Meditation Exercises

I think I got it:

I am grateful for all that is unfolding in my life and all that is yet to come.

How do you do this? Do you actually mouth the words? Do you say them in your mind?

The mantra thing works better than focusing on the breath. It makes me limbs feel heavy and my spine tingle and shiver. I feel purged, like after a good cry, heaving deep breaths.

I do wonder how much of this I'm doing for the attention.

i think there's something important to add here about meditation. whilst we're thinking about all the bad things in our lives that make us sad or depressed or even suicidal, our brains are producing hormones that correlate to these thoughts and feelings. meditation blocks this process and allows the brain a period of normalisation. this is exactly how occupational therapy works. you can't be sad or depressed or even suicidal if your mind is fully engaged in an activity. one of the activities i used to enjoy for this very reason was quite simply potato peeling. being a perfectionist, i could focus on this with quite extra-ordinary intensity. so, there's a very real reason why meditation works. it simply stop the brain producing the hormones related to being sad or depressed or even suicidal. it actually does what ECT is supposed to do - it resets the brain - but without any of the very damaging consequences.

I'm beginning to wonder if that's not at least part of the reason I became a cook. The focusing on the present moment that it required. I remember how therapeutic I used to find it (and still find it). It was grounding, and extremely satisfying, to have my mind entirely occupied by something physical, to the exclusion of all else. No thoughts, just the perfect movement, and the concentration required to achieve it. Like a kind of trance.

Do you find you get irritated by other people's inefficiency, (a measure of progress against an absolute standard) or is potato peeking just an communion between you and yourself?

I find I hold other people to the same standard of efficiency and focus, which is why I always run into trouble at work.

pamelaperejil wrote:Do you find you get irritated by other people's inefficiency, (a measure of progress against an absolute standard) or is potato peeking just an communion between you and yourself?

... you can make any task into a form of meditation, which is what mindfulness is about. as for other people, i'm fairly relaxed about how they want to do things. i''ll only jump if i can see they're going to make a serious mistake. as for the potato pealing, i guess the attraction was kind of like sculpture, if that doesn't sound too bizarre.

shock_the_monkey wrote:as for the potato pealing, i guess the attraction was kind of like sculpture, if that doesn't sound too bizarre.

Funny.

I have found this video very helpful for my child's anxiety:
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