I am sitting and stretching waiting for the class before me to finish so I can start mine. I am watching the class, watching Jonathan and Danielle help Master Holloway show the beginner class how to do a low block. I am half here, watching but also thinking, not about what I am watching but about a hundred other things that are occupying my mind. Worrying about my business, about schedules, my friend who is depressed again this week, my patient who is going in for surgery. I am physically here in the gym waiting for taekwondo to start but miles away in my mind with all the worries and planning and stuff that is making me think it is all so important.
Now class begins, line up, feet together, my body knows what to do. I am here. I feel my feet touch, my hands press to my thighs, my body bend at the waist to bow. Finally class begins and I can be here, now. The floor vibrates into my feet as I sense the movement of the students next to me through the bouncy floor. Jumping jacks, stretching, punches, kicks and I start to feel the sweat around my face and my familiar aches work themselves out. Combinations, fundamental moves, my form and I feel myself focus. I am only here and now and nothing else matters. Focus and freedom.
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about being in the moment. We were talking about things that keep us in the moment and things that we do when we are so far out of the moment it is scary. I am noticing all the times when my thinking takes over. The thinking is mostly worry about the future, or remembering some past moment. When I do this I am not paying attention to the only moment that really matters, which is the one I am in. I have been practicing this lately, this being in the moment. It makes everything interesting. I feel more alive to what is happening around me, people, nature, everything. It also wipes away any worry about the past or future when I can get myself into the now. I have found it a waste of time to worry about something that hasn’t happened yet and another waste of time to worry about something that has already happened. Freedom. Slowing down, paying attention, with relaxed focus on the thing that is in front of you. And all of this seems like a miracle seen as I have been conditioned from an early age to worry. I somehow learned to worry about everything, like my worrying, if fierce enough, would produce some result.  Well, I will tell you the result, anxiety. Â
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Present moment awareness is a practice, a discipline. The practice is catching yourself in your daily moments when over-thinking is taking over and coming back into your center, into the now, with a clear, quiet focus. Negative thoughts have this way of sucking you in, and being self perpetuating. Breaking out of that trance and into the now is the practice. And it is worth the effort. Â
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When I am in class I am in the moment and it is beautiful, almost effortless. There are moments of distraction like when I catch one of my kids misbehaving, but in general I can stay focused because I have to pay attention to what my body is doing. If I don’t, there is a consequence that has a way of slapping me in the face, and in taekwondo that is sometimes literal. I used to call my running practice my meditation time. When I learned about the idea of the mind chatter I realized that most of my meditative runs had been lost in thoughts, some good and some bad. Since then when I have tried to focus on the moments of the run itself I have struggled to stay there, always seeming to drift back into thinking about something other than what I am doing. It was easy to be distracted because running is rhythmical and repetitive and I seem to be able to run without really paying attention to the act of it. With taekwondo it is more difficult to be distracted and still practice. It requires the mind and the body focus at once, and that is what I enjoy most about it. Â
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There is power in the present moment when you are aware inside of it. That power has to do with a peace, freedom, creativity, a stillness out of which anything can happen. If we can break out of the prison of our minds and live aware inside that stillness we can achieve anything.
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This post was taken from my blue stripe essay. Â Thanks for reading.
COMMENTS
I needed this tonight, having gotten not a single decent point in my sorry sparring matches but earning a black and blue knee AND wrist (awesome) and feeling like I am never, ever, ever going to get this. *sigh*. I love this post. Thank you for sharing.
