I spent a whole month last year trying to meditate.
I read about it.[1] I downloaded apps. I set up a space in my home and (since it was summer) I found quite places in the park to sit and find focus.
My conclusion was not that meditation didn’t work, but rather that I had already been meditating: I had been finding mindfulness on the running trail during solo runs. So, I deleted the apps and stashed my pillow and put my sneakers back on.
The other takeaway lesson was that meditative mindfulness is critical for my creative process. Long runs—which works for me, by the way, and everyone needs to find their own effective source of clarity—emptied my brain and allowed the ideas to come out and play.
I am not a meditation expert, but I have done both a lot of meditative running and creative ideation. Clearing the mind—whether by sitting quietly listening to chants or going for a long drive or sinking into the warmth of the sun on a beach or putting on a pair of trail shoes and snaking through the woods at speed—seems to be a critical piece of many people’s creative process. Find yours.
References
- ↑ . (2006). Eat Pray Love. Penguin Books Limited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_Pray_Love_(book).
Terms FROm this POSt
- meditation
- I often use this term loosely to refer to any new-age adjacent notion of mindfulness and focus. I’m not hiding away in some remote temple chanting to incense, but I am thinking about thinking in a way that is about shutting out distraction and spending time looking inward.
- running
- This is not a running blog, but I took up distance running in 2008 and worked my way up to running marathons, including two of the World Majors: New York and Chicago. These days I just run for fun and the social aspect, but it has shaped and shaded so much of the last two decades of my life that there is bound to be a mention on this blog more than I would let on.
