So there I am, bloody determined to join the enlightened masses, downloading this meditation app, like some convert at the altar of digital wellness. My smartphone screen glows with pastel animations of serene bastards floating through clouds of manufactured tranquility, and I think to myself, yes, this is it, I am gonna be a guru or something! This is the moment I transcend my chaotic primate brain and become one with the fucking universe. Why haven't thought about it before?? You Idiot!
Without further fucking ado, Press play.
Her voice materialises through my earbuds like warm honey dripping from a teaspoon. Samantha. I will call you Sam because, I must admit, you're very friendly. Smooth, measured, professionally compassionate in that way that suggests someone spent thousands of hours perfecting the exact frequency that makes anxious mammals feel temporarily less doomed. She tells me to sit comfortably, and I'm already overthinking it, because what is comfortable, really, in this meat prison we call existence? My arse finds an acceptable position. Good enough. Close your eyes, Sam purrs, as though closing one's eyes is some revolutionary act rather than what happens every time I blink. Whatever, focus!
Breathe in through your nose, she instructs, and I'm doing it, I'm bloody well breathing like a champion, Olympic-level respiration happening right here in my sitting room. Hold it. Release through your mouth. Oddly, at times I create bubbles with my saliva, and I wonder is this already the gift of being elected? Again, she says, and we're cycling through this respiratory ritual like monks with really boring mantras. My mind, that treacherous little shit, starts cataloguing the sounds outside: a car alarm having an existential crisis three streets over, the neighbour's dog barking, fucking magpies dragging themselves across my house's roof, scratching the tiles as if they were their own property, my own heartbeat performing a drumroll for my impending mental dissolution.
Now, Sam says, and there's a pause, a pregnant silence thick with intention, I want you to bring your awareness to your body. Start at the top of your head and slowly, slowly, move your attention downward.
What? Fine. Top of my head. There it is, that bony vault containing my catastrophic consciousness. I am an horrible person anyway. Moving down now, forehead smooth or furrowed, I cannot tell. Down to my eyes, twitching beneath their lids like fish trapped in a bowl, and here comes my nose, that magnificent protruding flesh and cartilage that has witnessed every humiliation and triumph of my existence.
She guides me lower. Shoulders, she suggests, notice the tension there.
I notice. Christ, do I notice. I don't know! Release that tension, Sam whispers, as if tension responds to polite requests rather than aggressive whisky consumption and screaming into pillows.
Further down. Chest. And here, right fucking here, is where the meditation industrial complex reveals its fatal flaw.
Bring your awareness to your chest, she says, feel it rise and fall with each breath.
My chest. My chest is rising and falling. This is a perfectly innocent anatomical observation. But my brain, that magnificent pervert, that chaos agent wearing a consciousness costume, immediately pivots. Because below the chest exists a whole topography of flesh and nerve endings, and she's still talking, still guiding me downward through this corporeal inventory, and suddenly I'm not thinking about mindfulness at all, I'm thinking about my cock's knob. Pinky, shiny, glorious. What? I am erect. Isn't meditation supposed to be relaxing? Maybe next time I will try post coitus meditation, right? It's big, I can inhale its scent, sensual, carnal, full. I can feel the arousal building up and her soothing voice is not helping. to keep it down. What was the name of that Italian writer that used to perform self-fellatio? Do I want that too now? That was D'Annunzio I believe, awful awful. Let your body go down to the ground, let yourself go, Sam says, except I go the opposite direction. You pervert, she says now... No wait, it's just my imagination piloting the sound wave to territories I like. Inappropriate thoughts about touch keep derailing through my brain station. I see a tongue licking the freaking knob, all while this poor woman's voice continues professionally guiding me through basic mindfulness techniques. Poor world.
I'm supposed to be achieving inner peace, not inner bloody chaos. But here we are, my breath getting shorter for entirely non-meditative reasons, my awareness hyper-focused on regions that corporate wellness apps definitely did not intend when they programmed their body scan modules. The disconnect between her serene instructions and my degenerating mental state is so vast it could house entire galaxies of embarrassment. Why it's always me?
She's moved on to legs now, which only makes matters significantly worse, because legs connect to other things, and those other things are currently staging a mutiny against transcendence. My supposedly clear mind is a carnival of carnal distraction, a three-ring circus where every ring features increasingly elaborate scenarios that would get me banned from most yoga studios. Yoga? The primate in me immediately lands on yoga classes where women bend over in tight leggings. This is over. How do I stop this useless joke?
And then, just as I'm contemplating whether this meditation session constitutes some new form of accidental edging, she delivers the coup de grâce, the phrase that transforms this entire debacle from personal crisis into cosmic joke:
"It's normal for your thoughts to wander," she says, with that infuriating calm that suggests she has never once had her meditation derailed by spontaneous horniness. "Simply try to take a step back and appreciate having a little headspace."
Headspace. Right. Someone calls it 'head'... or 'dick head'... Because what I have right now, trapped between manufactured mindfulness and biological imperative, between the pursuit of enlightenment and the pursuit of ejaculating in this woman mouth, is definitely headspace. The kind of space where heads are involved, certainly, though not in the way the app developers intended.
I open my eyes. The meditation has concluded. Apparently I have completed a ten minutes session on managing stress and anxiety, though what I have actually achieved is a masterclass in how quickly inner peace can transform into inner pandemonium when you combine neurology, guided visualisation, and the fact that human bodies are essentially electrical circuits wrapped in increasingly inconvenient flesh.
Tomorrow, the app promises, we'll work on deepening our practice.
Bloody hell.
I feel like someone who just discovered that the path to enlightenment is paved with hilariously awkward biological responses and the universe's sick sense of humour.
Tap, hold it pressed, uninstall. Bye.