The Effect of Mindful Meditation

Meditating has helped me – wait, more than helped me, it’s me – over those moments when I’ve felt overwhelmed by stress. I do it everywhere. In my car. At my desk. On a beach. If I feel mentally tired, I’ll close my eyes and sit with … and the lift takes me down, down, down or up, up, up depending which button I hit. When I’m ready to take another breath it stops. As I breathe in, the doors open. What happens then is the air that comes into the lift, and into me, is purer and cooler and even more beautiful than before. I step out, stand there for a second and look at everything around me. Sometimes it’s the beach, sometimes it’s the jungle, sometimes the front of my boat. I’m the only person there. There might be birds in the sky or fish in the water but the air is pure and it’s all mine. I concentrate heavily on the air going in and out of my body. I focus on everything that I can see, the glitter on the water, how the sky meets the ocean, the rocks on the mountains. When I’m ready to come back, I take a few more breaths and step back into the lift. As I breathe out, the doors open and I walk over to an imaginary desk where I sit down. I take two more deep breaths and open my eyes. And that’s my little trip away. I’ve done that for fifteen years. When I was depressed and I couldn’t take it any more, that’s where I’d go.