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Source: Mary H. (Kay) – Kentucky State AFG Convention 2024 Step 11 Workshop – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-h-kay-kentucky-state-afg-convention-2024-step-11-workshop-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:57:28
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I'm short but I'm not that short. Okay. I think this will work. All right. Hi, I'm Mary Kay. I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon. And I would first, before we get started, like to ask, are there any newcomers in the room today? If so, could you raise your hand? We'd like to welcome you. Newcomer within the last year. Okay. Let's welcome the newcomers. All right. Thank you. Okay. So this is going to be a little different than probably some of the speaker, speakers that you've heard. But what I would like for everyone to do is if you have a handout and if you don't have one, if you could get with a friend and we're going to spend the first 10 minutes reading our handout silently. But before we do that, if you could please take your phone out and turn it off so we don't have any distractions unless you have some emergency that you are waiting for. Thank you so much. So I'm going to start the little timer after everyone turns their phone off. And reading the handout and when you're finished reading the handout, if you could just sit in silence until everyone is finished, that would be greatly appreciated. So I will start my little handy-dandy timer.
Okay. Thank you. If you're just coming in, we're going to read our handout. And if you don't have a handout, if you could scooch in with someone that does have one and maybe they can share. Thank you so much. If you're just coming in, we are reading a handout. I have one left if anyone would like this one. And if you don't have one, if you could share with someone. We're going to read the handout and then we're going to sit quietly until the 10 minutes is up.
False alarm bell. Sorry. False alarm bell. False alarm bell.
[00:05:27]
False alarm bell. False alarm bell. False alarm bell. False alarm bell. False alarm bell. Ten more minutes, just take a deep breath, let it out. Take a deep breath, let it out, let it out, let it out, let it out, let it out, let it out, let it out.
[00:10:51]
Okay, that was probably the longest ten minutes of your life. Okay, first I would like to ask, how many people in here have a daily Step Eleven practice? Raise your hand. Wow, okay, great, awesome. How many people would like to have one? Okay, about half and half. Great, I'm glad you're here. Okay, what I'm going to go over today, or what I'd like to share, is the why, the how, the when, the what, the who, and the where of my practice.
And then I would like for, after we finish that, people to come up and share their practice. Because I think a lot of people might want to, you know, they see Step Eleven and they want to do it, but, you know, and people can pray, and then it's like, meditate. How do I do that? Where do I do that? What does that look like? So that's why we're here. So hopefully you got a handout. If you did not get a handout on your way in, let me know.
I can email you the handout if you didn't get that. But I just pulled some literature, actually, I would like to thank Laura for helping me with that, pulling some literature from the different readings on Step Eleven. Okay, so meditation changes your brain. And what I know about meditation is it helps when we meditate, it moves us from the fear-based brain up to the prefrontal cortex, so we can make wise decisions and reason things out.
But when I'm not meditating and I get up and move through my day, I'm reacting, and I'm not responding. So my meditation practice, my Step Eleven practice helps me to, it buys me about three seconds so I can respond rather than react, because it literally changes my brain. And just a real quick story of how this was put in action, Laura handed me the handouts last night, and I went over to the coloring table, and I colored, and I apparently left them there.
So I went home, and I copied off a few extras, and I woke up this morning, and I thought, what if I can't find them? Where am I going to go? Can I go print them out? And normally, you know, that would have taken me down a rabbit hole, and I would have been a mess here, and I thought, just go there early, look for them. If you can't find them, have people share. You know, I was going to eat something to help my brain this morning, so I got a can of sardines.
I had them in my car, and I thought, wait a minute, if I eat sardines, my breath is going to stink. I don't want to do that. So I'm riding in the car, I stopped too fast, the sardine can that I already had open flipped over in my car, and so then I'm thinking, now my car really smells, well, I was going to go out to my car to meditate, and I thought, I'm not going to meditate with a car smelling like sardines.
So I took my mat out, and if you see my car out there with the nose on it, I put the mat underneath my car, because I didn't want the heat to, you know, so anyway, that is meditation in practice, because I've been doing this for several years. That would have been a totally different story had I not had a consistent practice. So I'm just going to give you a little story just about this morning, and that could be any morning, but what meditation does for me, and what that step 11 practice does, is it gives me like a Teflon coating.
So no matter what happens during the day, it's not as likely to stick to me. It just kind of slides off, because I took that time, and it could literally be as little as three minutes, and that's 15 slow, deep breaths, and you know, racing to get somewhere. Sometimes when I'm going to a meeting, and I'm early to the meeting, and I've had a pretty crazy day, I'll sit in the car, and my sponsor will come over there and knock on the window and look in at me, and I said, do you want to come join me?
[00:15:00]
I'm doing a little body scan, so just, you know, sneak it in during the day, but plan it, that's the main thing. I plan in the morning, I started, it was 20 years ago, I was in the middle of getting my masters, I had my two kids in middle school, I was working three jobs, and I was living with my former spouse, which he was doing what he does. And so, I was literally a top spinning, and I went to a yoga class, and this class was highly recommended, and she said, you've got to go to this instructor is here, and I said, I've got finals to study for, I've got so much going on, and I said, okay, I'll go to the class, so I raced to the class.
We did some yoga, and at the very end, we laid in something called Shavasana, where you lie on your mat, and do nothing. Well, it was 15 minutes of doing nothing, and all I kept thinking of was how many things I needed to do, and I wanted to run out of the room, but I was there late, and I was in the front row, and I thought, no, I can't do that, and so I lay there, and I literally felt like I was in a straitjacket for this 15 minutes, and people are in, they're all relaxing, and the lady in the back is snoring, and I was looking around at somebody else to say, do you hear that, you know, and because I was just, you know, my brain, I have a really quick brain, and I was just wanting to react to everything, and I thought, and I finished the class, and my friend said, how was the class?
I said, it was interesting, and that's all I said, because I never realized how quick my brain was, excuse me, how quick my brain was, and how much I needed to slow down, so then I went to more yoga classes, and at the end, they had that time built in, where you just do nothing, and it became easier and easier, and I started to notice that I was getting a little bit more calm, and I was okay with sitting still for just a few minutes, so what does that look like?
What does my practice look like now? So, it's rarely the same. I do have a place set up in my house. I will say, when I first started, it was, when I really got serious, it was 14 years ago, when I got divorced and moved out, and I was living in, with different friends in their basements. I had a friend that was a hoarder. I had to, you know, have enough, I was sleeping on her couch. You know, I moved around, but I had my yoga mat, and I thought, as long as I have enough space on the floor to, you know, to lay down, do a little stretching, and then sit still, I think I'll be okay, and so that's where it started, and I started with 10 minutes, and for that 10 minutes, and this is what I feel that people need to know, there needs to be a disclaimer, like there is on the cigarette package.
I feel like with meditation, there needs to be a disclaimer saying, for me at least, for the first two years, and I did it every single day, for 10 minutes, then it went to 15 minutes, I didn't have two seconds of peace or silence in my head, but I did it. I did it. I said, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to do it every day, because I didn't know where I was going to live. I didn't know if I was going to have any money.
I just, I didn't know, all those things were out of my control, so, but I have control over this, and I'm going to meditate. So, I would close my eyes. First of all, I would wake up and say, okay, where am I today? Whose house am I in? But then I would feel this peace, and then I would do my meditation. But now, my life is a little more calm. We did adopt our granddaughter eight years ago, and some of you might have seen her out there crocheting with the white hat on.
Her name is Zoe, and that was a lot of work, you know, at three years old, and, you know, I agreed, you know, we agreed to adopt our granddaughter, and I told my husband, I said, I said, I'll agree to this if you agree to meditate. And he said, okay, you know, because I think we can do this, but we're going to need some help, and that is the biggest thing that has helped me, is getting still. So, how do I do this?
First of all, I'm kind of antsy, so I like to move around a little bit. I stretch a little bit, and then for the first probably five years, I just did it lying down. I know everybody says you need to sit up. You need to sit up. I thought you had to sit up in lotus position, and, you know, I said, you know what? I'm tired. I'm just going to lay down. So, I would lay down, do a couple stretches, roll over to my side, and then get myself, my mind calmed down enough that then I could just sit up for the last few minutes and be still.
I have a kind of a ritual that I do, and it kind of came to me
[00:20:00]
when I was not knowing what was going to happen with my life. And so, at the end of my meditation, it was like something just guided me to do this. I do like a cleansing breath, and then I reach my hands up and open my hands, and I wait for, and it's usually three words. I don't know why it's three words. There's three words that just come to me. There's probably never been a day that's gone by that I haven't gotten the three words, but that's after I've moved a little bit, you know, stretched a little bit, sat still, but at the very end, so that's when I kind of, that's my guidance for the day.
And the three words come to me, and I write them down, and that is, that's my guidance for the day. So, why did I start this? Because my life was in chaos, and I wanted some peace. And after the two years, when I meditated, there was maybe five seconds of my mind went somewhere else, but then I realized, I came back, and I went, wait a minute, I wasn't here. I wasn't in my body. I went somewhere else, and what was that?
That was really cool. That was, I felt like this peace feeling, and then I was kind of chasing that. So then, there was one day, probably four years in, that by this time, I was living in a basement apartment, getting ready to get the settlement, and hopefully being able to buy a house, and I thought, you know what? I'm just going to sit here for as long as it takes. I have nothing to do today. I'm going to go to a meeting later, but I'm just going to sit here, and I sat, and I looked at my little clock on top of my old TV, and I just sat there, and then I opened my eyes, and I really thought someone had moved the clock ahead 30 minutes, because 30 minutes had gone by, and I felt amazing.
I felt like I've never felt before in my life. Well, then, I wanted that same feeling, but then it's like, okay, now I have to put in 30 minutes every day, but I know what I get when I do it. If I'm on a girls' weekend, I used to worry about how am I going to get my meditation in, so what I do now is, if I'm in my bedroom, or in a cabin, I'm sleeping, right? I wake up, I don't have to come out there and say, well, guys, I'm going to do my meditation now.
I just do it in my room. I just sit up in my bed, and then when I'm finished with my meditation, then I come out. If I don't get the chance to plan it and put it, you know, to do it that morning, and there's not very many mornings that I don't have to make the time. It's make the time, not have the time, make the time. I would have these headphones, and we would be driving in the car, and, you know, with our granddaughter in the back seat, I would put these headphones on.
There's a certain song that's an instrumental song. I said, G-Ma is going to check out for 30 minutes. Is everybody okay? Does anybody need anything? And we might be driving in our camper, you know, in the truck, and, you know, it's bouncing, and I've got these headphones on, but I know that's what I need to do to be a better G-Ma today. So, and then where I do this, I have, when I first lived in the basement apartment, I just set up a little bit of, I'm going to call it an altar.
I don't know, I put some pictures in a windowsill, and I kind of faced that. It's really great for me when I have a space to go to. I think an outside practice is beautiful, going outside and sitting next to a tree, but, you know, maybe you don't have that. So, you know, a dedicated space, but the main thing is first thing in the morning, because we all know we have great intentions, and the day can get by, and before you know it, you know, we didn't make the time to meditate.
So, what I would like to do is I would like for everyone to share what their practice looks like, because I think that's how we all learn, you know, where do you do it, how do you, what do you do, how do you do it, because I think everyone's practice is personal, and I do have a microphone here, and I'm going to ask if people, when they want to come up to share, if they can come up to the front, and if you want to share next, if you could just come and sit in this front chair over here so we're not running around, and that way we can get to more people, if they would like to share.
The three things that I would say that I get from meditation, number one, absolutely number one is patience, and I know yesterday someone was talking about driving
[00:25:02]
in the car, and the blisters, and somebody cuts you off. I used to be that person. I used to be like, what are you doing, you know, but I think meditation over time has changed my brain, so now it's kind of like, you know what, you want to get in front of me, you go right ahead. Patience, the other one, the next one, and this is probably the more important than patience, is it helps me process my emotions.
When I sit still, what's really going on in my life is right there in front of me. I can be busy and doing things and feel like I'm accomplishing something, but it's not until I sit still that what's really going on in my life presents itself, and that's another one, and the other one is it gives me, it gives me a greater perception. All right, so I'm going to ask some people to come up and share what their practice is like, how they got started, anything you want to share about your practice, because this is how we learn, when people share.
Okay, who is the first brave person to come up here and share about their practice, yay. Okay, and I think they said when we're talking, we need to be between the speakers. Between the speakers so there's less feedback. Thank you. Thank you Mary Kay for this topic, it's a beautiful topic and I'm. I'm sorry for the feedback everybody, should I talk quieter, thank you for the topic. I first started meditating, I did the Shavasana like you said Mary Kay, sometimes I would fall asleep, usually I didn't, and that was when I was in college, when I was you know 20, 21 years old.
That was when I was in college, when I was 21, I just hate the feedback, it makes me crazy. So I got pretty good at meditating then, but at the time I was also using a lot of marijuana, a lot, and I stopped, I stopped on my own without a program, I just decided enough is enough, and that was two decades ago, but now when I think about meditating and yoga, which someone just gifted me some yoga things, when I think about doing that I put myself back to where I was 20 years ago, and I don't want to be a daily user, obviously, I don't want to do that.
So that's hard for me to think about meditating in that way, in that like lotus position like she said, or in the Shavasana position, what I do now is I have an app on my phone that times you for 3, 10, or 20 minutes, and it has a little circle like this, and it says inhale, and it says exhale, and it says hold, and it counts to two, and then inhale, exhale, and now it says hold, and there are different ways to do it, you can hold as you inhale, you can hold it, or you can hold it as you exhale, and then so I just follow that little circle, and I try not to think of anything, and I got pretty good at not thinking of anything when I did that practice in my early 20s, I got good at clearing my mind and making it really empty, so I can remember that feeling, I recall that when it's happening, and then afterwards I always just feel, you share how you feel afterwards? I just feel really complete, and really whole, and really full of breath, if that makes sense, probably doesn't make sense, I feel really full of energy and breath, where I've taken all those deep, deep breaths, and I just have to follow that little app, and it makes it really easy for me. Next sharer.
Thank you. I'm Christy. Hi all. And two things came to mind when Mary Kay started saying people could come up. One is that my mom encouraged me to meditate many, many, many years ago, and I would keep trying it, and every time I did, I… Keep trying it, and every time I did, I couldn't stop my thoughts, and so I thought I was a
[00:30:01]
failure at it, and I don't like being a failure. I wanted to be perfect at it. Closer? Okay, thank you. So, it was immensely helpful to me when someone, I guess I was reading something where they said, it doesn't matter, no one can stop their thoughts. The important thing is bringing your attention back to the breath, and if you do that a thousand times during your meditation period, then you're a success. So, I've remembered that, and I don't spend so much time beating myself up because I can't make myself stop thinking. The other thing is that I wanted to share what happened to me when I first really began meditating consistently.
I would do that in the morning and sit for 20 minutes with nothing happening, and it was hard, like Mary Kay said at first, but over time, after a couple of months of doing that, all of a sudden I noticed that during the rest of my life, there was space. When something happened, I had an immediate pause and was able to take the time to consider how to respond. I've never had that happen before, and I'm certain that it was the meditation that began to create that space for me. So, that's all I have. Thanks.
Good morning, everyone. Can everybody hear me? It's very weird to talk. Very weird to hear myself on a microphone. My name is Tatiana. Hello, everyone. I have a longstanding relationship with meditation. I started it a long time ago to save my first marriage because in Moscow, my husband, I was taking care of a very sick child, living with my parents, and my first husband somehow went to this strange kind of meeting at that time, and when I came back to visit him in Moscow, he was a different person. And I was thinking, wow, because he started meditating and running and whatever transcendental meditation was offered at that time, and I was, oh my God, if I will not go with him, I will lose my marriage. So, I started doing it with him, and it was a very interesting experience. I found a lot of friends, I found, but I didn't get spiritual kind of, even it was talked about it, I didn't get it. I wasn't ready. And then I give up, I mean not give up, life moved on, we came to America, and life presented me with the very big challenge. My ex-husband apparently was alcoholic. I had no idea. This was the biggest challenge of my life and biggest fear that I would marry an alcoholic. It was never occurred to me that this perfect Mormon boy, which is I'm marrying, who's not supposed to drink at all, all of a sudden will become an alcoholic. So, when life presented it to me, and when I went to Al-Anon, and first meeting they were reading 12 steps, and I said prayer and meditation will bring us closer to God, something like that, right? Connection to God. And I was thinking, well, maybe this is my people. Maybe life brought me again to bring my practice back. And this time, I realized that when I came to the program in a very bad shape, and a lot of people in this room remember that, I was thinking, well, I understood right away it's a program of action. That was drilled into my mind. I don't need to think my way through my problems.
[00:35:05]
I just have to do what program asked me to do, simple things. You pray, you meditate, go to meetings, read each day, and you meditate. That says, that's step 11. And then I went to retreat, and I'm a big fan of some, okay, we're all not going to have names, it's fine, but I went to the retreat, and I become a meditation teacher, instructor, specifically because I was thinking, well, maybe I'll be able to help somebody one day, and maybe today is a day, and I maybe say something which will help you. Because what I realized that it's no such a thing, I am bad at meditation. This is the first thing from almost every single person's mouth. I'm bad at meditation. That's furthest from truth, because the worst is meditation, the one which you never did. That's it. Because you're not required and don't have to have any skills at all, or any kind of specific personality, or any kind of a ground to do meditation. And start with five minutes. I would say five, three, probably it's too little. Start with five, give yourself a grace. I could stay still five minutes.
I wake up, I open my eyes, I prep my pillow, and I sit down in my bed, and I am doing a meditation. I am closing my eyes, I am awake. I'm not sleeping. Well, if you sleep deprived, you will fall asleep. But this is the sign. If you're falling asleep during the meditation, you sleep deprived. You need to think how to organize your day and sleep more. But that's one thing. And second thing, your thoughts. Never try to stop your thoughts. I'm meditating considerably long time. It's never ever a minute when I'm sitting without thoughts.
Because as soon as you think that you're sitting without thoughts, you're thinking. This is the thought. So don't even try to do that. But what you do, you're absorbing your thoughts. You're absorbing them how clouds in the sky. You are learning how to be absorber of your thoughts. And this is how you're becoming less reactive. Because you're creating this opportunity for your mind to have that gap where you're able to assess the thought and then make a special way to handle this situation. And I am saying special because during the meditation you're getting this something invisible which will guide you, which stays with you, which you never could even acknowledge. But your decisions will become better. Somehow.
This is a magic. This is truly a magic. And one thing, sorry, I'm taking too much of a time everybody. Sorry. But I so wanted to give this knowledge to you that you don't encourage you. You don't need to be a good meditator or be good at some meditation. No. You just need to sit down, stay still, absorb your thoughts, absorb your breath, whatever it is. So when you, when they're teaching meditation, teaching structures, so explain that you have thoughts, right? They're constantly coming, they're constantly coming, they're constantly coming, they're constantly coming, depending from the subject, right? And depending from the situation. But between each thought you have a gap. Each thought after another have a gap. And that gap is present you an opportunity to connect with divine. And you don't need to think about it. You don't just need to know that. That even millisecond between your thoughts and when you're meditating longer, you're increasing this gap which you
[00:40:01]
are falling in. And like you're falling into the pool of divine energy during that time. And each time when you're practicing, when you're coming back, you're bringing a little bit more of the pool water with you. Like you, you drop in and you're coming. And then if you're doing it too many times and it's cumulative, if you especially doing it regularly, it's cumulative effect that you will have a puddle of water on the side of the pool.
It will be your divine pool which you will learn how to swim better and better and life becoming easier and easier because of that. So that's me. Thank you. Hi, I'm Carol. When I worked through my steps and I got to step 11, I thought I have no idea how to meditate. And I found an Al-Anon meeting that addressed steps 10, 11, and 12. And I thought what a good way because I don't know what I'm doing. So anyway, I went to, I started going to those and the first time I went to step 11, the person who was leading it had the whole group of us meditate for 10 minutes. And everything got quiet and I thought, boy, this is really uncomfortable and really strange. But anyway, I am not a person who is real comfortable with, you know, using apps or anything like that. So I thought, what am I going to do? I don't know anything about yoga. I don't know anything.
So anyway, I kind of came up with my own way to do this. And what I did was when I have my quiet time, the first thing I do is pray. And then at the end of that prayer, I would say, okay, God, I need to know what your will for me is. And then I would try to meditate. And the way I do it is when you close your eyes, you see dark and light spaces. And I would just sit quietly, close my eyes and see those white and dark spaces and choose one of the white spaces and imagine that was my higher power. And so then as I sat quietly, I imagined myself taking steps toward my higher power. And as thoughts came, I would like, you know, I went to a meeting one time and somebody said, you can't stop your thoughts.
So if you have a thought, say, okay, go away. And so I would kind of do that. And anyway, quietly, I would imagine myself taking this walk. And as I walked, I would listen to see if there were any thoughts that came to me that I felt like were from my higher power to lead me on what I needed to know about that day. And that's how I do it. Thank you. What a great topic. I just love Step 11. So for me, what I like to think about is what does Al-Anon help me to do with Step 11? There's so many pieces to Step 11. There's the prayer, you know, getting that connection with my higher power in that way where I'm talking like I have a conversation with all of my friends, my God with skin on it. That's part of where I start. And then I go to my inner self, just my own personal self for where I'm connecting with my higher power. Where did I find my higher power? Through these 12 steps. You all helped me to define the God of my understanding through these steps. And, you know, 1, 2, and 3, all of these steps where I went through 4 and looked at, you know, how I was not serving my higher power, how I was not doing those things so that I could get a better connection with my higher power. What does Al-Anon say about prayer and meditation? To me, it's a very personal thing. There's so many things I can find. I love this sheet that had the literature keeping us focused on the program because we can get really quickly into outside issues when we're talking about prayer and meditation.
You know, prayer, we could stand up here and, I mean, I have thousands of prayers that I learned from my religion before I came here and thousands of different ways to do meditation. There are so many different ways, but, you know, laying on a yoga floor just didn't work for me. You know, I tried that. I tried a lot of stuff. I've heard people say walking meditations. that we share our experience, strength and hope with each other because that's what Al-Anon
[00:45:03]
says to do, to share our experience, strength and hope. And if, you know, if it could turn me away and probably did when I was newish in the program, you know, for people telling me what to do and what we say in the program is to just share our experience, strength and hope. I know that, you know, so, so much I have heard that meditation is so personal. So it really takes, it takes a challenge to do a workshop on this because it becomes like, you know, it's, gosh, it's more like what can I do for myself by using the tools just like with all the other steps when we share our experience, strength and hope. How do we do that? But I know that it has been well established how personal this step is. You know, there's so much how, you know, when I connect with that higher power, that conscious contact with my higher power. And I think, you know, there's just so many ways to do that, so many ways to do that. So thank you for this topic.
Hey, thank you. Thank you. Hey, Marcia. Hey, everybody, I'm Marcia. Hi, Marcia. Oh, gosh, I've heard such great things and I just want to put a little different slant. I also want to include Al-Anon in this, too, in how I came about meditating and I've been meditating for many years. I've been a yoga practitioner for many years, which includes meditation, but I got introduced to the 12 steps and it said sought through prayer and meditation. I understood what prayer was, but meditation, just like everyone has said, I started out little. This is, I hardly, I didn't have a cell phone. I don't have, maybe it was an egg timer. You know, I started with one minute and two minutes. I agree, our thoughts, our brains are designed to think. They're going to think. Here's an Al-Anon slogan.
You know, you hear mantras, mantra practice. The slogan, let go and let God. Those thoughts are going to come. They're just going to. They, if a long-term practitioner, they still come. Let go and let God. Sometimes I just recite step two as a mantra and many, many times I don't use a mantra, but I do have a daily practice that has evolved and I had this beautiful altar in my dining room. It is still there. It's got all these yogic things and a candle. I don't use it anymore. I got my hip replaced a couple of years ago and I ended up on the corner of the couch and I'm staying on the corner of the couch right now. You know, I combine a 10th and 11th and on the corner of the couch, I have a meditation practice, but if I'm in a hotel room, well, we have a suite here. I can go out in the living room, but on any other travels, you know, if I need to, I can sit up in the bed.
I can make it work anywhere. I can make it work during the day when I'm feeling insane and I can repeat, there's a power greater than myself that can return me to sanity. And that in itself, if I got that built in, I love the story about the sardines and forgetting the literature. You know, it's true. Oh, here's one more little program thing. A word we hear a lot in these rooms is pause. You know, and that's a, we can apply it to meditation. We're pausing our thoughts and we can pause it in our behavior and before we react. And something that I'm trying to practice, that principle in all of my affairs, practicing, practicing.
We're practicing yoga. I don't think anybody's perfected it. Well, maybe they have, but I'm not perfected it and I've been practicing a long time. And it's really a great part of my morning and that too. I combine 10 and 11. I got this little ritual I do, but I make time and sometimes it's with the app. Well, it's always with the app, but sometimes that app is silent and it's just a timer. You know, I do a lot of different things, but I make it happen every day and it's really important to me.
Hi, I'm Patty. I just have to start with this meditation moment of silence that we had together because sitting up front here with my eyes closed and feeling all of your energy just surrounded me and lifted me up. And that's what I'm looking for when I do my meditation
[00:50:00]
at home. I have two special places. One inside, I have some cushions by a bookcase and in that bookcase are all my Al-Anon books. So I usually start with a daily reading or some reading. Sometimes I'm not focusing on anything and sometimes I'm thinking about that reading to begin with and that gives me a good place to start from. But my other place that I like to meditate is on my porch because I've got a bench near my Zen garden and my two meditation partners are two 60 pound dogs, one on each side of me. And they just lean in and that, that gives me all the loving kindness that I need to start the day. So thank you.
Hi, I'm Benita. So about, I don't know, probably at least 20 years into the program and about 10 years ago, I decided to take an outside class on meditation. Just some of us were doing it and it sounded good. So I started going to this class and I had that thing about I can't sit still, my mind won't stop, yeah. And I thought this is dreaming no good. But I kept going and in the class we did 30 minutes. So, you know, I'm 30 minutes. Whatever. I thought how are these people sitting still and you don't want to make too much noise because there's somebody right next to you and, you know, I have all my perfectionism stuff I still take with me everywhere. So anyway, I was doing it and I had this terrible job. I had this job that was just driving me crazy and I was just a nervous mess all the time at work. And so I had been going to this class, I swear, for maybe a month and it was just like once a week or something. And then I was trying to do it at home too.
I was better at home. I did better by myself at home. But I went to work one day and one of the girls said, I don't know what you're doing, but man, you are calmer. And that was it. I was hooked. So thanks to her for pointing out to me that it was working even if I didn't know it. Hi, my name is Kim. The first time I ever did a meditation thing it was in a group. It was a different 12-step program, but we did a shared guided meditation every week.
And I was like everybody else. It's like, this is the stupidest thing you've done. Oh my God, do they know how loud they're breathing? Oh, would she please just quit moving? Open that piece of candy already. So then shortly after that, because this was back in the day in the 80s, shortly after that we started doing earbuds. And I saw all these people out and about that were talking to themselves because I was riding a bus at the time. And all these people were talking to themselves. And I was like, this is just, I don't care about Susie's failing grades, or whatever, or how that cat just won't stop. I don't care.
But that's whenever I started taking the opportunity for that time to be for me to focus on me. And I realized that the problem for me with meditation was that I was still pointing out. It was always what was happening out and around me, and what I needed to respond to, what I needed to react to, what I needed to be aware of to make me better. That I realized that those earbuds are a really great gift. And now I work in an office, but I'm kind of a, I'm an independent person, but there's other people around me doing other jobs. So that I always have an earbud in my ear, whether I'm listening to something or not. I admit
[00:55:00]
I do meetings on it, and people have no idea. It's awesome. You know, just all this kind of stuff. But I'll have that earbud in there, and I don't have to listen to them. It gives me permission not to pay attention to what they're doing. And I really find that a great gift. And so it, I still like guided meditations, I admit. That's still my go-to because it helps bring me back to focus. But. Thank you.
Okay, I'm getting the, I'm getting the signal. I'm sorry, you can share right after we're finished. We can share right after we're finished. We would love to hear. I would just like to thank everyone so much for sharing your practice. And there have been so many different ways over the years, the breath work, following the clouds. I've tried it all. I've gone to tons of mindfulness trainings, looking for the way to meditate, and after about 10 years realized there isn't one. But what has been my latest one that actually got me there the quickest was a reading that I read out of this wonderful book that I can share afterwards that said, sit in silence and get rid of, and those are the three words I had to remember. Sit in silence and get rid of ideas from your mind. And so I would sit and I would just keep repeating that. Sit in silence, we can just try that right now. Sit in silence, just to remember these words. Sit, first of all you have to sit, second of all it has to be in silence, and get rid of ideas from your mind. And that's what I'm going to leave you with. And thank you all. I have lots of resources outside of this. If anybody would like to come and talk with me, I can share some other things. But thank you all so much. I appreciate it.