90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
I will DB thanks for the support.....
I will DB thanks for the support.....
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AF since 19 January with a week's holiday last week. Today is AF day 1sigpic -
90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Please do, join this thread anytime, Joanna! This present moment is the "perfect time."Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
OK what do I need to do first?AF since 19 January with a week's holiday last week. Today is AF day 1sigpicComment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
joanna, no time like the present! obviously we aren't practicing everyday, but what we have learned has helped in immense ways and in small ways...
i learned from my mom a sort of taoist attitude about illness...she just went through it and never had expectations about what would happen, just lived while she was alive...she taught me alot about acceptance in many ways...
i hope you aren't having pain from your illness...but if you do, i bet learning here can help a little.
audio dharma is an amazing place to visit for guided meditations.
take care!!!!
peaceComment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Jo, there are some links in the earlier posts in this thread that you might find helpful. The "audio dharma" link that Peacenik just posted is excellent, with lots of free downloadable guided meditation materials. And the Tricycle magazine link will take you to the "90 Day Challenge" stuff that you can sign up for, with very nice materials about how to sit meditation, some video dharma talks (instructional talks and commentary on Buddhist thinking)... Just go to the beginning of the thread, and poke around a bit. The idea for me is to have a group of people here that works together to encourage each other in consistency of meditation practice (even if very brief periods, we aim for a daily practice), to compare notes, to talk about barriers, benefits, etc.Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Also, I have mentioned this elsewhere but not sure if I have talked about it in this thread... but the methods we are practicing here have been specifically adapted for use in a successful relapse prevention program (Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention, or MBRP) designed by Dr. Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington. Here's an excerpt from a university newspaper article about this:
"We found that the number-one trigger for relapse for people who have been through treatment for alcohol and drugs is negative emotional states," said G. Alan Marlatt, a psychology professor and the director of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center. "If people are feeling bad, and if they've used drugs in the past to make themselves feel better in the short term by getting high, then, unless they've figured out or been taught other ways to cope with these negative emotions, they're a big trigger."
The MBRP program helps people cope with these emotions by teaching them Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation that emphasizes mindfulness, said Sarah Bowen, a psychology graduate student involved in the research. Mindfulness is the ability of the meditator to be "in the present moment," observing his or her thoughts without judging them, said Neharika Chawla, another psychology graduate student who works on the treatment.
Though the meditation has its roots in Eastern meditation, the treatment program is completely secular, Chawla said.
"The idea is for people to use mindfulness as a way of coping with urges, cravings, triggers and other stresses in their lives," Chawla said.
One mindfulness technique for coping with urges is called "urge surfing," Chawla said. In this process, when a person gets an urge to use drugs or alcohol, he or she is taught to imagine the urge as an ocean wave. The wave starts small but rises; the practitioner "surfs" the urge by using his or her breath as a surfboard, trying to maintain balance until the urge subsides, Marlatt said.
The group previously showed that Vipassana meditation reduced relapse and recidivism in a population of inmates from King County. In that study, non-violent offenders from a minimum- security prison ? people incarcerated for drug-related offenses like DUI, drug possession, sales or prostitution ? chose to be placed in a control group or enrolled in a 10-day, intensive, silent meditation retreat, Marlatt said.
"We found people who took this course were just doing much better on all outcome measures," Marlatt said. "They had significantly less alcohol and drug use, less smoking, less depression, less anxiety and were more optimistic about future life opportunities."Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Thanks Peace and WIP. I'm going to have it as a weekend project JoAF since 19 January with a week's holiday last week. Today is AF day 1sigpicComment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Yesterday I decided to do my sitting meditation outside, in a chair on my back deck. Instead of focusing my attention on the sensations of my breathing, I kept my attention trained on sounds. Wow, it was amazing... the birds of spring (here in midwestern USA) are here, and when I open my ears to them and pay attention, it's wonderful!Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Oh Wip, that sounds beautiful, I think I'm going to try that this evening.
I haven't had a chance to sit today -- the rugby was on at 6:30 this morning which kinda threw my whole day out.
Hope you are all having a great weekend."The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it"Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
I found a website called "Buddhist Recovery Network." It appears to be closely connected to the person who wrote "Cool Water," which is a very nice self-help book about using Buddhist psychology (chiefly, mindfulness, or noticing and detaching from distorted thinking, impulses to drink, etc.); it also has some good links and download-able stuff. You might want to check it out...Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Busy checking out that link now, thanks Wip.
This week will be a better week, is all I'll say!!"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it"Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
Charlotte Joko Beck is one of my very favorite spiritual writers; she's a Zen teacher, but/and her writing has the clarity that some Zen teachers lack (or, if "lack" is not the right word, perhaps "eschew" is more accurate). She displays all the compassion of fully understanding our human impulses to defend ourselves, and to justify our positions against those who disagree (and against those who may belittle or ridicule us and our views); and she also clearly understands the futility, even the corrosiveness, of doing so. Here's one passage from her book Nothing Special: Living Zen:
This is a very challenging teaching for me; my first professional life was that of a trial lawyer, and there was much about that work (attacking, defending, counter-attacking; focusing on winning, and on losing) that felt comfortable to me. I grew up in a household, and among people, who argued as (almost literally) a blood sport. The work of refraining from the impulse to defend my "self" and to justify my dearly beloved opinions (by which I know who I am... this "famous 'I'" as Jon Kabat-Zinn says)... this is very hard work.The ills and injustices of life are [usually] handled by counteraggresion, in which one makes an effort to eliminate the injustice and create justice. Often such efforts are dictatorial, full of anger and self-righteousness? [But], in spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion? We need to let these judgmental, angry thoughts pass before our witnessing, impersonal self. We gain nothing by expressing them.
It is a mistake to suppose that our unexpressed anger hurts us and that we must express it and thereby hurt others. The best answer to injustice is not justice, but compassion, or love. We need to vow: I will forgive even if it takes me a lifetime of practice?
The quality of our whole life is on the line. Failing to grasp the importance of forgiveness is always part of any failing relationship and a factor in our anxieties, depressions, and illnesses?in all our troubles. Our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive?
Nonforgiveness is rooted in our habit of thinking self-centered thoughts. When we believe in such thoughts, they are like a drop of poison in our glass of water. The first, formidable task is to label and observe these thoughts until the poison can evaporate. Then the major work can be done: the active experiencing as a bodily physical sensation of the anger?s residue in the body, without any clinging to self-centered thoughts.
Often I am Sisyphus, at the bottom of the hill with my rock.Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
One of the fascinating things about sitting meditation is that it tells us so much about what is going on in our lives... and especially, about what we have been paying the most attention to. When we sit quietly and observe our thoughts, we find that our most recent preoccupations, worries, and arguments will soon rise to the surface in their full glory (or shame). I can tell when I have become over-involved in something that is not helpful to me, when I find, in my morning sitting, that thoughts related to it are all over the place in my inner landscape (or "mindscape"). Sometimes I find that thoughts about some upset on MWO are in the forefront of my mind; and that was true this morning. That's a signal to me that I need to back off, a bit, from my participation in this community.
The problem with online groups, of course, is that communication is not always clear (often it is just plain misunderstood, and distorted), and when people are not face-to-face, disagreements about ideas or principles can quickly escalate into personal attacks. And, in truth, of course the problem is not really "with online communities," but with me (with each of us who is engaged in such communities), and with the way I respond to the constraints of this mode of communication. When I find that I have allowed myself to get engaged in negative interactions, so that I am helping neither myself, nor anyone else... it's time to step back for a while.
Here's another wonderful quote from Joko Beck:
[There are] two viewpoints about practice: Operating from the first viewpoint, our basic attitude is that we will undertake this demanding and difficult practice because we hope to get certain personal benefits from it… The second viewpoint is quite different: more and more, we want to be able to create harmony and growth for everyone. We are included in this growth, but we are not the center of it; we’re just part of the picture… Practice is about moving from the first to the second viewpoint. There is a pitfall inherent in practice, however: if we practice well, many of the demands of the first viewpoint may be satisfied… These changes can confirm in us the misconception that the first viewpoint is correct: that practice is about making life better for ourselves. In fact, the benefits to ourselves are incidental. The real point of practice is to serve life as fully and truthfully as we can… True practice… is much more about seeing how we hurt ourselves and others with deluded thinking and actions. It is seeing how we hurt people, perhaps simply because we are so lost in our own concerns that we can’t see them… I can tell how well someone’s practice is going by whether he or she is developing greater concern for others, concern that extends beyond merely what I want, what’s hurting me, how bad life is, and so on… Practice is always a battle between what we want and what life wants.Comment
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90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!
i hear you wip.
there are days i don't even feel like checking in here and days when i need it. to find the balance is something we just need to listen to ourselves to do, like you said.
take care!
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