Beautiful Paradox: Meditation and HIIT Lessons

I love the word paradox. I especially like the concept that things can contradict themselves in a beautiful way, if you let them.

I just started reading a book about Buddhism and meditation. There is so much paradox in there. Just reading it is a meditation labyrinth. Meditation itself is a paradox: letting go, clearing your mind and watching your thoughts in order to bring clarity and focus and be present.

One paradox for me with meditation has always been that I'm not a visual person. I don't paint pictures in my mind. I don't visualize well at all. I'm very abstract. My pictures are more Picasso than Monet and even Picasso is more realistic than my visualization. I visualize in very blurred, unfinished and undetailed fashion.

That makes it difficult to follow guided meditations when they tell you to imagine being in a field of flowers or being at the beach or imagine being grounded into the earth and you are rooted like a tree.

The paradox comes because I am very auditory. I am lulled by words and voices. So even though the purpose is to have me visualize, I am able to get the result from the words and the voice and by saying the words in my head and focusing on my body without the actual pictures.

I can't really imagine being pulled from the top of my head with a string, but those words allow me to understand the concept and my body knows to lift my chest and get taller. My head knows to pull higher from the crown as if there were someone pulling it up, even though I'm not able to really visualize it that way. Beautiful paradox.

It's beautiful because I don't allow the fact that I'm not a visualizer to get in the way of me getting the results I want. Many times when reading about meditation, even in this current book, people get frustrated with meditation because they don't feel like they are successful at meditation, which is the greatest paradox in itself.

Meditation is about letting go of the idea of success and failure and letting go of stress. Letting go of stress and anxiety. Letting go, period. The hints people give you to get there such as focusing on your breath or clearing your mind or watching your thoughts are just that--hints. They are ways to help you let go. They are not mandates for successful meditation.

If you get mad at yourself because you forget to focus on your breath or mad because it seems like your meditation is boring or mad because you can't seem to clear your mind, you are not failing at meditation, you are failing at understanding what meditation is. You are still successful at meditation because you are thinking about trying to meditate and you are in that moment! Beautiful paradox.

The other day Khris set up a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)  workout for me for training. At one point I was moving from one thing to the next and he said, "The workout is high intensity, not you." Beautiful paradox.

I don't need to be frantic to achieve the high intensity. The workout does that for me. The intensity comes from the activities, not being frantic. I still need to be slow and deliberate. I still need to inhale, brace and exhale. As soon as I start being crazed and moving and breathing too quickly, the workout becomes less effective and less intense because I'm not focused.

I need to take these lessons into life as well. I'm going to clean my house today. I need to be patient and focus. I don't need to be frantic. It will all get done. I need to take breaks when I need to take breaks. I need to enjoy and pay attention to the chore I am on when I am on it. Then when things are finished, I will enjoy the results.

That's a good mantra for life. The workout is high intensity. Not me.

P.S. After this blog entry was posted, this screenshot from Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin about the Paradoxes of Happiness showed up in my Facebook memories!!