Week 5 - Coachee

The first thing I talked with my coach about tonight was whether or not what we did this week was really meditation. Having read about meditation and tried it a little in the past, I thought of this more as self-analysis and less as meditation. The assignments asked us to clear our minds and only focus on one thing (breathing, emotions, movement, and thoughts) which is reminiscent of meditation practices. However, I found it literally impossible to notice these things without analyzing them at the same time, which seems to defeat the purpose. To genuinely and authentically just think about what I was doing or thinking without trying to figure out why immediately was just not a possibility for me. I can’t read theory about meditation and then go out and do it without thinking back on a readings constantly and trying to apply them to the practice.

My coach seemed to have a nicer and less rigidly academic experience with the meditation assignments though. He appreciated the operational nature of the assignments. As he put it, it was nice to know that on Tuesday he was going to be aware of one thing, then on Wednesday, another, and so on. I liked this aspect of it too, and honestly enjoyed the assignments as a whole. I guess I just had a hard time stepping back and just watching myself.

One possible reason for this difficulty that we talked about at length is the fact that for the last 20 years I have either been a student or a teacher, without so much as a year off at any point. I have spent so much of my life learning to download, to repeat information that’s given to me, and to say what someone else wants to hear, that I have to some extent lost the ability to do much else within the framework of school. I expend so much effort trying to figure out what is right, than I can’t just “take it for what it is,” as my coach put it.
This class is asking us all to walk a like between downloading (the information from the books, meeting deadlines, posting according to rubrics, etc.) and “thinking outside the box”/living in the moment. The transition back and forth between those two ways of being is what I am starting to see as a struggle. I can do one or the other, but I have a hard time doing both. My coach recommended that I take some of the pressure to figure all of this stuff out off of myself, and instead find what relevance I can – be it in my community, in my family, or in other small settings. Seems like a reasonable place to start.