The tired thing, and an obvious solution

This happens to me sometimes,
maybe to you, too.

Toward the end of the afternoon, and this Nap Urge
slithers out.

Now, the obvious solution:
set the timer for twenty minutes,
or in my case, since it's a favorite meditation time number
for me,
22 minutes.

Set the timer, 20, 22, 18,  and lie down
and see if sleep comes.

if it does,
great
a twenty minute plunge into reviving
ourselves

if it doesn't,
great,
we've calmed and let ourselves be supine and out of
the up and down world of chairs and walking and talking.

Back to the fish world,
the lie down and see what the body feels like
when it feels support over a large surface.

Ah, that could be nice.

So, I don't know about you, but I'm certainly talking myself
into a little 22 minute horizontal eyes closed, sense the arms and legs and
spine
and follow the breathing
meditation/ nap.

And if I don't know what will happen,
how much better,
how much like life as it always really is.

What's next?
We don't know.

Wait and see.

Breathe and see.

Sense the moment and see.

It's all a chance to be present.
And if we, or I, anyway, fall asleep
in this little interlude,
I'm going to be glad of that.

And if I don't,
wait and see if it perks up the old "tired"
thing,
that started off this late Friday afternoon ramble.

oh, well.

It's so uncool to live in the world of
"I don't know,"
and so peacefully powerful.

Good.

120: Soul, a framework for meditation, a container as it were

Meditation as providing a surrounding

Let’s try this, both in official “meditation,” as in sitting with eyes closed and following our breathing, and unofficial mediation, i.e. Living.

Try what?

Create this frame around whatever we are thinking and feeling in the moment. The frame is simple: on bones in gravity, our skeleton holding our head up. (In “official” meditation, I’m a big fan of sitting in a regular chair, at the front edge of the chair: this makes it easier to sense the skeleton as upright, for me).

Sensing both arms, our spine and our legs as the upright skeleton that is holding up our head. Might as well add on the pelvis.

Then breathe into the middle of the box that these five lines sort of create. And when thoughts and feelings come up, let them come and go, but have the breathing as an ongoing constant behind and underneath then, and sensing our arms and legs and spine as the skeletal underpinning of our ongoing existence.

Obviously, we could, with a bit of/ huge amount of practice, do this all day.

Day Thirty Seven: Learning can take us to Heaven, especially waking up learning

Dogwood in bloom in Sonoma, Ca, in April


Brendan, my son, at the Anat Baniel Method training, Special Needs Children, Segment 4, as part of some 60 people doing grand learning

Movement with attention
is one grand path to feeling
younger,
to sharpening up the brain,
and
waking up to now

Try this:

1. Sit in a chair. Don't lean back. Feel your pelvis against the chair, and your spine holding up your head. Enjoy that. Close your eyes, and sense two arms, two legs, fingers, toes, breathing, and spine.

2. Do this for awhile, as if a meditation.

3. Imagine doing this sensing and awaring all day long.

4. Now, begin to move the toes of your left foot back and forth,
rotating at your heel. Go slowly. Go so slowly that each time you
do this, and do it many times, you can feel and sense and learn something new about your nervous system and your bones and your feet.

5. Take a rest.

6. Now, move the heel of your left foot back and forth (to the left and to the right),
slowly, pivoting on the front part of your foot. Many times, slowly, pleasurably,
learning.

7. Take a rest and feel the differences, left to right, and before to now.

8. Come back, if you've forgotten, to being present.

9. Lie on your back, and put both feet "standing," which means the foot is on the floor and the knees are pointed toward the ceiling.

10. In this position, a number of times rotate the toes of the left foot to the right and left. Rest. Then rotate the heel of this same foot. Rest.

11. In the rests, come into a deeper meditation.

12. Bring both feet to standing again, and push up your pelvis into the air. Do this a number of times, more and more arching your back, and pushing out your belly.

13. Rest with awareness and pleasure.

14. Again, feet standing, pelvis up, and bring the toes of your left foot as if for running. Toes on the floor. Put your hands behind your head on the floor, and tilt your whole upper body toward the left, and then back to the middle. It is as if the ribs on your right get longer and the left elbow comes closer, staying on the floor, to your left hip.

15. Rest.

16. Do all of 14 again, and use that to get your left hand to your left heel. Once there, rotate slowly your left heel right and left. See if you can feel the toes pressing the floor most clearly between the big toe and the second toe.

17. Rest. Imagine other moves you could make. Imagine being aware of your ankles and which toes press into the ground as you walk forward today.

18. Get up to standing and go forth to a life of slowing and awaring and happying.

Good.

73; Breathing and life and now

Breathing in, breathing out

Life is simple, and can be extremely complex. There are all sorts of people around us, sometimes, and they have all sorts of things they want of us, or ideas they have about us, or missions they want to accomplish.

We can have a score of projects we are either engaged in and hoping to be setting in motion.

We can have demands and responsibilities in our life, families and jobs and commitments to various organizations. We can have various circles of friends, each requiring its own set of rules and maintenance actions.

And that’s all good.

All food for waking up, IF the waking up is seen as something that is a full time activity, not something just for sitting on the pillow or the chair and doing our MEDITATION.

We can meditate ten hours a day, and if in the eleventh we can’t remember ourselves while we are eating our oatmeal or steak or talking to our friend, then the meditation is not broad enough.

All of life is a meditation, which is to say, all of life is a chance to live in the present.

Can you feel the Now of you, Now?

Can you add on your breathing as you read this?

Can you take as your aim today to follow your breathing as you go about everything?

Do this as a chance not to be good, but to be calm and happy as an ongoing state in anything and everything you do.

It seems “hard,” and it is, and so what? Have some fun waking up to your breathing from now until you go into sleep tonight and maybe even in your sleep, be aware of your breathing.

Pleasurably aware.

Good.