Tag Archives: meditation

Simply and Sanely

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Melissa Farlow/National Geographic

I love fall. (Photo By Melissa Farlow/National Geographic)

This may be short and/or rambling, but I wanted to share this  while it was on my mind. This was the “voice” today in my Verse and Voice email:

“I vow to offer joy to one person in the morning
And to relieve the grief of one person in the afternoon.
I vow to live simply and sanely,
Content with a few possessions.
I vow to keep my body healthy.
I vow to let go of all worries and anxieties
In order to be light and free.”

-Plum Village, A Verse from Plum Village’s, Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist community in France, chanting book

I love this. I love the connection of health, letting go of anxiety and living simply.  I want to copy this down and tape it up in all my “probable freak out zones” – work, the car, that place in my wallet where money is supposed to be.

I haven’t had many huge breakthroughs yet during my daily meditation “homework” from my class, and for my challenge to myself. That is probably because, well, those things take a while and most of the time I begin them begrudgingly, but end thinking about how glad I am that I took 15 minutes to do them. But, last night I was doing a guided body scan exercise and had a light bulb moment.

Laura, my instructor and also the voice on the recording, said to be “with” a part of the body – not thinking about how it appeared, but sitting with it and being OK with how it existed. The way that it was at the moment was perfect. This meant so much more than just being at peace with how my back – or whatever body part it was – existed. I realized that I’d been missing the point of mindfulness. I realized I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my restless emotions, rather than being with them.

I’m a great observer and analyzer, and all this time I’ve considered mindfulness in my terms. I could examine what I was feeling, and judge it to be OK, rather than experiencing it and being OK. I’ve been perceiving that I was stressed, or lonely, or whatever, and I could intellectually tell myself that those were OK things to feel, but I’m not sure I was really buying it. I wasn’t allowing myself to have those feelings without judgement, and I definitely wasn’t judging them to be perfect.

So, that is something I’m going to keep working on, because I living “simply and sanely” sounds like a great goal to me.

That girl needs help!

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Moneen doesn't care if you call her fat either. I promise to take pictures of something besides cats soon. And stop being lazy and upload them.

Moneen doesn't care if you call her fat either. I promise to take pictures of something besides cats soon. And stop being lazy and upload them.

And by that girl, I mean me. And by help, I’m referring to all the appointments I’ve been to lately to try to get my stuff together. Last Friday, I went to my last dietitian appointment for a while. I think I was less frustrating this time because I told her I had decided to follow her advice and tackle my stress level instead of food issues right now.

Things are getting better though. I’ve switched from cereal snacks to almonds and fruit. I’ve started getting more carbs in my diet, but I’m still lacking consistency.  That is one thing I’m not stressing about right now, because I think that is slowly working itself out.

Yesterday, I went to my first biofeedback appointment. If you have no idea what that means, don’t feel bad. I didn’t either until I went. Apparently, there are lots of types of biofeedback, but my appointment focused on pulse (I think) via a sensor attached to my ear and connected to the computer, which gave a read out of my pulse and my sympathetic nervous system response to stressful topics and muscle pain. After the initial measurement, the guy administering the test said I was very anxious. Well, yeah! I could have told you that.

The point was to monitor my pulse to see if I could utilize mental exercises and relaxation techniques to lower my body’s response to stress. I did OK.  We went through some breathing and thought-process stuff that reminded me a lot of my meditation practice. Stop thinking about the present. Stop thinking about the past. Stop trying to control the stress/pain/whatever, but observe it. Acknowledge that your brain is thinking you are stressed, but that doesn’t have to affect my response.

That was all really great yesterday when life was just regular, but today was pretty awful. Thinking, “My brain is thinking that it wants to yank someone’s weave out, but I don’t really want to do that,” or “I’m observing how much I want to blow up my laptop, but I’m not going to try to control those feelings,” didn’t really work, but I’m willing to keep giving it a shot tomorrow.

One highlight to my day was a conversation with a class friend from Nigeria. She told me I should stop worrying about things falling into place, because if I followed my heart, everything great would happen. She actually said I was too young to worry about that stuff, like so young I “should still be breast feeding.” She also may have said in an unrelated conversation, “She should be flogged on the behind!” which is the Nigerian equivalent of weave pulling, I think. It made me laugh.

Also, this is unrelated, but if I don’t get the wonky spacing fixed on this layout, I may have to break my promise and change my WP theme.