90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

The body scan, and scanning the environment, are great ways to practice mindfulness, and to stay in (or bring ourselves back to) the present, the "now." A cool thing about the body scan is that it can be done very slowly (the way Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches it, it takes 40 minutes) or fairly quickly. I like to do a very fast (but carefully attentive) body scan (maybe one minute, from feet to the top of my head) when I am feeling particularly tense or anxious.

One thing that fascinates me about the practice of scanning the environment (what I call a "sensory inventory") is that it points out the lack distinction between "inside our heads" and "outside in the world." Everything that we experience (what a thing looks like, smells like, feels like, sounds like, etc.) is experienced in our brains/minds. So, paying attention to the "environment" is a way of paying attention to our minds... it is a mindfulness, or meditative, practice. The task when doing this can be to JUST observe, and let go of all the commentary that usually goes along with all of our observations. Or in other words, observe our minds, including the commentary as something to observe, instead of something to participate or get caught up in...

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

I woke up late, didn't get to sit this morning and my day turned totally pear-shaped after that. The factory let me down big time with an order which I was supposed to deliver to some NB customers so i had egg on my face. It left me shaking I was so mad and I have the unfortunate habbit of being tearfull when I am mad or frustrated -- maybe because I don't know how to get my point accross in a clear and consise manner?? who knows? I had to drive for 3 hours to see the client and spent a lot of time in the car with the radio off just thinking about how I could've handled the situation better ( I really gave my boss an earfull) and I was thinking of all that's been discussed here and just re-evaluated my behaviour really.
I'm off to my first yoga class so not much time to chat... will hopefully have something positive to report tomorrow:-)

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Hi Deebs... yikes that sounds awful... I do hope today is a whole lot better!

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Crumbs I had to really seach to find our thread this morning!!

How is everyone???

I went to yoga for the first time in my life yesterday and I LOVE IT!! While I was there i kept thinking "why haven't I done this sooner?" but I know the answer "because it would cut into my drinking time"!!

At the end of the class the instructor took us into (don't know the right terminology here) a deep relaxation -- very much like a guided meditation but different. I was lying there with thoughts boucing around as I was so consious of the other ladies in the room with me, eventually I thought nope, it's not working but when the instructor slowly brought us back again, only then did I realise how deep I had been under -- wierd.

Ofcourse now I am totally hooked and want to go daily to yoga but i'll settle for twice a week for now.

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Tricycle's Daily Dharma
Heaven or Hell: Your Choice

A big, burly samurai comes to a Zen master and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.”

The Zen master looks him in the face and says, “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?”

Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword and raises it to cut off the master’s head.

The Zen master says, “That’s hell.”

Instantly, the samurai understands that he has created his own hell—black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment. He sees that he was so deep in hell that he was ready to kill someone. Tears fill his eyes as he puts his palms together to bow in gratitude for this insight.

The Zen master says, “That’s heaven.”

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Hi DB! I'm doing good! Yoga! Weird that I love yoga, too, and have not been making the effort to get back to it... I'm glad you brought it up. I'll make it a priority on my list for next week!

And this morning's story is wonderful... thanks...

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Here's a nice (and very helpful, for me) meditation tip from Joseph Goldstein (one of the foremost meditation teachers in the USA today):

[QUOTE]"Try making a commitment to getting into the meditation posture at least once a day. You don't have to sit for any particular length of time, just get on the cushion. A lot of times, the hardest part is getting there. Once you're sitting down, you think, 'I might as well sit for a few minutes,' and more often than not, you're getting full sessions in." –Insight Meditation Society co-founder Joseph Goldstein/QUOTE]

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Wow Wip, that tip will definetly do me some good. It's just too easy to find an excuse not to sit. i'm gonna try that right NOW.

[peacenik]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

no exciuses...haven't been sitting...i feel too busy lately and want to be doing other things...probably when a person needs it the most, eh?

i have been doing yoga and corpse pose at the end which is sort of a meditation pose...let's call that my meditation.

peace!

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Ditto Peace.

I was just sitting here thinking that on the meditation side of things this week has not been a success for me but on other spiritual issues I have come in leaps and bounds so I don't feel too bad -- just feel like I've missed out.

I've had 3 things happen all around the same time which have all led me to A-HA moments. The meditating, the yoga and the book "A New Earth". All three all linked and have many common threads which I find comforting.
I don't want to go so far as to say that I am "enlightened" because I don't know yet that I am but I do feel a sort of awakening in me (spiritually).

Hope that made some sort of sense to you:-)

Yay, it's weekend again -- which means lots of ME time.

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Well, as with "counting days" in giving up alcohol, same with sitting practice: sometimes it really gets in our way to worry too much about how many days in a row we have done any new behavior, or to worry and get upset because we have "missed" some days of doing whatever... not that I think you are really doing much of that, Peace and DB, but I know that I am prone to that. I tend to hold myself to very high standards, and to be challenged in the self-compassion department. Which is why I find this practice so important (among other reasons). Lately, I have missed a couple of days for a weird (to me) reason: once I get my shoes on, in the morning, I have a hard time persuading myself to sit and meditate. I sit on a meditation cushion and mat on the floor, and the posture does not work at all, with shoes on. But my dogs have begun eating too much bird seed (and other non-food items) out in the yard, so I need to go out with them and supervise, instead of just opening the door and letting them go in the mornings. Hence, shoes go on immediately. Hence, it is harder to get myself to take off the shoes, to do my sitting practice.

Amazing, isn't it, how we get tied up by such little things in our lives? I should say: we ALLOW ourselves to be tied up by little things, sometimes, because they set up a new little chorus of voices in our heads that say things like "it's too much trouble... let's go do something else, first... " and then like robots, we (I) go along with those messages...

DB, it's wonderful to be experiencing these moments of feeling awakened, isn't it?

Definitely, something for me to work on! There's always something going on in my head that I need to observe, and detach from!

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

You Know More Than You Think
Ajahn Chah

In what direction are you headed?

With a compass, when you enter a deep forest you will always be able to
know in which direction you are headed. You might start to think you
are heading east, but the compass will show you are going south. Then
you realize, “Oh, I was wrong. It was merely my mistaken thinking that
I was going east.”

The compass will always show you
the right direction, so you will stop relying on your own guesses. Like
this, wherever you are, you have this sense that shows you the truth.
Our thinking may lead us elsewhere, but we have the compass. We can let
go of our ideas and feelings because we learn that they will lead us
the wrong way.

Ajahn Chah, from Being Dharma

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

I just read this on the Tricycle website and wanted to share with you...

Cultivating Curiosity, March 2, 2009By Ezra Bayda
The deeply ingrained human attitude that we need to be free from problems is really one of our greatest problems. For example, when something unpleasant happens, we’ll almost always react from the deeply held belief that life should be free from discomfort and pain. We might not even be conscious of having this belief, but because we believe it, it colors (or discolors) how we relate to reality.

What happens when we no longer cling to the belief that we have to be free from problems? Pick one small problem that you have (and don’t want), and ask yourself what it would be like if you could actually say yes when this problem arose, moving toward it voluntarily, consciously, with curiosity?

This is not a masochistic attitude; rather, it’s the actual (and often gentle) willingness to stop pushing our experience away and demanding that life be different. When we learn what it means to say yes to a difficulty, to be curious about what life is, our whole world turns right side up; it allows us to experience life more as an adventure than as a nightmare. This is similar to how we approach meditation retreats, where we come knowing it may be difficult, yet we’re willing, at least to some degree, to explore whatever arises.

[Joanna]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

DB

Thanks I really really like that. I wanted to join this thread but I feel you are a little far in for me now. Letting problems be there and accepting them. This resonates as I have a kind of might be terminal condition in my brain; a neurological thing. A 'problem' that will never go away! I have to let it be or it would destroy me. I've spent the last three years I suppose in a kind of denial feeling superficially OK about it, drinking heavily, functioning on the one day at a time approach. As I'm sobering up I'm coming to the realisation I may have been kidding myself all along in massive denial and probably using AL to mask my true feelings about this. Antidepressants can dampen down feelings and emotions and I've been using these as well.

Now I need to wake up and smell the coffee and work out how I am really feeling about having this brain illness and the 50% chance my children may have it. So your words have helped enormously. Thanks:thanks:

[DeeBee]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Stick around Joanne -- seriously I'm a beginner and this thread has helped me enourmously.
I hope it will help you too!!