February 1, 2023

February 1, 2023

For February, there's a new essay entitled Yoga Nidra at the Gas Station, chapter two of my upcoming essay collection Notes to Self.  Ever on the lookout for new tools to deal with seasonal affective disorder (winter blues) scattered attention, and runaway thoughts, I recently started a daily habit of a new form of meditation. Here's how it works: I usually wake several hours before dawn, and while still in bed, before I turn on the lights one of the first things I do is reach for headphones and my ipad, touch a few buttons and icons, and listen to a guided meditation. Apparently it counts as meditation if you lie down, cover yourself with a blanket, put on headphones, close your eyes and listen to a narration of instructions to do relaxed breathing and sense various parts of your body named in relatively quick succession. If I had known this, I would have started meditating years ago, because it's not very demanding. In fact, it is very close to sleeping in.

I am still new to it, and so will make no claims, other than to say it is relaxing while it is happening, a little like being in the calm afterglow of a good acupuncture session. It can feel so good, that it almost doesn't take discipline to remember to do it. Habit is my friend for things like this that I would otherwise let slide even though its so obviously beneficial. The other sneaky benefit is that I am continuously creating at least one brief time time within every 24 hour period that I feel relaxed and not even remotely anxious, fearful, or angry in any way. This seems to make it so the unconscious mental habits of the mind that can make consciousness an enemy can't get as much traction. Having this regular bliss space makes it  a little easier to start drifting towards peace and freedom without having to work at it. It's the working at it that generates the internal resistance that prevents it from showing up. The trick is, the main effort is not efforting to relax, its efforting to remember to follow the habit.

The song for this month is a love song called straightforwardly enough: While I Love You   

Film director Martin Scorsese said that as a creator: "Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions." I think the way to do that might be to let go of trying to do that. I made this song just to feel something, and I did it for me. That's probably what people want people making things to do first, do it for you, serve yourself, and if you do that, it might mean that it does more for the listener than trying to make something they like. That's another of those paradoxes like you can't relax by efforting relaxation, even though if you don't do something, the default won't get you any closer either.

 For this month's video I share some interesting experiences I've had with early morning routines, namely the Wim Hof method which is yet another of the daily rituals I've adopted to make it easier for me be grateful to be living in Winter 2023 in the Northeast part of the U.S. on our planet which is Earth.