What Drew Me to Meditation
In her interview with PsychAlive’s Dr. Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about what drew her to the practice of meditation.
Lisa Firestone: When did you first become interested in mindfulness and what attracted you to that practice of meditation?
Donna Rockwell: Well, it was quite interesting really because I was a journalist in Washington, DC and I was a typical Type A running 100 miles an hour every day and I had friends who I heard were Buddhist meditation people and I had always been interested since I was a child sort of in that Eastern world.
And so I asked them to please teach me how to meditate so I sat with the husband, Robert, and he gave me meditation instruction and what I discovered that day was that I could not sit still for five minutes. That I was actually coming out of my skin and it was awful. It was scary and when we finished the five minutes, I said, “That was terrible. I could not even be still for a second and my mind was racing.” And he said well that’s what you discover in meditation.
So I thought that this was something that I really needed to do in my life. I saw in that instance how really out of control my whole life was. Even though I was accomplishing a lot. So that’s how I got into it. And since then I think I’ve actually dedicated my life to it. Maybe unknowingly, but more and more interest in different areas of it and practicing and teaching. And it’s become a mission for me.
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Dr. Rockwell,
Please define “mindfulness”.
Thanks … Paul
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally…as if your life depended on it.”