Finding Peace in a Stressful Day

 

This picture is of Fish Creek in the summer in Fish Creek Provincial Park.

Many folks carry a lot of stress around with them…from work, from family, from financial worries or health worries.  When stress is building up, even those things that are usually seen as “normal” add to the stress. 

I worked with a teacher for two years in the early 2000’s. One of his best lessons for me was to teach me to deal with stress by finding peace.  He would lead me through meditation to different places to see where I felt the most comfortable….a beach on the ocean, a lake where animals come to drink, a mountain ledge easily accessible, a cloud, beneath a tree, and we tried different trees, on a rock, up a tree, by a creek, in a forest glade, by a waterfall, in the middle of a meadow, and even on a monastery.  Each meditation relaxed me and gave me shades of peace.  The place where I felt the most peace was by running/moving water with a forest close by. 

For years, as I felt stress, I closed my eyes and went to that place where the water was running with the forest in the background.  As time passed, the vision of the place changed.  Sometimes it was an ocean with waves rolling up on the shore and the forest in the background. Sometimes it was a large lake that was mirror still with a forest growing almost to the water’s edge.  The vision slowed my thoughts, cooled anger and frustration, and relaxed my muscles, especially in my shoulders.  

In the beginning, it would take up to 25 minutes to get peace.  If it was a tough day, then it took longer.  Eventually I could find peace in two to three minutes, and what a difference it made to my work performance!  

The lessons that my teacher taught me about finding peace in a stressful day are:

• In meditation, people will tell you to go to your comfortable or safe space.  One does not know what that space is until all the options are explored.
• Finding one’s peaceful, safe place is a process and the safe place may change over time.
• There is not a magic time that it takes everyone to get to their peaceful place.
• Like many actions, getting to the peaceful place takes a lot of practice.
• Arriving at the peaceful, blissful state is worth the work.

Blessings.