11-12-15

This week I’ve been focusing on two aspects of meditation, breathing and the Great Circle Meditation as described in Justin Stone’s book, The Joy of Meditation.

Breathing: I’ve been finding success with breathing using the brief mantra Dr. Fields suggested to me a few weeks ago. I repeat “peace” in my mind when I inhale, and “thank you” when I exhale. Counting while breathing also works. Both practices allow me to be aware of the breathing without trying to control it. Additionally, I try to focus on my belly moving up and down and visualize “vacuuming in” peace or energy or gratitude into my body with the inhale and expelling “waste” or undesirable stuff on the exhale. My mind does tend to wander, but I’m getting better at drawing it back to focus on the breathing. 

Typically I do this when I awake while lying in bed for about 15 minutes before I get up. I’ve found it has a useful effect on the frenzy of thoughts that almost immediately overtakes my mind when I wake up. Sometimes it even leads me to fall back to asleep. It’s a good thing I work in the afternoon and not the morning!

The second thing I’ve tried is the Great Circle Meditation. As I mentioned last week, this involves drawing warm, moist, golden light into your body from a “waterfall” you visualize. You then direct it in a particular path around your body, through your extremities, up your back, and so on, until you arrive at the dantian, a point about two inches below the navel.

As described in Wikipedia, the dantian is loosely translated as "elixir field", "sea of qi", or simply "energy center". Dantian are important focal points for meditative and exercise techniques such as qigong, martial arts such as t'ai chi ch'uan, and in traditional Chinese medicine. (Wikipedia)

The point two inches below the navel is the lower dantian, which is considered to be

the foundation of rooted standing, breathing, and body awareness in qigong, Chinese martial arts, and other martial arts. The lower dantian has been described to be "like the root of the tree of life". (Wikipedia)

When you reach the lower dantian with the “golden energy” you are supposed to focus it and keep it there.

Performing the Great Circle Meditation was a challenge because I had to read the procedure from the book and then remember it. The steps are rather exact. I suppose rehearsal and repetition would have eventually cemented it into my mind, but I wanted some additional scaffolding. To that end, I recorded myself reading the description of the steps in my best, most relaxing, enlightening voice. Even after two separate attempts to record it, I found myself wishing I had someone a little more dulcet and soothing in tone to record it for me!

There may be nothing more distracting than trying to do a guided meditation to the sound of your own voice, but maybe there’s some benefit in it. Could it be that hearing me tell myself to relax and engage in meditative behaviors would actually enhance my own chances of success?

My mother’s taken an interest in my efforts to learn to meditate. This week I had the opportunity to drive her to visit a relative in the hospital and she began to ask me about meditation. I began to teach her about the Omvana six-step meditation I tried a few weeks ago. In doing so I ran into the “expert blind- spot” we’ve talked about where, as a relative expert, I described the process to her without giving sufficient detail to the small, simple steps that actually make it work, such as sitting down and doing it in a quiet place to begin the day.

The other thought I had about meditation this week is that in order for it to work, the person meditating has to want to feel the positive effects of it. No- brainer, right? It should be, but my natural inclination seems often to tend toward negativism and cynicism. It’s comfortable. I’m good at it. It’s hard to give up what’s comfortable for what might be better but require more work to achieve.