The lessons learned over 10+ days of meditating (I was with the grampies last week, meditation wasn’t happening there) are less of the altered-world-view type, more practical. But they’re still lessons.
- Brush your teeth before you start. Morning dragon breath is a distraction when you’re doing deep exhalations.
- In a completely unshocking twist of events, sitting still with your eyes closed before 6am is difficult to do without falling asleep. What IS surprising is the fact that if you can persevere and make it through a mere 10 minutes, you actually feel more awake when you open your eyes than you did when you started.
- Apparently mind exercise triggers the same physiological response as full body exercise because without fail, 3 minutes in, I will have to get up and run to take care of business. Then come back and start over. I need to figure out a system, like I did with running, so my morning sessions don’t take twice as long as they should.
- Breathing exercises (like simply counting your breaths–odds on the in breath, evens on the out breath, up to 10, then start over) are very, very similar to doing hypoxic sets in swimming (breathing every 3/5/7 strokes) or getting into a breathing rhythm with running. It makes it easier to focus without having to focus on focusing. The thought centering just kind of happens. And I like it.
Rambulatory Ambulatory 