Surja Tjahaja has been teaching Mindfulness Meditation classes for six years in Milwaukie, Lake Oswego and West Linn, because hes happy he can help others in need and provide them a strong foundation to deal with the challenges of life, he said.

Tjahaja will offer a one-time free workshop called Demystifying Meditation from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Jan. 22 at the Oregon City Library, so participants can learn how meditation can reduce stress and improve health and happiness.

He also will offer a course called Mindfulness Meditation from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, for six weeks, beginning Jan. 28, at the Milwaukie Center.

Tjahaja likes to work with libraries and parks and recreation departments because they offer affordable prices to residents, so anyone who is interested can learn meditation techniques, the West Linn resident said.

Life lessons

Tjahaja studied for 10 years, beginning in 2000, at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, Calif., and is a graduate of the Sati Center Chaplaincy program, also in Redwood City.

He worked for two years as a volunteer chaplain at the Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco.

I teach Mindfulness Meditation as a secular study with emphasis on practical application to daily life challenges. My goal is to help others remove stress from their lives and cultivate happiness and good health, Tjahaja said, adding that his classes are open to people of all ages and health conditions.

He added, My lessons are scaffolded and build on each other. I start with the basics of just focusing on breath, and then continue with more advanced materials as a student progresses. This approach is useful in coping with daily life challenges such as stress, physical pain, depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, phobias, grief and loss, weight control and recuperation from a major illness.

Demystifying Meditation

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Meditation classes help with life's challenges

After spending most of my younger life, particularly my 20s, drunkenly barhopping and blissfully kissing my way through Manhattan, I thought I would easily be able to conceive a child when I was ready. Like a lot of women, I spent many of those years being terrified that it would be too easy to conceive one when I wasnt ready.

I stopped taking birth control pills about a year or so before Billy and I got married because a friend convinced me that they were terrible for my body, and I finally felt like it wouldnt be more terrible to be pregnant. Well be celebrating our second anniversary in April, hell turns 36 in a few weeks and Ill be right behind him in September. I am ready, waiting and practically dying to be pregnant.

After getting married, I wanted to have kids, but I didnt want to work at having them I wanted a baby to come naturally. I refused to be that neurotic, maternal Medusa scheduling sex with her husband. I took for granted that Id get pregnant without having to think twice about it. I was so wrong.

On the horrible-things-in-life scale, infertility ranks galaxies away from the worst. I try to constantly remind myself of this so I can better appreciate what gifts I do have. Coworkers, friends, and their families have been touched by cancer, death, and loss. Every day, the media inundates us with news of unthinkable violence and tragedy, both at home and around the world.

And yet, here I am, bawling so hard that I cant breathe on a morning I woke up to discover, yet again, that my period came a depressing sign our efforts this month were futile, again.

While living in Los Angeles, I met a lovely couple who struggled to get pregnant. They had tried in vitro fertilization a couple times without success. The wife lent me a self-help book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility and I tossed it aside, thinking, That challenge shes facing isnt my challenge. Its not going to happen to me. Im young. Im healthy. I will not face what shes facing.

But that book, a bible of sorts for those unlucky in baby-making, now has a permanent place on my nightstand. Ive read it. Ive highlighted parts. Ive ripped out pages of charts. And still, nothings changed.

My doctor recommended fertility yoga and meditation. I signed up for classes at a local yoga studio days later, and then I Googled fertility meditation and listened to a soft voice telling me to chill and think about becoming pregnant for 15 minutes. After a sperm test proved that his count is good, but his motility is not, our doctor also prescribed my husband something to help like Mucinex to help break up his semen.

After about a year of doing nothing, six months of charting my ovulation without results and then peeing on dozens of ovulation sticks with ambiguous results, I decided to start taking Clomid, a pill you take on days 3-7 of your cycle thats supposed to stimulate the release of hormones which cause ovulation. Ive completed three months of Clomid and Im already eager to move to the next phase: intrauterine insemination. I dont care any more about being Medusa or being natural; I just want a baby.

The pain of dealing with knowing that my bodys betraying me is difficult to share with people. It makes me feel weak. I think of women who have just given birth and the euphoria they feel, and compare them with me and my body, supposedly built specifically to achieve the one thing I cannot. Theres so little I can do to control it. Ive always been a fairly positive person, but now Im living with this strong black tide that rolls in uninvited and washes the joy and happiness away.

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I thought having a baby when I was 'ready' would be easy. I was wrong