The Zen Mom

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths — Etty Hillesum

I know my blog is The Zen Mom, but being zen doesn’t come naturally for me. I’d like to think I’m optimistic and balanced person but being zen is something I have to work at. One of my goals for this year was to be more peaceful, more zen if you will.

We’re all busy and as moms we are not only busy for ourselves, but usually busy for our families taking care of the things that most people don’t even notice.  Life moves fast-with the house, our husbands, our kids schedules, our work or just responsibilities, then on top of that keeping up with friends, our social networks, television, technology, our hobbies, whatever. It can be exhausting.

So this week on Project Zen we are focusing on stillness.   I just came back from a Primordial Sound Mediation retreat at The Chopra Center.  I wanted to share some of the things I learned and what brought me to this place.

I’ve done yoga for years, but have never done meditation, okay maybe I’ve sat in a room trying to be peaceful and quiet only to have my to do list run through my head, but I never had an actual mediation practice.   I always thought I’m busy enough who has time to meditate.  If I have extra time I rather workout or pamper myself, but this year I realized I need to make time to hear myself.  By slowing things down a bit, I might actually find I have more time rather than less.

I started with the free 21 day guided meditation challenge-(2013 update) Perfect Health with Oprah and Deepak (starts May 11) studies have shown it takes 21 days of consistent behavior to change a habit or create a new one.  This is different than the Primordial Mediation I did this weekend, but the guided mediations are very enlightening and soothing. It’s free and a new challenge will start any day now. (I will update my blog and Facebook once the new challenge starts) I loved that it was online and that I could access it anytime.

They open you up to questions in your life

Who are you?

What do you want?

What is your purpose in life?

How can you serve?

After this weekend I am now committed to meditating 30 minutes in the morning 30 minutes at night.  It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m going for it. While you may not want to take up a formal meditation practice I think it’s important to take some time to be still.  Whether it’s just 5 or 10 minutes in the morning or in the evening or just taking some time in your car to hear our inner voice.  Close your eyes, breathe and listen to yourself. Here are few things I learned this weekend that helped put mediation into perspective.

-Meditation is not about forcing the mind to be quiet; rather it’s a process to rediscover the quietness that’s already there.

-Don’t worry if you sit down to be still and your brain won’t be quiet.  The human brain has about 70,000 thoughts a day.  Mediating is not about not having any thoughts, but rather slowing them down.

-To live a more balanced life we need to focus more on being than doing.

Happy Stillness!

*TZM was not paid for this post, all thoughts are my own.