Practice originially written as part of the Shevet Reset, a Jewish meditation challenge for younger adults.

It was not. My body immediately rebelled—aching knees, itchy skin, endless shifting. I felt terrible at meditating. But eventually, with nothing else to do but practice, something shifted. One day I noticed a strong itch on my nose and, for the first time, I paused. I felt the urge to scratch. I stayed with the sensation. And then—without me doing anything—the itch passed. On its own.

That itch changed everything. After all, so much of my life was made up of itches I scratched without thinking, feeling powerless not to. Each time I felt lonely, I texted an emotionally unavailable ex. Each time I was angry, my fingers flew to a keyboard, typing faster than I could think, hitting send before I could change my mind. Each time I felt anxious, I would binge eat or drink tequila or shop for clothes I didn’t need, anything to put out the fire of discomfort or pain. If I could slow down enough to watch the life cycle of an itch, as well as the desire to scratch it, without reacting, then suddenly, my habitual ways of dealing with desire were fair game for pause and interruption. As Victor Frankl famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

This is your invitation for practice. See, as best as you can, if you can slow down and notice the transitional nature of all things – your breath, the light, an itch. Pay attention to how everything is shifting and changing all the time. See if you can elongate the time between stimulus and response by paying attention to these moments of constant change and transition.

Reflection Questions:

• What transitions are happening in my life, right now?
• What arises for me in moments of transition? What emotions (fear? Excitement? Relief?) What thoughts? (“I better hold on”? “I like this”? “I hate this”?) What bodily feelings? (clenching? constricting? relaxing?)
• What supports me during periods of transition?