Thirty-Five Years to a Simple Practice
My first experience with meditation was over 35 years ago. I was very forgettable. I was nervous. I did not know what I was doing. It was in a Zen center, and I left after 15 minutes, and years went by. It was not the only room I would walk out of in those early years, and they all ended the same way, with me deciding this was not for me.
I tell people that on purpose, especially anyone who thinks the person guiding them must have always been good at this. I was not.
Eventually, I was found by my teacher, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who guided me into my first deep dive in silent retreats and the beautiful Sahaj Samadhi meditation that he teaches. Along the way, I encountered and was guided by S.N. Goenka, from the Vipassana tradition, and those silent retreats were indispensable. The silence did something the effort never could. It let the interior world grow quiet enough to be felt, instead of managed.
My practice has changed forms many times, and I have learned to trust that. When I started practicing yoga in my early 20s, there was a story I loved about a teacher whose whole instruction came down to two words. Exercise every day. My own practice has wandered from intense yoga to Qigong, and recently my Qigong has become pick-up basketball at the YMCA. The form matters less than the showing up.
That is the through-line of 35 years. It was never about finding the single correct technique and gripping it forever. It was about staying in relationship with my own aliveness, and letting the doorway change as I changed.
If you are somewhere on your own version of that path, tried it, set it down, picked up something else, wandered, doubted, none of that is off the path. That is the path.
I wrote the fuller story, and where it finally led, on our Effortless Meditation site.