{"id":3677,"date":"2009-05-19T13:01:21","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T20:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=3677"},"modified":"2026-01-31T21:36:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:36:33","slug":"meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2009\/05\/19\/meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been sitting daily for 20 minutes, and I&#8217;m amazed how frenetic my thoughts are. They are faster and more erratic than any toddler. I sit, eyes half open, aware of the breath in my nostrils and counting, and all the while it sounds like a cocktail party in my head:<\/p>\n<p><em>Boy, I can&#8217;t believe SHE did THAT&#8230;<\/em> <em>Need to get bread, bananas, and bologna&#8230;<\/em>  <em>Bean is such a sweetie&#8230;<\/em>  <em>When is the auto shop going to call about the repair?<\/em> &#8230;<em>I wish our home had air conditioning&#8230;<\/em>  <em>Wish we had a back yard&#8230;<\/em> <em>Ooo, forgot to send that email to&#8230;<\/em>  <em>The litterbox needs scooping&#8230;<\/em>  <em>How much longer do I need to sit here? My back is killing me&#8230;<\/em> <em>I need to scratch my nose.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I don&#8217;t think thoughts as much as see images in my mind&#8217;s eye: me walking with Bean, the house we almost bought, our living room strewn with toys. All too often I catch myself traipsing down the path of thought or following the images and then I pull myself back into the present and focus on my breath again. Then there are moments when I am aware of all the chatter in the background but remain undistracted.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s difficult to do this, but I feel the impact already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been sitting daily for 20 minutes, and I&#8217;m amazed how frenetic my thoughts are. They are faster and more erratic than any toddler. I sit, eyes half open, aware of the breath in my nostrils and counting, and all the while it sounds like a cocktail party in my head: Boy, I can&#8217;t believe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,217,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-meditation","category-nature"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3677"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13866,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677\/revisions\/13866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}