Meditation Challenge: Day #1

Challenge  – Meditation – Day 1 - Mandala Coloring

I already meditate every day in the morning for 5 – 30 minutes depending on how I’m feeling, how much time I have etc. In fact, I have tried many different forms of meditation at least once and quite often have created my own guided meditations for others when I’ve been speaking, teaching, speaking or doing massage.

If you are new to meditation or want to try a very simple guided meditation, you can check out “Just Breathe” on my website at www.FeliciaBrown.com. It’s very short and totally free, though there are others available for purchase if you want more. I think it they are a great entry point for someone just getting started with meditation.

Since I am not taking on meditation as a “new” discipline with this challenge, I decided to try form(s) of meditation that are new or less familiar to me. My first step was to research different techniques and styles of meditation to see if anything jumped out at me. I stumbled across several articles about meditation including this one - https://www.prevention.com/health/mental-health/a36149090/types-of-meditation - with suggestions about types of meditation. Somewhere I also found a more extensive list of types of meditations which included:

·        Mindfulness meditation

·        Guided meditation

·        Forest bathing

·        Cultivation meditation

·        Loving kindness meditation

·        Forgiveness meditation

·        Yoga nidra

·        Breathwork

·        Moving meditations like yoga, Tai Chi, Chi Gung

·        Walking a Labyrinth

Having tried these and quite a few others, I was drawn to the suggestion of Mandala coloring as meditation. Basically, you color in the shape of a mandala which is “meant to relieve stress and increase focus while exercising the brain and expressing creativity.” (https://www.colorit.com/pages/mandalas-to-color) I have my doubts about the positive effects I’ll experience for a few reasons but am going to give it a try.Since this decision was made at 5:54 AM and I neither had a mandala coloring book nor a printer on hand, I decided to work with a the Zen Doodle coloring book, “Uplifting Inspirations” which I already had.  To speed up the coloring process, I decided to use markers which have richer colors that I find more satisfying than pencil or crayon. The doodle design I chose was “Trust.”

Almost immediately, I felt familiar feelings of anxiety and stress enter my body as I began to worry about color selection, accuracy and the amount of time this exercise would take. Filling in the spaces between the swirling lines, I found myself wondering why I chose “trust.” Was it about trusting myself to pick the right colors, or that the drawing  would look fine no matter what I chose? Was it because I felt my trust had been repeatedly broken by someone important in my life? Or was it a prompt to examine the ways I may have caused others to question their trust in me? Perhaps a wordless mandala would be a better choice for me, so I don’t assign so much meaning and tension to what is supposed to be a relaxing activity.

I’m about halfway done and will finish this design. However, I’m not sure I’ll be coloring as a meditative activity for the rest of the challenge! In the meantime, I’m going to do a moving meditation (i.e. going for a run) to help dispel the tension caused by coloring. Ha ha! After my run – which put me in a much better mood, I stretched, sang some songs, and ate a late breakfast before I began my workday. Then a few hours when I took a break for lunch, I went back to my markers and doodle. Surprisingly, this time I felt like I got into a groove and had a much easier time not only relaxing and zoning out while coloring, but I actually enjoyed it. Perhaps what I needed was an active brain that had a need to calm down rather than approaching coloring when I was still half asleep in the early morning hours.

Not only did I finish the page by the end of the day (thanks to space made by putting technology down for at least an hour a day) but I also felt like I was back in my flow! On three separate occasions, I had an idea that lined up almost immediately with the person I’d connected to it.  

For example, on one of my breaks, I had a thought to take my “time-share” dog, Miller, for a walk. Miller belongs to my downstairs neighbor, Charlotte, who is thrilled Miller has a friend like me who can entertain him when she is at work. I sent Charlotte a message to let her know we were heading out, so she’d know where Miller was. She immediately replied that was “perfect” because her day was running long and he’d need a break before she could get home.

Whether this and my other “flow moments” were related to coloring, running or something else does not matter. Perhaps I’ll give it another try tomorrow!

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