My home-base studio hosted a Gratitude Practice today.  Donation only.  The class was longer than usual.  The announcement made it sound that we would be practicing meditation, a gratefulness meditation focus, as the key component for today’s gathering.  I’m not sure that happened.  Regardless, the studio was packed.  We were making spaces where there wasn’t any space. I was feeling the community of it.

Four of the studio teachers tag teamed the session.  The meditation teacher, that’s all she hosts classes for anymore, did the final Savasana.  I did not get to take her classes while she was still teaching yoga classes.  She was the studio owner in fact, when I first started attending this studio.  Her classes just weren’t at times that I could make it.  Now she hosts meditation groups.  I so want to attend, and still they are not at times that I can make it.  Today was the first opportunity to take advantage of her mature instructor style.  I so appreciate a seasoned teacher.  There is so much to learn.

Savasana was not longer than usual.  I didn’t even reach that meditative state I am finding to be common place these days.  But her voice and some of her words still brought me mentally, to my knees in personal awareness.

As we settled into our asanas, and I could hear the rustling of people in the room so I was not the only one fidgeting into place.  Our meditation coach talked us down from our active minds.  Mid-way through her calming address she said, “What’s on your mind?  What are you thinking?  Do you have a thought, or does your thought have you?”  Right there all my thoughts turned to imaginary pixels and fell from whatever picture I had in my mind, just fell away, no trace.  No thought.  It was magic.  It was what I crave from meditation, that loss of thought.  The disintegration, the vaporization, thought never existed, or better…I was beyond thought.

Meditation has become my new love.  Allowing the lull in thought, to become unencumbered by thought, allows me to feel fresh, light, grounded and vibrant again.  There’s beauty sleep, which is a real thing, and there’s meditation, which is as wholly beneficial as sleep and only takes ten to twenty minutes.  So yes, the question is pertinent.  Do I have a thought, or does my thought have me?

While there was not direct instruction to set gratefulness or gratitude as our intention, other that at the beginning of class (grateful to be coming together, grateful to be warm, housed, with family and community) The Savasana did not come with additional instructions to be grateful – I was allowed to swim in the plasma ooze of the universe, thoughtless and flowing.

That such a thought would dispel my thoughts.  I find this phenomenal.