Posted by Ian on September 16, 1999, at 16:06:00
In reply to Re: Hippocampi (cont from previous session), posted by dj on September 15, 1999, at 11:56:35
In fairness I haven't realy given meditation a proper go on a long term basis. I propose systems for myself to live by like New Year's resolutions gone crazy.
When I have done meditation its been a couple of times a week. There's an authentic Thai buddist temple in the green surburbs of Wimbledon would you believe. I don't know the Thai names for the techniques they taught but
I generally just start counting breaths one to ten , then I transfer to labelling everything that I become aware of whether its a noise, a feeling or a thought. I feel tensions in my head sometimes and they tend to stick there, there's no great emotional release but they do tend to subside after a while. I become very aware of the sheer volume of silly thoughts in my head and gradually the number of thoughts decreases. Afterwards I do feel a bit more in touch with reality and less like I'm looking at the world through a pain of glass.
Cognitively stress doesn't help and in that way the meditation helps but I still feel that I can only see a smaller piece of the jigsaw than before my trip to Holland.
Exercise is a great anxiolytic and will raise my baseline mood it also helps my chest which I gave a real B&H bashing after Amsterdam-not clever for an asthmatic but I wasn't planning on sticking around at the time.
Why I don't regiment myself more to do what I know is good for me I don't know. I'm always looking for ifs and buts, I've got a scepticism and idealism that defeats practicality, if that makes any sense. My job tends to disrupt my exercise as I am literally resident one week then off the next, but I should be able to work around that one. I've just got to frame all this positively, I don't have failures just learning experiences ( why am I grinning as I type this ).
Anyhow thanks for the web site address I'll check it out. Its 22:00 here in the U.K. so night,night
regards
Ian
poster:Ian
thread:11593
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990914/msgs/11649.html