Day of mindfulness yesterday.

And what was weird was that we didn't leave the apartment for a walking meditation until the sun had almost nearly set!

Started with a little mindful cleaning (I started at one end of the apartment and Les started at the other), followed by a few sessions of mindful reading and eating. I am changing one of my micropractices to mindful teeth brushing. Wow! I had no idea how spastic I was about teeth brushing until I took the time to slow down and be a little more systematic about it. What I love about this particular micropractice is that is so beneficial to slow this down: I am doing a really awesome job of brushing my teeth and that feels GREAT! For some reason when these practices are applied to something real and tangible and something with a level of immediacy, I actually feel more motivation to do them. Although I know sitting is hugely beneficial for me, it doesn't have that immediate your teeth are now clean and you won't get a cavity kind of benefit.

Had an interesting sit last night, followed by an interesting day of active mindfulness.

Place: The Nook
Circumstances: in the evening, before bed
Practice: T and H exercise #13

Started to sit with the things in my mind that were coming up: desire, distraction, and anxiety were the three big ones. Labeling was a useful act to bring my attention back to the neutral feelings: the here...

and that practice felt pretty great.

And then I started to live my life the next day (today) and had a tough case of "first day of my period-itis" and brought that same awareness from last night to my throbbing abdomen. "MY UTERUS IS KILLING ME" morphed into "I am noticing that my pain is arising as a habit of mind", which felt a little funny, because I felt it in my uterus, not my mind, but this somehow softened it a bit. And then I would invite the pain along with me: "Oh hi pain. Welcome to my day". Nothing brings up the need to be mindful quite like a little pain.

Had a short sit today in the nook before Mysore in the AM.

Just starting to transition into the next month's assignment...

More interesting ideas to come later - pinky swear.

Time: 6:40am
Place: Living room chair
Circumstance: Right before leaving to teach grade 5 - no asana this morn.

I just did a short practice while my breakfast was cooking on the stove. I keep remembering how helpful this practice is when I am teaching my students in class and when I am working with young people. I couldn't imagine teaching without the grounding of this practice. It is even harder for me to imagine parenting without consciousness...and yet, it happens.

I was interested in the posting on the Mindfulness board the other day about "Why are we meditating? Really?" and for me, it really comes down to practice. I tell myself that asana is "practice for real life" - but often I get distracted by the goal of headstand, or the reality that I need to do something to keep my physical body from falling apart and turning into a blobby gross pile of mush. But sitting is different. Sitting really has no inherent value, unless you are using it to come back to yourself and practice your practice of being aware.

Place: My Nook
Time: 8:00am
Circumstances: The opening act of a very full day

The wheels have been spinning a bit out of control and I knew that 20 minutes or so on my cushion, practicing loving kindness would be helpful, but I didn't really know how or why...that that it would. When my bells of mindfulness (red light) went off coming home from Mysore, I remembered that this practice happens everywhere. And when I practiced loving kindness to the dude ahead of me in the line at the grocery store, I remembered that remembering the most important thing sometimes.

So, I fell off my cushion for a few days.

I have noticed in my practice that when a "new" or different thing happens in my schedule, it becomes really hard to honour my sitting. Which is a little counter intuitive because knowing the last few weeks, I probably could have really used the mindfulness practice and awareness training.

I am aware of how challenging this is.

Which doesn't make me want to run from it, but it is just something that I am most certainly aware of. I can do asana everyday until I am blue in the face (okay, maybe not totally true), but sitting with a REAL sense of consistency is super challenging.

Going to keep going.