We did walking meditation in my stress reduction course tonight. Acute awareness of one’s feet and their motions. Every now and then a bell would sound and we would head for the nearest chair to continue with some sitting meditation, then at another bell would keep walking again. We were encouraged to take a nearby chair, not any one in particular, and to continue to move very slowly and mindfully as we went there, to keep the flow of the meditation continuous. I did find it much easier to focus with the alternation between activities.
Thing is, every time that little bell rang, and we all began heading to the circle of chairs at the outside of the room, all I could think of was slow motion musical chairs. There we all are, heading for the chairs in the circle, each one trying to get to one particular one that we’ve arbitrarily decided on, sometimes having to change our mind and go for another one nearby since somebody else got there first, except in absolute, painful slow motion. And not just slow motion like a leisurely stroll, but full fledged batteries dying, molasses-filled room Slow Motion. This amused me greatly for some reason.
In the final sitting meditation, it occurred to me that I’m not sure what would happen if the instructor was ever one of the ones to doze off (I should point out that I do spend SOME of my time in actual meditation, but the mind offers thoughts no matter how successful the focus. That’s just what minds do). It seemed for a moment that we were going on longer than usual, all seated in silence with our eyes closed and our focus on our breath. I wonder how long we would all sit there if she never cued us to stop. I wonder who would be the first one to disrupt the group by mentioning that time should have been up a while ago. I bet we’d make it at least an extra twenty minutes like that. Maybe significantly longer.
I also acknowledged today that perhaps a part of the small distance I’ve been feeling from my husband lately (who I love dearly and am super-duper thrilled with and attached to, don’t get me wrong) might be the result of my taking this all on independently. I don’t really have that many undertakings that are exclusively my own, and I know that historically I can have a hard time balancing self-sufficiency and pushing-away-others. My mind mixes them up sometimes, I think, and feels like to manage on my own I need to convince myself that I don’t need anyone else. At any rate, I am going to try to not let being successfully on my own interfere with cherishing the time I spend with my sweetie. I don’t want that to cause any distance between us.
Of course, it could have been the fact that he’s been super-grumpy lately from the moving stress too. 
