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One of my goals for the current year is the meditate each and every day. I am proud to say that I kept this goal up over the weekend. Friday night was a bit rough because we ended up watching a movie and staying up pretty late. Even though I was a bit tired, I ’sat hard’.
Initially, I was a bit dreary and about to fall over during my sitting, but after a couple minutes of focusing on my breath, I became more alert and awake. Physically holding the zazen posture is still a bit rough as my hips aren’t quite flexible enough. In addition, I sit regular cross-legged style and therefore my knees are up in the air, NOT creating a tripod. I don’t have a zafu so I just stack up 3 pillows on top of each other.
When I start to feel sore in the hips or lower back, I change into a standing zhan zhuang posture. Last night, I began incorporating another posture into the standing process. I start off in wuji, then change to the universal post posture (hands in front, holding balloon), and then change into a ‘wade in the pool’ posture where the arms are to the sides facing forward.
So far, so good on the meditation front. Another unbroken chain in my Joe’s Goals tracking. Keep the chain going, keep the chain going 
One of my goals of the upcoming year is to try and set a little bit of time aside each day to meditate. Last night, I did roughly 15 minutes of meditation right before bed. 10 minutes was spent sitting in zazen, with the remaining 5 spent standing in zhan zhuang.
During these sessions, I will either stand or sit, whichever I feel like doing at the time. I like to sit first as I feel it’s easier to ‘center’ myself in zazen. As soon as the physical pains start to kick in, I will stand. Last night, I noticed my posture getting very lazy and my inner thigh muscles tightening up, so I stood up.
While last night’s session was mostly spent sitting, I have a feeling I will be changing over to do more standing in zhan zhuang than sitting in zazen. Either way, both methds are good and still count as ‘meditation’ in my book
