My Year of Meditating Virtually
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
~ Gretchen Rubin
It’s already been a year since I started row, row, rowing my meditation bench gently down the live stream.
My friend and colleague Steve James streams some of his meditation sessions on Facebook. He doesn’t provide guidance. He just meditates and invites people to practice with him.
The idea seemed a bit odd to me, but when I meditated with him a couple of times this way, I was surprised by how much the experience resembled meditating in the same room with other people. A local colleague, Juan Alvarez, had also been streaming guided meditations every day on Instagram during the pandemic.
I had already moved my Wednesday evening mindfulness practice group online and was looking for additional ways to support people’s exploration of mindfulness in spite of the social distancing constraints.
I spend a lot of time explaining mindfulness to people and quite a bit of time practicing with them, but almost no time just practicing together in silence. I’ve benefited more from the many hours I’ve spent sitting in a silent meditation hall with experienced meditators than I have from all the time we’ve spent discussing the practice.
April 21, 2020
So I decided to move my weekday morning meditation practice to an hour later than usual and invite people to join me whenever they wanted for as long as they wanted. For my first attempt, I positioned my phone incorrectly and didn’t realize until the end that the Facebook video had streamed sideways.
I felt self-conscious and wondered how people were interpreting my little project, but it quickly became an energizing routine. It felt oddly social regardless of how many people—if any—showed up to practice with me. I was soon streaming on both Facebook and Instagram. Several people reached out to me directly to let me know they were meditating with me and enjoying the support they felt.
In late November, my left knee started to hurt when I was running and meditating. I stopped running and switched from my low meditation bench to the more chair-level bench that Matt made for me several years ago.
It’s been fascinating to track the gradual shifts in the time the sunrise begins and ends each morning and comforting whenever Baxter decides to focus on rest with me.
I created this fun, interactive mosaic to summarize and celebrate my year of meditating virtually.
I’ve hidden a few Easter eggs. See if you can spot:
Bobby Hill meditating in his bedroom
Bernie Sanders meditating in my bedroom
Kristofferson Silverfox (from The Fantastic Mr. Fox) meditating outside
friends and family who meditated with me over Zoom to celebrate the beginning of my daily mediation practice
snapshots of Tehching Hsieh’s one-year time clock performance
Nam June Paik’s video installation of Buddhas watching themselves on television
I’m not sure what comes next. I guess I’ll keep streaming my morning sits for now. I’ve been invited to offer guided meditations sometimes on the Clubhouse app and I’ll soon be leading live sessions on Insight Timer.
It will be nice to practice in person again, but I’m still enjoying the possibility of practicing with people all over the country and around the world. And I’m enjoying the idea of encouraging others to explore mindfulness without trying to talk them into or through it.
You’re invited to join us wherever you want for as long as you want.
