Remembering My First Meditation Class
I can’t remember when it was that I first considered trying meditation. What I can remember is that from a very early age, my brain seemed naturally curious about anything to do with meditation and eastern teachings. Looking back, this is quite surprising, given that the rest of my immediate family could not have been less interested in meditation and eastern teachings (and are still not to this day).
I can clearly recall being ten years old, at a residential conference my father was running, where I met a wide range of adults from other countries, being super intrigued by an American man who said he was a Buddhist and meditated every day. I didn’t really know what meditation was or what Buddhism was, but I knew that I was definitely super intrigued by the idea of meditation.
So seemingly, having come off the production line with a natural curiosity about meditation, it was inevitable that I would find myself in my first meditation class at some point. But this didn’t happen until I was in my mid-20s.
I had been meaning to find a meditation class for a long time, but it wasn’t until I found myself severely ill that I developed enough motivation to start being more proactive in my search for a meditation teacher and a meditation class. I believed wholeheartedly that if I could learn to meditate, it would give me a far greater chance of getting healthy in the long term, so I was super motivated to find a meditation class that worked for me.
Purely by chance, I was introduced to some people who practised Qi Gong and quickly realised that this was definitely something I wanted to try. And as luck would have it, they were attending classes with a Qi Gong master who had left China and moved to New Zealand.
At that time, I was highly motivated to get healthy; but I also had a thirst for knowledge that I can now see; looking back, it came from a solid egoic desire to master meditation or something similar. I figured that if I could become some kind of warrior monk-type character, it would bring me greater health and happiness than I was currently experiencing. So you can imagine my delight when attending my first meditation class; the teacher seemed to most definitely be a warrior monk-type character himself.
The class (my first meditation class) was in a small cold church hall. It consisted of six vaguely alternative-type human students sitting on a wooden floor and one Chinese warrior monk-type character sitting on a stage, bolt upright, being freakishly ‘still’.
The first 10 minutes of the class were somewhat anticlimactic. All we did was sit on a hard cold floor and watch a bald Chinese man being deadly still on the stage. I was more intrigued than impressed, you could say.
We sat patiently waiting for my new meditation class teacher to show some sign of life for 10 minutes, which seemed easily like 30. And if I’m being honest, it was pretty dull. Then at around the 10-minute mark, something very strange happened, and to this day, I am not sure whether it was my imagination or not. And depending on your own beliefs you’ll likely make your own decision over whether I probably imagined or probably didn’t.
At about the 10-minute mark, the bald meditation teacher seemed, for all the world, to develop a slight glow around him. But it wasn’t the kind of glow you might see in a movie where special effects create the impression of esoteric energies. It was more like the edge of his body became slightly blurred and whitened. Perhaps the way he would look if I had stared at a lightbulb for a minute and then looked back at him. Only it was a very dimly lit space.
It has always been my nature to immediately assume that such things are purely tricks of the mind. Yet within a few seconds of this undeniable shift in his appearance, he stirred and began taking the class. Then, for the remainder of the class, I could intermittently see this strange white blurriness around the edge of his body. I’ve never seen it on any other human being since. But I did see it that night, and although it was 20 years ago, it was visually arresting enough that I’ve never forgotten it.
The meditation class itself was far less interesting than the visual hallucinations I experienced in relation to its teacher. Far less!
We sat patiently waiting for my new meditation class teacher to show some sign of life for 10 minutes, which seemed easily like 30. And if I’m being honest, it was pretty dull. Then at around the 10-minute mark, something very strange happened, and to this day, I am not sure whether it was my imagination or not. And depending on your own beliefs you’ll likely make your own decision over whether I probably imagined or probably didn’t.
At about the 10-minute mark, the bald meditation teacher seemed, for all the world, to develop a slight glow around him. But it wasn’t the kind of glow you might see in a movie where special effects create the impression of esoteric energies. It was more like the edge of his body became slightly blurred and whitened. Perhaps the way he would look if I had stared at a lightbulb for a minute and then looked back at him. Only it was a very dimly lit space.
It has always been my nature to immediately assume that such things are purely tricks of the mind. Yet within a few seconds of this undeniable shift in his appearance, he stirred and began taking the class. Then, for the remainder of the class, I could intermittently see this strange white blurriness around the edge of his body. I’ve never seen it on any other human being since. But I did see it that night, and although it was 20 years ago, it was visually arresting enough that I’ve never forgotten it.
The meditation class itself was far less interesting than the visual hallucinations I experienced in relation to its teacher. Far less!
Qi Gong meditation classes are movement meditations designed to clear blockages from the body and enhance the connection between the mind of the body. And unfortunately for me the style of Qi Gong I had stumbled upon achieves this mainly through boredom, pain, and discomfort.
The first 15 minutes of the class involved stretching your arms in and out repeatedly until they felt like they would burn off, leaving only stumps.
The second 15 minutes of the class involved standing up and then squatting down to the floor repeatedly, making me feel like my spine was made of splintered wood.
Thirty minutes into the class involved some blessedly less painful but incredibly boring arm and leg stretching.
And worst of all, the final 15 minutes of the class was standing really still with your eyes shut and your leg shaking.
It was easily one of the least enjoyable hours of my life. Yet for some bizarre reason, I continue practising that style of Qi Gong to this day.
Qi Gong meditation classes are movement meditations designed to clear blockages from the body and enhance the connection between the mind of the body. And unfortunately for me the style of Qi Gong I had stumbled upon achieves this mainly through boredom, pain, and discomfort.
The first 15 minutes of the class involved stretching your arms in and out repeatedly until they felt like they would burn off, leaving only stumps.
The second 15 minutes of the class involved standing up and then squatting down to the floor repeatedly, making me feel like my spine was made of splintered wood.
Thirty minutes into the class involved some blessedly less painful but incredibly boring arm and leg stretching.
And worst of all, the final 15 minutes of the class was standing really still with your eyes shut and your leg shaking.
It was easily one of the least enjoyable hours of my life. Yet for some bizarre reason, I continue practising that style of Qi Gong to this day.
Whether you do a painful stretchy meditation class like the one I did or a more classical mindfulness meditation class from a Buddhist tradition, the beginning of the meditation journey is inevitably not a particularly fun one. Most of us turn up to our first meditation class only to find that we have taken on something that is not immediately easy or comfortable to do.
When remebering my first meditation class now, it’s not the weird glowing Chinese man I remember most vividly for some reason. I just started with that because it was interesting. What I remember most is that I felt super frustrated about how bad I was at the new challenge I had set for myself. I really just wish that I could whisper in my own ear back then and convince myself just to relax and accept that it was a process rather than put myself through the frustration and subtle self-loathing that comes from failing to accept that it is okay to start something and be bad at it at first.
When I look back now, I can see so clearly that meditation and all the meditation classes that I’ve done have totally changed my life. I can also see so clearly that I never needed to struggle as much as I did; or be as hard on myself as I was, in order to get where I am now.
All the frustration and self-doubt I brought to the meditation class scenario with me did nothing but take the joy and a lot of the speed out of the transformation process. This experience has left me with tremendous compassion for people who experience frustration and uncertainty with meditation classes when they first start out.
Twenty years after my first meditation class, if I could offer one piece of advice to a beginner it would be to just do your best to relax and enjoy the process as much as possible. And not to get discouraged because you are bad at it. It is inevitably challenging to work your way through years of meditation but it can be so much easier if you be kind and patient with yourself along the way.
A less important (but very practical) piece of advice I would also give is to take whatever time is needed to find a meditation class that really works for you and that you strongly believe in.
My belief in the example set by the unbelievable physical strength and poise of the glowing Chinese warrior monk chap was what drove me to practice. That ‘buy-in’ fuelled the progress I made in the early days. If I hadn’t believed in the content of his meditation classes I would never have put enough work in to make progress. If I had held a half-arsed perception of his classes, I would have put in half-arsed effort.
Don’t settle. If you are looking for a meditation class, be patient and keep searching until you find one that really works for you. And when you do find that one, stay with it until it no longer works for you. Then find another one if or when the time comes.
Meditation classes that work for you today are the right ones for you… today. It is likely that at some point, you will need to move on to some other type of class. Very few of us progress endlessly with just a single perspective or set of tools when it comes to meditation classes and meditation practice. It’s a journey and one of the most worthwhile ones you could ever set out on.