GENTLE MOVE

My Love Affair with Meditation

As a child raised in Buddhism, I had a hard time understanding and enjoying meditation. It wasn’t until I faced a life crisis that I opened my mind to this self-care practice.

As an adult, I feel so fortunate to have learnt about the concept of meditation as a child. Growing up in Thailand, we had a Buddhism class during which we would spend 10–15 minutes meditating. I can tell you that it was not my favourite moment of the week.

For me, then, meditation meant sitting still on the floor and keeping up with a mantra as we breathed in and out. What torture! The only fun we got out of this was peeking at each other and seeing who would fall asleep or making other kids laugh and get in trouble with our teacher.

Needless to say, I did not meditate outside the classroom. Why would I want to do that?

All of this changed in 2016, when I rekindled my relationship with meditation and, essentially, myself as part of my burnout recovery. I still recall the first meditation practice after two decades of absence. I rebuilt my meditation practice from a one-minute guided session as part of a 20-day meditation series. Every day, an extra minute was added to the session…