How to sit

Anyone who’s ever tried to maintain a regular meditation practice will know that the hardest bit is not sitting still — though that can be hard enough — but to accept the unwieldiness of the mind. My yoga teacher, Jason Crandell, often says: the mind will produce thoughts like the mouth produces saliva. And that has helped me to think of my meandering thoughts almost as a bodily function.

The mind does what the mind does. Meanwhile I sit.

This morning, I was struck by how obediently my body follows the thoughts. My mind usually wanders forward, playing out likely and unlikely scenarios, walking through potential conversations, dreaming a world to come. And as it does, I lean forward without knowing it, straining my back and neck, trying to be in that which decidedly is not: the time ahead.

But just as my body moves with my mind, so it works the other way around.

Every so often I lift my chest bone and push the back of my head back. The shoulder blades fall into place. The shoulders relax. The mind returns. And so I am here, I say to myself.

And so I sit.