{"id":6495,"date":"2011-06-03T13:31:48","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T20:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=6495"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:45:12","slug":"the-beginning-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2011\/06\/03\/the-beginning-results\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beginning Results"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been sitting twice daily for 15 minutes each time. It’s possible that 14 days of daily meditation does not make an adequate sample for assessing results (although I was also told when I began an SSRI that the effects would probably not be felt for weeks and within one week I was experiencing vast improvement), but I think it’s changed me. <\/p>\n

In the past two weeks — one of them being my PMS hell-week, when I normally feel like my skin is too tight, am bone-tired, and am agitated and simmering with anger — I have felt something different. Calm. Centered. Grounded. Like a mountain. Unshakeable. Patient. Bemused by things that normally piss me off (stupid drivers, for example). Toward Bean, I have felt the wide open space of graciousness and being<\/em>, just spending time with her. When we’re getting ready to go somewhere, I haven’t been in my usual flurry of cranky nagging, and we still manage to get where we need to go. As I wrote to Maezen<\/a>, Bean has been responsive to this. The other day she said, \u201cMommy, I like the way you talk to me. You\u2019re magic. I love you.\u201d She\u2019s been very affectionate \u2014 possibly also because my absence refreshed us both!<\/p>\n

I feel a change in my interaction with my husband too. Rather than becoming snippy and defensive when I’m tired, or when discussions snag, I’ve remained clear and calm. I like<\/em> him more. Or perhaps I\u2019m encountering me differently?! I asked him this morning if he’d noticed any changes in me, and he admitted he had not, but that he also hasn’t been paying much attention. His head has been at work most of the time, even when home.<\/p>\n

But possibly the most convincing (to me) evidence that meditation has helped is that I skipped yesterday completely, and as a result today I have that vibrating, irritable energy. I hear a stridency in my voice when I talk to Bean that has been otherwise absent. Perhaps the “honeymoon” of my mini-vacation is over, or perhaps it’s because meditation really has that much impact. The only way to tell is to keep sitting. <\/p>\n

\"garden<\/a><\/div>\n

One view of Maezen’s back yard<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been sitting twice daily for 15 minutes each time. It’s possible that 14 days of daily meditation does not make an adequate sample for assessing results (although I was also told when I began an SSRI that the effects would probably not be felt for weeks and within one week I was experiencing vast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,217,34,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-meditation","category-motherhood","category-nature"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495","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=6495"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13533,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions\/13533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}