I guiltily sneak a peak at my watch and then at the woman meditating by my side. She seems so peaceful, so focused on her meditation practice. With her straight back and calm expression I start to wonder how she is "clearing her mind of thoughts" and if her mind, like mine, ever strays. Only five minutes have passed — already my foot is falling asleep and my mind is racing.
It has been a year since I first sat next to Nicole Porter, on a retreat, and a year since I first started exploring the world of meditation. With a host of traditions to choose from, each with their own benefits, it was hard to know where to begin. In an ironic twist, after coming to the land of Zen meditation, I decided to take a different approach and instead have begun to learn the ancient Indian meditation technique of Vipassana because of its closeness to yoga.
"In Vipassana (which means 'to see things as they really are'), the meditation focus is the naturally occurring experience from moment to moment, primarily our breath and bodily sensation, rather than a created focus such as a visualization or mantra (repeated word or phrase)," says Cameron Harris, a Kamakura, Tokyo-based yoga instructor who has been meditating daily since 1999. He further claims that, "In focusing our awareness in this way we quickly deepen our conscious experience of reality; what is unconscious becomes conscious, and during this continuing process of expanding awareness experiences of 'super-consciousness' occur and become more frequent."