| | Author: okir
Wow, what a fund of practical knowledge you all have! Thanks for the reading suggestions (Peong and Wayne), and to everyone, I appreciate your generous ideas, whether they are mindfulness bells, holosync, using my breaks, or what have you. There are so many ways to trigger awareness - I'm just trying to find what works for me. Because I work in a very "social" environment with long periods of focus on editing work, it seems there's little chance of acting upon triggers, and actually "going anywhere" with it. Trent and Hipster, I may try utilizing my break times a little more often for some "lite" practice, although I know it can't substitute for the formal. Once I get home, a nice trigger for me, before or after meditating, are the crickets (I live in a rural area, so there are a lot of them), and various birdcalls, especially hawks -- or the rustling of leaves, which feels like breathing when the wind comes up.
Since I've started this thread, I am already noticing how formal meditation seems to set up a rhythm and momentum of its own, and although I don't practice much (if at all) during work, the momentum of formal practice at home or in the sangha does seem to carry through during my day in various ways -- just in terms of things that I notice while driving home from work, being more aware of sensate experience, sounds, space, etc.
Jeff, for some reason I don't feel like I have much differentiated experience of the breathing yet -- it all seems kind of mundane, rising and falling, for now. But I'm trying to hone it on it. From following Shinzen Young's instructions, I do have some experience of pain (I used to get migraines for years, but pretty much gone now) breaking up into "particles" and transforming from intense hot misery to cool streams/"droplets" of light, and I hope I can get that kind of specificity in my experience of breathing. |