenge. I’m happy to say that I’ve completed 5 out 6 days, so I missed a day, but that was due to poor planning on my part.
Overall, it’s pretty easy. I mean, c’mon, the general idea is to sit still with a clear mind and breathe deep. I can do that. The hard part is staying comfortable siting on the floor and not getting distracted by the puppies. I’m not usually a fidgety person, I don’t tap my foot, or find it hard to sit still in general when I am doing things – reading, watching a movie, in a meeting, working, etc. But sitting still and just breathing is proving challenging for me.
All the excuses that I had before starting, and the puppies weren’t one of them. Turns out they are my biggest obstacle because they don’t like to be ignored. It’s a little hard to visualize floating on a cloud or walking through an empty meadow with a dog barking at you and licking you. 🙁
Last night’s meditation session involved laying on the floor (rather than the traditional seated meditation) and of course Roxy felt that was an invitation to hop right up and lay on my chest.
Maybe she wants to meditate too? I wonder if there’s such a thing as meditation for dogs…. hmm.
If anyone has any thoughts or ideas on how to distract the dogs for 10 minutes each night, please send them my way. Locking them in another room isn’t really a viable option, and neither is food. It would just take too much food to occupy them for the full 10 minutes.
I started thinking more about meditation since you last posted about it and I realised that although I don’t do it every day and it’s not conventional – I do meditate sometimes. Running – my head is always perfectly clear!! I know running isn’t really meditational… but it kind of is for me. And whenever I’m done swimming, I just sit and quietly float around for several minutes and my head is completely clear.
Anyway – your thoughts on distracting the dogs. Kong + almond butter = distracted puppy. Works every time for a good 10-15 minutes.
That would be a lot of almond butter to distract 2 dogs every day for 30 days! But it would work! Running is also like meditation for me, so I totally get what you are saying.