Last week I said a few words about my own meditation practice, how I started with an approach that I call one-minute meditation, and how I had no idea where it might lead. I just knew that I liked listening to what regulator meditators said about their own experiences. So I thought I would try it out. One-minute meditation is just what it sounds like. It’s great for starters. It’s hardly much of a commitment. I mean, it’s one minute. You won’t be late for the sake of a single minute.

First, I had to figure out where to meditate. And when to meditate. It needed to be somewhere relatively quiet, and where I would be less likely to be disturbed. I thought about the basement (lumpy couch, cranky cat). The bedroom (nowhere good to sit). The bathroom (no).

What about the car? Somewhat unorthodox perhaps, but it might work. You’re not home, you’re not at work. It’s liminal time. In between time. Nowhere time. Perfect for tucking in a bit of breathing. So I tried it out when I got home from work, and I fell asleep in the garage. I decided to try meditating in the morning instead. I drove to work, pulled into the parking garage, and turned off the engine. I dropped my keys in my lap, and began to breathe.

So I started. And my mind went a million places all at once. We need toilet paper. Should we go to the Jersey shore again this summer? Did the electric bill get paid yet? I need a gift for my neighbor’s new grandbaby. I wonder if it’s safe to use salt on the front walkway. It felt like theater of the absurd. This couldn’t be it. I asked my friend the meditator, and she just shrugged and smiled. Keep going, she said.

Some days I forgot to meditate before I got out of the car, but most days I remembered. If you might have followed my car into the parking garage at work, you probably saw me with my eyes closed for a minute before I exited the car. Four or five days a week, I breathed in for 5 seconds, breathed out for 5 seconds. That was my warmup, now do it 5 more times. A minute of meditation. Every intrusive thought felt like I was losing. It wasn’t a contest, but I was sure this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. There were a lot, and I mean a LOT of intrusive thoughts. Many days, in fact, it was mostly intrusive thoughts.

I imagined climbing an endless ladder to forever. I pretended I was riding an infinity loop, up and over, down and around, up and over, down and around. Do we have enough cat food? Do any of the kids need a new sleeping bag this year? Why do my parents always tell us when they are coming for a visit instead of asking if the dates work for us? I imagined I was the flame of a candle, steady and incandescent. The thoughts kept coming. I seriously doubted my ability to do this. I could not get through a single cycle of inspiration and expiration without being distracted. Every distraction felt like a demerit. I felt no different. I felt nothing.

I kept trying. In my old car there used to be a clock on the dashboard. I would note the time before I closed my eyes, and immediately upon opening them. 7:47, 7:48. Done.

Then one day, when I opened my eyes, two minutes had gone by. That was odd, I told myself. And then, a few weeks later, it happened again. And again. Not long after that, I marked my one-year anniversary of meditating, and soon after that came the very first time I went through an entire inhale-exhale cycle (10 seconds of breathing) without being distracted. The next time did not come for a long while after that. But I had felt it. And I liked it. One day, I opened my eyes and saw that 6 minutes had gone by. Six whole minutes. Where had I been? What was happening?

I began to feel more like a human being instead of a human doing. Years passed, and I continued to meditate. I added weekends, because at some point the right thing for me became to meditate every morning, including weekends. At some point, I moved my practice from the car to home, and set up a tiny little studio, complete with yoga mat, in a large, vacated closet.

At one point, I realized that some of my distractions had begun to be about the subject of meditation and mindfulness. It’s still distraction, but I have to give myself credit for trying. That’s so meta. Sometimes I crack myself up.

Maybe a year ago, I had the realization that I had a habit of reacting to every distraction as if it were a mistake, a problem, a disappointment. And then, just that quickly, I saw the distractions for what they were: opportunities. Opportunities to remember that I was meditating. Not trying to meditate. Just meditating. That’s because the trying IS the meditating. Of course I was meditating during this entire thought process. The distractions are an essential part of the process. So what was the next step, then? I simply returned to the breath.

I have read that the major benefit of meditation derives from the action of “returning to the breath.” So realizing that you have become distracted is actually an opportunity, and that opportunity is how you learn to meditate. In other words, these opportunities, all of which result in you returning to the breath, ARE meditation. Distractions don’t detract from the act of meditating; they are your teachers. Consider the thoughts as passing clouds, noticing but not engaging with them. And then return to the breath.

What is the breath actually? And what does it mean to return to the breath? For me, I have had a number of different approaches to this question. It might be the little wind at the opening to my nostrils that’s cooler on inspiration and slightly warmer on expiration. Or it might be the sensation of my rib cage expanding and contracting. And not just the front, but all the way around my torso. Or it might be the feeling of air moving down my windpipe into my lungs and then out. Sometimes these morph into hearing my heartbeat in my ears, or feeling my heart beat in my chest, or even feeling a tiny pulse in my hands. Any of these, or others, are ways to connect to the breath.

With time, I feel like I have become a little more patient, a little less reactive, a little kinder maybe. Reliable. Resilient. Maybe this would have happened whether I had begun to meditate or not.

I still have days in which I feel as if I practically didn’t even meditate. The whole exercise is just a rolling cascade of thoughts: I think I feel congested; I need to wash my pajamas; What should I do tonight after work??? And there have been two or three times, but still, that felt almost magical in a way that is hard to describe. Most of the time I meditate for 10-15 minutes during the week, and a little more on the weekends. When I am in a huge hurry, like for a 7 am meeting, I might meditate for just a few minutes. I have even done one-minute meditation on occasion when I didn’t really have time to meditate. Because I never DON”T meditate. Every day is a day for meditation. That’s what works for me.

Besides, even just a single minute of meditation every day would add up to 6 hours of meditation in a year. And that is really something.

One other thought i want to share is that I have, with time, noticed that sometimes the things that continue to distract me most actually provide a solution to a problem, or insight into an issue that may have been bothering me, but of which I was not previously aware. That is not the purpose of meditation, but it is an observation. And a benefit.

I believe that I started meditating sometime around January 2016, which means that I have been doing this for just over 6 years now. I invite you to try if you are so inclined. There is no right or wrong way to meditate. Just breathe. And when you find that you have strayed from the breath, you can just return to it.