“Medding” is a word I made up while working on my new book. I needed it to fill a vacancy in my vocabulary. I was missing a catch-all term that included every imaginable awareness-type activity. I’ve been using the term medding for a while now, and test-driving it on other medders, who then start using it right away as if they’d been using it all along. That tells me that this really is a useful word.
MEDDING the noun: Many things are medding. Meditation is medding. Yoga is medding. Medding includes every act of mindfulness, such as mindful standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. And mindful eating and drinking. And mindful hearing and listening. And mindful stopping. And of course it includes any attention you put on your breathing, such as following the ins and outs, or counting, or altering, or belly breathing, or just noticing. Watching your own thoughts and feelings come and go is medding. Basically, any type of intentional coming back to or remaining in the present by way of paying attention to what is observable in the herenow is medding.
MEDDING the verb: It means to do any of that stuff in the previous paragraph.
And now, in keeping with one of the great traditions of wordsmithing, I shall use the word medding in a sentence:
“I was doing some medding the other day, at the grocery store, in the cereal aisle, and I noticed that there were many brightly colored boxes.”
That was fun. How about some more…
“It’s good to start with medding in the morning.”
“Monks are medders who med all day.”
“I haven’t medded all day and I feel like crap.”
“Poker and medding do mix.”
Which will be in my book, now that I have a word for it.
