One of my students told me she couldn’t meditate.
She’d tried. She had the app, the cushion, the quiet corner of her bedroom. But every time she sat down to do it, her mind went straight to him — to the person she’d lost — and she’d end up more undone than when she started. So she stopped trying.
I understood completely. Because for a lot of people in grief, the idea of quieting the mind is not restful. It’s terrifying. The mind is the one thing that’s been keeping you moving. Stop it, and everything you’ve been outrunning catches up with you.
So I stopped calling it meditation.
I call it tuning in. And for a lot of people, that one shift changes everything.
Tuning in isn’t about emptying your mind. It isn’t about achieving a particular state or doing it correctly or sitting still for any prescribed amount of time. It’s simply about turning your attention inward — deliberately, gently, without agenda — and noticing what’s there.
Sometimes what’s there is grief. That’s okay. We don’t run from it.
Sometimes what’s there is a surprising stillness you didn’t know you had access to. Sometimes it’s a memory that brings comfort. Sometimes it’s a sense — quiet but real — that you are not as alone as you thought.
That’s the thing about tuning in. When we get quiet enough, we sometimes hear things. Not always. Not on command. But often enough that it becomes worth returning to.
I’ve sat with people who swore they weren’t spiritual, weren’t intuitive, weren’t the type — and then in a moment of stillness, something arrived. A feeling. A knowing. A sense of presence that surprised them.
I’m not asking you to believe that will happen for you. I’m just asking you to try getting quiet.
Ten minutes. No app required. No right way to do it.
Just you, turning inward, and seeing what’s there.
That’s tuning in. And for some of us, it’s the closest thing to peace we’ve found.