📿 Splitting Hairs

Rocking chair meditation. Or is it meditative rocking?

Image ID: A rocking chair in the afternoon sun under a delightfully unhinged painting of a cat-mermaid by a local folk artist named Earl Swanigan. Cat-mermaid has become the patron saint of our Baby Den and oversees feedings, rockings, and diaper changes.

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Hello! Adreanna here, for this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

These days my meditation practice happens more in a rocking chair than on the floor straddling my cushion. These sessions seem to happen at 7pm, during the witching hour, or in the deep night of 3am when our daughter needs extra soothing and I’m loaning her my nervous system until she’s able to fall asleep. 

During rocking chair meditation, my mind will sometimes flash back on a not-so distant past when both my time and my body belonged to just me. I could practice whenever I wanted. I could practice wherever I wanted. Now my meditation practice is more of a collaborative effort between myself and the needs of our daughter. It makes me think of what the choreographer Twyla Tharp wrote about creativity: that it thrives with restraints and limitations (I paraphrase). Limitations urge us to get creative with what we have available. This has certainly been true for my practice during this period of time when both space and body autonomy are rarely in my resource kit. 

From this not-so-distant past, I’m able to hear my own voice teaching a meditation class and making the distinction between “meditative practices” and the practice of meditation. 

Meditative practices are activities that people generally like to say is “their meditation” — without actually being meditation. Running. Painting. Fishing. Knitting. These are practices that live in the same neighborhood. They are meditation’s friendly neighbors down the street. It’s a matter of splitting hairs, perhaps. But I’ve always found it helpful to make a clean distinction. One way of coming to know a thing is by knowing what it is not. 

Often the purpose of these practices is different. Which means that the outcome will be different, too, even if only subtly. They activate the body, the mind and sometimes even the nervous system in a different way than meditation practice. Even if they lead to feeling more calm. And at the end of the day, not everything has to be a “meditation” in order to have value. 

Knitting can just be knitting. Running can just be running. Meditation can just be meditation. All are contemplative. All have tremendous value. And all are distinctly different. Occupants of a contemplative neighborhood that live in different houses. 

And then there’s the rocking chair at 3am. It’s in these moments that I wonder if rocking one’s body under a sleeping child can be considered meditation or if it’s simply meditative. I hear myself making the distinction and decide that honestly, it doesn’t matter. I know that my sanity is strengthened in meditative moments just like this. 

Feeling the pressure of my feet on the floor; rolling from toes to heels and back again. Feeling the intake of breath widen my belly. Feeling her tiny body nuzzled warm against my chest. Right here. Just this. 

These early weeks of parenthood have been marked by this kind of simplicity. Doing the simple, singular thing without making it more than it is — which is meditative in its own right. Just eating. Just sleeping. Just soothing. Just rocking. I think of Thich Nhat Hanh’s straightforward instruction for meditation practice. “Breathing in I know that I am breathing in. Breathing out I know that I am breathing out.” 

It makes me wonder: What is meditation if not a simple act that’s performed with devout attention? 

Or maybe it’s simplicity + attention + repetition that makes an act meditative. Knitting. Running. Painting. Rocking. 

Here I am splitting hairs again. 

This has been a time when all fat has been cut from the activities of daily life. Our needs have been reduced down to what is essential. Our focus has been reduced to the immediate. I think again of this not-so distant past of mine and count the number of times I’ve gone on meditation retreat to find a similar mode of being. A daily experience that’s marked by a similar raw simplicity. Just eating. Just sleeping. Breathing in I know that I’m breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I’m breathing out. 

I find myself thinking that maybe, just maybe, fourth trimester is a meditation retreat with diapers? And infinitely less sleep? Okay, this is a bit of a stretch. I’ve never known a retreat to be quite so rigorous, or adorable. Maybe the fourth trimester is a retreat…with a newborn…that’s meditative. At least it has the potential to be in it’s very best moments. Rocking chair moments. Moments of attention, repetition and simplicity.

Here I am splitting that hair into tiny little pieces. 

I think that this is my way of making sense out of a nonsensical experience. I want to qualify it as something familiar and knowable. At least for now, what I know is true is that I share my nervous system with this tiny being. And whether our rocking is meditative or meditation, it’s finding equilibrium - not classification - that honestly matters the most.

Breathing in, I know that I’m breathing in. Splitting hairs, I know that I’m splitting hairs. 

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