The house is quiet. 

I’m settled in my chair with two pillows behind me and one in my lap to rest my hands. My favorite cashmere blanket is draped over my legs. I take a moment and then very gently and quietly introduce the idea of my mantra in my head. My body starts to relax. I begin to let go. Then... I hear the little pitter patters of my daughter's tiny feet. I gently ignore them. Not overtly. I just let them go. The pitter patters get faster. Louder. I accept them and then let them go. Why does she run everywhere she goes? There’s no in between. It’s sleeping or running. I let the thought go and gently suggest my mantra again. The doors squeaks. I think: Please go back to playing. Please go back to playing. Mantra. The running gets louder and it stops—right in front of me. I have that sensation of when I'm sleeping and I feel like someone’s watching me. But someone is watching me, a foot-and-a-half from my face. Standing there, staring. An entire minute passes. Then two. Maybe even three. WHAT is she doing? Mantra. Okay, I think. I can do this. I am so good at this meditating thing. It doesn’t matter where I am or what’s going on around me. I am a meditator. Wait. Mantra. Peace. I feel so proud of myself for teaching my daughter the value of meditation and mindfulness, I think to myself. She’s going to grow up to meditate. Maybe she’ll even be one of those mindful, centered, confident teenagers I saw on that Oprah special about TM. Mantra. Peace. 

Warm breath tickles my ear, followed by a whisper. “Mommy.” A little louder: “Mommy!" A little louder: “MOMMY! CAN I WATCH TV?” I serenely shake my head no. “WHY NOT?” I ignore it. Deep breath. Mantra. You’re not supposed to chant your mantra or really even overtly focus on your mantra in TM. It’s more of a gentle suggestion. Mantra. “MOMMY! WHY NOT? HUH? MOMMY!!!” I shake my head no and point to the door. “MOMMY!" I keep my index finger firmly extended as I say out loud: “Go.” This business carries on a few moments longer until she dispels the false courtesy of whisper yelling and moves into full-blown whining. I say: “OUT. I’ll be done in ten minutes. You have a room full of toys to play with until then.” I settle back in and close my eyes. I am determined to make it through this and do—as my TM trainer always says—my twenty minutes and move on. Too late. She’s arguing and whining. She's raising her voice and trying all the tactics a three-year old tries. She pokes me and hangs onto me. Until, without warning, I jump out of my chair, grab her by the arm, and march her out of my room. “OUT! I say. "LEAVE ME ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES!” I may have said a few other choice words. I can’t remember. It’s really uncomfortable to be disrupted, particularly physically, when you’re meditating. The deeper your meditation, the more disturbing it can be. In any case, now she’s crying. I feel furious. I feel guilty. I feel horrible. 

The change that has helped me most is my attitude. It has changed... slowly. I have leaned into my belief that my meditation practice matters. It has value for me—and for my daughter. I’ve been meditating since I was pregnant. In fact, I’m certain that it was meditation that helped save my baby. 

I had a rough pregnancy. I was rear-ended at a stoplight during my first trimester. To help with the pain from the accident, I visited an acupuncturist, where I had an unfortunate situation. I was on my stomach with needles all over on my backside when I started to have a rhinitis attack. I was sneezing and my nose was running so badly that I couldn’t breathe. I had no way of getting the acupuncturist's attention. (She was convinced that her practice was small enough that she could hear anyone who needed her.) I yelled for her until I started to hyperventilate. Finally I got up and—wearing only my underwear and with needles dangling everywhere—walked over to the door, opened it, and yelled for her. 

Within an hour of being home I started bleeding. A LOT. It didn’t stop. I rushed to the doctor. It was all a blur. I can’t remember if my husband was home or how I really got there. All I clearly remember is hearing the heartbeat on the sonogram and feeling a flood of relief. I had suffered a placental abruption. For the next six or seven months, this bleeding happened a few more times. I was on and off of bedrest. My pregnancy was already high-risk because of my "advanced maternal age," and the placental abruption added to our worries. So I began to meditate.

I had a brutal labor and delivery. My blood pressure was so low (not too low) and steady that I remember the doctors and nurses coming in and commenting with wide eyes. So, after I got settled in for the long wait and started to go through my contractions, I went back to my meditation practice. A full on TM session. My mantra was in my head while it felt like knives were going through my cervix.

After my daughter's birth, my meditation practice was choppy. Non-existent sometimes. That was okay. I kept coming back to it. Regardless of the disruptions of a crying baby, a whining toddler, and a short-tempered, short-attention-span five-year-old doing the best that her five- year-old self could do, I kept coming back to it. I made it a priority. Some sessions were better than others. Some were sublime. Some were hard. No matter what, I kept coming back to it. 

My husband and I have found sound guidance in our two TM trainers, husband and wife team Jesse and Natasha Berkowitz. No matter what my "what-if" question is, Jesse always tells me: “Just do your twenty minutes and move on.” Even when I think it isn’t working, it is. It really is. And the most important thing about meditating—like exercising, like eating well, like most things in life—is consistency, not perfection. What you do most often, even in small amounts, matters far more than what you do in short bursts once in a while.

Like with all healthy habits we want to instill in our daughter—eat well, protect your sleep, drink sufficient water, practice gratitude, move your body daily, ask to help others, laugh often, have a growth mindset—it’s all about the law of attraction. For all of these habits, what matters most is not what we say to her but what we practice in front of her. It's about what she sees us doing. What we do regularly becomes the norm, like brushing our teeth. It is questioned less and less. It gets easier and becomes the default. This is what I believe with meditating. She is too young to sit still and meditate for twenty minutes. But she can get it in little bursts. She observes me doing it. And over time, it has gotten easier and easier for her to wait for me while I meditate. Sometimes she can’t help it. She interrupts me and isn’t so nice about it. Other times she honors  my space. She’ll open the door, peek in, and then close it. 

I wanted to challenge myself to get back into practicing twice a day because the benefits of TM are cumulative. After about six months of a regular twice-a-day practice, you really start to notice poignant changes that you didn’t see while they were happening. I wanted the dopamine hit of accomplishing my goal in order to strengthen that neural pathway, so I built a solid habit. I started using the Calm app to time and keep track of my TM sessions. 

Sometimes when my daughter is feeling impatient, she’ll come in and dig for my phone under my blanket to see how much time I have left. If it’s only a few minutes, she’ll wait. She thinks she’s being quiet as she rolls around and does somersaults on the rug. She’s not being quiet, of course, but I appreciate so much that she’s trying. And even during the meditation, I allow myself to feel that warm appreciation and gratitude, which is far bigger than my irritation. 

Then I have done my twenty minutes and I have already moved on.

With Love,
PrimaFoodie