Running Meditation

I have been running again.

Years ago, I trained and ran the Florence Marathon.  I have been saying for years that I want to get back out there and I really do.  I missed running.

My friend Susan who read my tarot cards recently said that I needed to start meditating and visualizing and saying what I want out loud.  So I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

I have a routine to my runs.  I walk to the end of my street and run along a bike/walk path where I live in Burbank.  And I don't bring my iPod.  I just run.  And I tell myself things.  I repeat one sentence about what I want.  Over and over again as I run.  And it becomes the rhythm of my running.  I don't think too much about what I'm saying in terms of editing myself.  I concentrate on the words, but I don't give them much thought because if I did I might judge myself.  So I run and express what I want.

And that's my daily meditation.  I have been trying to lay still and close my eyes and do a guided meditation.  But I found that I wouldn't do it every day.  And it felt silly.  But this running meditation helps make the time pass. But what it also does is that it gets me to say what I want.  Then I say it again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  And I keep going.  The words propel my forward as I run.

I don't just whisper.  And I fight the urge to quiet down while I running past someone.  I fight to be heard.  I speak in a firm voice.  Not yelling.  Not pushing.  But out loud in a speaking voice.  In a clear speaking voice.   It's wonderful.  And I can't believe I didn't do it before.

When Susan and I talked about visualizing, I didn't have any idea how to do that.  I thought it meant that I picture in my head a scene of me winning an award, or the credits at the end of a TV episode.  That was my idea of visualizing.  But Susan shared with me that she talks to herself in her car and she screams at the top of her lungs: "They're going to love this idea!"  I remember when she said that to me, I was so shocked.  That sounded so crazy.  It sounded REAL crazy.

But I also knew that good things were happening for her and if that was the conviction she was speaking with, then there was room for me to speak with the same conviction.  Every day.  I need to remind myself every day that I deserve good things to happen.  It really is a daily struggle.  It's like I had an addiction to shooting myself down and like any addiction, it's a "one day at a time" journey.  So every day I put on my running shoes and I go out there into the world and start running.  Then I tell myself that I deserve to be a writer on a TV staff and I deserve to have my own show and I deserve to have a production of my plays and I deserve to sit in a meeting with smart people and know that I'm just as smart, if not smarter than them.

My head has to get big so that it has room for every great idea that I come up with.  I am not afraid to get a big head.  I already have a big heart and a big libido.  So why not have a big head?

I deserve to have a big head.  That should be my next mantra.  I am going for a run right now.