Kimme: Habit One - meditation

The first habit that I want to keep from my last heath and exercise plan is my short morning meditation.  I have had a push and pull relationship with meditation ever since I was a child.  My mom had wanted to be a Buddhist monk  long before she met my father and has continued to practice meditation throughout her life.  When he passed away she began a yearly ritual where she spends the first 108 days with intense meditation.  She has always encouraged me to meditate but I always found it difficult to learn from her so I have looked for meditative activities that I have the same amount of passion for.  Once I found running and making things, I decided that I had found my own form of meditation and stopped looking for a formal meditation practice.

Now that I live in Panama and feel more distanced from my mom, I am looking for other ways to connect to her so I decided to try adding in a meditation practice.  I knew I could spend months sorting through all the meditations I could choose from so I decided that I was going to pick one that had the basic elements of  meditation that my mom does... an intention, a specific time limit, breath, pose, gaze and mudra.   I know from my past experience of trying to settle on a meditation that I have a tendency to over research and jump around and want to try every new thing I hear about so I promised that I would do this one for 21 straight days before trying something else.  I have made it through my initial trial period and think I chose the right for now.  Other than wanting to have another thing in common with my mom, I have no specific goal for this new habit.   It will be interesting for me to see how this ritual evolves over time.  It seems that the only habits that are sustainable in the long run are the ones that I learn to really enjoy and have some sort of profound meaning for me. 

My mom starting her morning meditation.