Shenanigans

When I teach Aikido to kids’ age 6 to 10 we sit in meditation for a couple of minutes at the beginning and at the end of each class. It has become such a normal thing to do that kids that just join the group slot in right from the start. They sit there for minutes perfectly still, eyes closed, breathing in and breathing out. Mothers watch in amazement, their ADHD child sits still. Their “miss talk a lot” is quiet. Every now and then we talk about meditation and I tell them that thoughts are like clouds. When you watch the sky she is never the same, sometimes there are hardly any clouds, sometimes there are many. Sometimes the clouds are nice and fluffy, sometimes the clouds are dark and heavy. All these clouds are perfectly fine as they appear. When you look at the sky you know you can not hold on to any of the clouds, nor can you make them move any faster, they just drift by at their own pace and so should you not hold on to any thoughts or make them move any faster. Telling the cloud that it is a nice cloud or a stupid cloud does not make much different to the clouds but it does make a different to you who is watching. Clouds are just clouds what ever shape or size.


One day I was telling the story again about watching the clouds and how telling clouds they are stupid makes you feel different, one of my kids remarked: “when you say things are stupid, it is like you are blowing smoke out of your mouth, when you blow out smoke all the time, pretty soon you can’t seen anything any more, not even the clouds.

I bowed to him deeply.

It has not always been the normal thing to do, to sit still and meditate at the beginning and end of class. When I started, some eight years ago, things were very different. When I had them all neatly lined up and I would sit in front of them in meditation, some kids would get up and walk around, some would ask me if they could go to the bathroom, some would poke at their neighbor, some would roll their eyes and pretend to faint and some would make funny farting noises and they all would laugh. All the shenanigans kids can think of I’ve seen by now I think.

I had a hard time understanding what it is I needed to do to get them to at least sit still at the start of class. I tried the nice cop bad cop routine, did my best to ignore it for a while, lost my temper a few times, and let the entire discipline slide completely and joined in the fun. What it took to take them with me in the enjoyment of meditation was the realization that all the shenanigans they pulled, I pulled when I started with meditation.

The whole song and dance between me and the kids was a blown up version from the whole song and dance I went through with my teacher and I was still going through with the clouds in my own head.

I could not make them meditate and enjoy it, no more than I could hold on to a cloud; I had been blowing smoke left and right and could not see what I needed to see. So I began with being truthful to myself and see my shenanigans and sit with them, in front of a group of young kids.

Now we can sit together in silent’s me, my kids and our shenanigans, enjoying breathing in and breathing out and every now and then we roll around laughing at funny farting noises.