How Was Your Sit Today?

By Edith Zimmerman January 28, 2011

If you’re too lazy to stand up or talk to people, there’s still hope:

[R]esearchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.

Plus we should all move to San Francisco:

Within four miles of our Bay Area home, there are at least six centers that offer some type of meditation class, and I often hear phrases like, “So how was your sit today?”

But what constitutes a sit?

“The main idea is to use different objects to focus one’s attention, and it could be a focus on sensations of breathing, or emotions or thoughts, or observing any type of body sensations,” [psychologist Britta Hölzel] said. “But it’s about bringing the mind back to the here and now, as opposed to letting the mind drift.”

Generally the meditators are seated upright on a chair or the floor and in silence.

No jokes here, but in high school a meditation dude once taught us to sit in silence and think to ourselves, “breathing in I calm my body, breathing out I calm my mind” — not necessarily repeating that exact phrase in rhythm with the breath, although it works that way, too — for five or 10 minutes at a time, and I wish I could find that guy now and thank him. It also works well in the shower.