{"id":294,"date":"2010-02-08T09:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/?p=294"},"modified":"2010-02-08T09:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T16:47:00","slug":"the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/?p=294","title":{"rendered":"The Present"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dearest Readers,<\/p>\n<p>As the love and support continues to pour in for who I am and what I do I am truly humbled by the kindness and generosity so many of you have shown me. Thank you for being on my team.<\/p>\n<p>Now a word (or two) on meditation&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Just over ten years ago I was looking after a couple of kids while their parents were away. Their mother had a yoga practice and although I had a knowledge of yoga and had been taught some of the <i>asanas<\/i>, I did not have a practice, let alone a devoted one. This particular mama had yoga video tapes and one morning while the kids were in school I put one on and followed it.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the practice it came time for <i>savasana<\/i>. As you may or may not know, <i>savasana<\/i>, AKA the Corpse Pose, is often the last posture to be taken in a class. It&#8217;s the resting and restorative pose that allows our bodies to integrate and feel the benefits of the entire practice in which we&#8217;ve just engaged.<\/p>\n<p>Lemme tell ya somethin&#8217;, folks. Ten years ago, I could not relax enough to lie in this posture for ten minutes. I kept sitting up to see if I&#8217;d missed the end of it somehow. No joke. I&#8217;m lying on the mat going, &#8220;Come on! Are you serious?&#8221; and then I&#8217;d peek up at the tape again. At the time, those ten minutes felt like an eternity. I had zero patience.<\/p>\n<p>Meditation is the art of being present. People think meditation means you have to clear your mind of everything and be some kind of a supreme being. No. It is the simple practice of being in your life as it is happening.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I spent 12 hours in a studio working with a multimedia artist on our video for the Big O Project. Most of the time he was working on the computer and I was waiting for him to show me something. For <i>twelve hours<\/i> I was able to sit there and be present in my life as it was happening. <\/p>\n<p>For a gal who could not lie down and be still for ten minutes this is a miracle.<\/p>\n<p>I attribute this miracle to meditation. Learning how to sit still and breathe and observe my thoughts. It began by lying on a mat, sitting in a chair, doing NO thing.<\/p>\n<p>As I developed an ability to do this much I carried the practice into my daily life. Being on the bus, tying my laces, doing the dishes, etc. Through the practice of meditation I&#8217;ve learned how to be present in my life as it is happening.<\/p>\n<p>Impatience still comes up. I still look for distractions. I still avoid the stillness sometimes, not wanting to go there, not wanting to find out what I need to hear or feel. But meditation has changed my life for the better. It has landed me <i>in my life<\/i>, in my body, in this Celia skin, where I have learned to really love myself and others.<\/p>\n<p>Inspiring Message of the Day: I will practice meditation in all its varying forms. Lying down, sitting, breathing is just the beginning. I will practice landing in my life and being present to who I am and what I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dearest Readers, As the love and support continues to pour in for who I am and what I do I am truly humbled by the kindness and generosity so many of you have shown me. Thank you for being on my team. Now a word (or two) on meditation&#8230; Just over ten years ago I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,66,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-meditation","category-motivation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}