I started! It felt so good to wake up knowing I’d already committed to begin the program today. No excuses, no bargaining for more sleep time. Let’s hope it lasts!

The first week’s meditation is about paying attention to sensations in your body and then spending a few minutes focusing just on your breath. You do it twice a day for the week. There were a few things I noticed during my very first session:

• First, I guess I never pay attention to physical sensations. I couldn’t believe how many there were and how hard it was to keep them all in awareness at once. But, I did notice that after I was finished with the session and started to get ready for work, at least for a few minutes I picked up a lot more physical sensations than I usually do.
• It’s really hard for me to focus on my breathing without altering it in any way. As soon as I pay attention to it, I want to regulate slow, deep breaths…which is not what I’m supposed to be doing! So, there’s something to work on already.
• Finally, something to explore: As I started to focus on my breath, I noticed a sort of ball of restless, panicky feeling in my chest. Usually when I get that feeling I change what I’m doing, and it goes away. Today I couldn’t, since I was in the middle of a session, and it was hard to just sit there feeling anxious. I’m interested to see if this will be a regular thing and whether it will change as we go.