Sit / Day of Mindfulness

Place: AYCT
Circumstances: Lots of sweat, sitting in the spare room
Practice: Du Sa Ni Ma

Had my day of mindfulness today. My trade with AYCT means that I clean the studio for 3 hours. Instead of playing music, what I would normally do, I let the silence swallow me and breathe into the emptiness of the studio. I try to notice each hair on the floor that I mop up and watch carefully what I am doing. I really like the act of moving through a meditation. It makes it feel incredibly productive and worthwhile.

Place: AYCT Balcony
Circumstances: Post Practice
Practice: Du Sa Ni Ma, Sa Ni Ma Du, etc...

I haven't gotten to the place where I am doing the practice twice a day. Once is very challenging, so I am negotiating when I shift into doing this twice a day. I know it will happen once, but I want to ease into this practice and welcome it into my body instead of a forceful thrust. Maybe next month I will play with that.

Place: Living Room
Circumstances: First Thing in the Morning
Practice: Du Sa Ni Ma

Playing with this practice, I feel less and less focused on what I am doing with the journal. I find like the more comfortable I get in the practice, the less I really have to report on. Is this normal?

Place: AYCT spare practice room
Practice: Du Sa Ni Ma

Sitting, sweating, breathing. I am having a hard time with this mental script during the sit. I don't think I remember what saying Du Sa Ni Ma is supposed to remind me of. I will have to research that. I am feeling like I just want to sit and not really have to worry about doing something the "right" way, which I know doesn't exist, but when I sit there and am wondering what the point is behind "Du Sa Ni Ma" I easily pull myself out of the practice. Back to the breath. Back to the breath.

Place: Bedroom Floor
Circumstances: Post-Class, in the afternoon

Propped up against my wall, I sat and saw the thoughts about work things, school ideas, what I would write about today float up into my consciousness and kept dragging my awareness back to counting my breath. I think I am into another week now and it is time to move onto another practice. Maybe I'll connect more to the next one I experiment with.

Also challenging to do the sit in the afternoon instead of the morning. More thoughts in my head from the day to negotiate for sure.

PLACE: the living room floor
CIRCUMSTANCES: Post-Practice, Post first sip of coffee
PRACTICE: Counting Breath

Felt some resistance to getting to the point to being able to come to the cushion, but knew if I didn't do the sit early in the AM (before I left the house again), it wouldn't happen - the day just moves too fast.

Found that counting the breath gave me the anchor to come back to something. Something about Frank's words about using the counting as something that will make our practice strong did resonate with me and helped me play with it.

Also liked being reminded that these practices are what get us out of our comfort zone.

Awake Sleeping

Place: Floor of my closet
Circumstances: Pre-Teaching at Uptown (11am or so)
Practice: Attempts at counting the breath 1-8

I caught myself at least three times this morning falling into completely unaware of where I am, what I am doing, and lost in the stories my mind created. And although my mind is a pleasant place to get lost in (kind of like a pretty garden), it felt way too much like sleeping for it to be an effective meditation.

However, the cozy darkness of my closet and with my back propped up against the wall, has helped with the time just rolling on by. I might increase my time to 20 minutes soon.

Sitting in the Closet

On the Floor
Before going to AYCT for practice

The 15 minutes few by remarkably fast. Was really impressed.

I started with the attempts of counting my breath and then, yet again, felt like this was distracting me. I would start to count my breath, feel a thought coming up, feel the seed of guilt for letting the thought come up, resentment arise for having to start back at one, and then the cycle continues. Inevitably, I always (about half-way through) my counting experience, I just forget what I'm doing (get on the bus to Albany) and then feel frustration when I call myself back to the breath.

I am finding when I don't try to blanket over my monkey mind with a counting system, and allow the monkey to be the monkey, it calms down in a more organic way. I'm not forcing it to slow, it is just slowing because it knows it is not being rebellious.

But I will still play with the counting, if nothing else than for the sake of research.

Morning Sit

Place: AYCT
Post Practice
In the cow room

There is something about anticipating the alarm that doesn't sit well with me lately. So I have been setting, as a back up device, but have been sitting "until it feels right" - which is usually just around 15 minutes, in the attempt to train myself to knowing what 15 minutes is without needing an alarm. It's also really jarring to get pulled out with the sound of my phone alarm (even if it is a xylophone...) - I've also been struggling with the "prescribed" meditations that we need to do. Maybe it's my inner rebel acting up, but I have been feeling like those are just distracting me from just simply sitting with what it really happening in this moment. I am okay with my mind wandering and I am okay with my mind staying put.

I have been finding sitting on the cushion each day not too challenging. It is what it is most of the days, but the process of daily reflecting challenging. I think I need to build it in to my schedule. Before I leave the house for Mysore, I think I need to do my sit and my reflections because it just won't happen otherwise. The more I get to know myself, the most I have to acommodate myself and make my practice suit who I am.

I had a great awakening the other night while I was sitting in practice. It is human for thoughts to come up. I am running away less from what comes up and doing less labeling of what I am doing. I am that farmer and a bunch of wild horses just showed up at my door and it just is.

Beautiful.

Sat yesterday after my practice at AYCT.

Although I was more aware of the thoughts that came up, it did kind of go by in the blur.

I remembered a thought that I had from the night before on my cushion: being present with what comes up means being present with those rogue little thoughts that jump into my head. Not pushing them away, like a crying baby, but just sitting with them. I feel like I actually "got" that the other night.

An Interesting Experience

It was a busy morning.

Mysore in the AM, and then I had to scoot downtown to have a cavity filled (my first in years - not cavity, but filling one). I went to the dentist, sat in the chair and closed my eyes. I thought to myself, "huh, this might be cool. To practice mindfulness and breath control while they are working on my mouth." It might not be meditation, but it is using the powers of meditation for an applied purpose.

So I lay there and observed anxiety arising. I counted my breaths to ten and went back down to one.

I noticed my feet getting tense and softened them, as well as my thighs, my hands and my bum.

And then it was all over. "Not too bad", I thought to myself.

I stood up and went to the receptionist to pay and started to feel a little light headed and woozy. So, I went to grab a seat while she was bringing up my file. My head started to feel really light and funny, so I brought my head down to my lap. Feeling a little better, but still a little weird.

The receptionist calls me up to the counter to pay. I give her my debit card, and before I even punched anything into the machine I say:

"I feel a little dizzy. Is this norma -"

Before I even finished the sentence, I feel my legs collapsing and people grabbing me to hold me up. I hear people asking "Are you okay? Are you okay?" And someone answered "I'm okay. I'm okay" That must have been me.

I feel my body dragged into the other room and lay down on the floor. I see black and it actually feels like something is leaving my body. Like I (who is this I that I am writing of?) was observing. And I actually had the thought "Oh. I guess I must be dying now."

But as soon as I was on the cold tile floor, I felt better. I was coming to. I could form full sentences. The Dentist sent someone to get my juice and after about 20 minutes or so, I was back on my feet.

Mindful fainting.

I have never fainted before, so it was actually really interesting to be observing my body as it was happening and to be able to use the breath while I lay on the concrete floor to calm my mind and my body down and move out of shock.

Why We Don't Meditate Lying Down

Or maybe why I don't meditate lying down:

(ready for this?)

Because I am more likely to fall asleep.

I was curious during yesterday's sit, and I was exhausted, so I thought, what harm could it do? And then I found myself in the middle of gone with the wind and loving it and forgetting where I was when the timer went off. A great learning for sure!