Category Archives: Meditation

Meditating with my son

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After reading my son a bedtime story, my 5 yr old sons asks if I can meditate in his room. For the past couple of weeks, I've been doing 20 mins of meditation in my son's room while he sleeps. I sit a chair next to his bed and sit quietly, "doing nothing" as he puts it ;)

As I was getting ready to prepare for meditation, my son tells me that he was meditating in school today. During quiet time, he was meditating but the teacher told him to lay down. I asked my son to show me what he was doing.  The little guy then proceeds to sit up on his bed, cross his legs, put his hands cupped in his lap, and close his eyes.  "Were you laughing or making noise when you were meditating at school?" I ask my son. He shakes his head no. "Were other kids looking and laughing, being loud?" Again, he shakes his head no.  He then lays down and looks upset.

"Do you want to meditate with Daddy?" I ask him. He smiles and nods his head.  So, I'm sitting in the chair next to his bed and my son is sitting cross-legged on his bed. I start the meditation timer on my iPod Touch (Soto Timer) and we begin. My timer consists of a 45 second session, followed by an 18 minute session, ending with a 2 minute session. Each session is signaled with a little gong sound. The iPod is set on it's lowest volume, so the gong is barely audible.

I then go over some of the basics with my son. I tell him to breathe in and out through his nose, quietly so there is no sound.  I tell him that he can think "in" during his inhale and "out" during his exhale.  I end the instruction with, "sit quitely".  During the meditation, I turn to peak at my son and he's sitting quietly on his bed with his eyes closed. He appears calm and innocent.  He is not straining to keep his posture.  After about 3 minutes into the session, I turn to my son and tell him he can lay down now. I ask him what he did and he replied that he was counting in his mind.

"That's good" I say.  "You can count if you want." I tell him. I tuck him into bed, kiss him on the cheek, wish him a good night and return to the chair by his bed to finish my meditation session.

Synchronicity of Meditation

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Earlier this month, I started reading Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana.  The book is basically a practical manual on practice of mindfulness meditation (vipassana aka insight meditation).  I have been doing this meditation at least daily, sometimes twice daily since ordering the book.

Over the weekend while driving through the local downtown center, I noted a sign for a new yoga studio and their web address. Today, I logged onto the website and noticed they have a monthly class on meditation. Upon further inspection of the details, the class is taught by a monk from Sri Lanka teaching Theravada Buddhism, the tradition in which vipassana meditation is generally associated with.

I have pre-registered for the hour and a half course on meditation.

Synchronicity?

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance. — Wikipedia

My 2010 Lenten Challenge – Meditation

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… The challenge is this: from Ash Wednesday (Feb 17) until Easter (April 4), train every day, without fail, no excuses; even if you have to move mountains. Simple enough said, a little harder to do.

It’s not as easy as it sounds; things come up. Some days, you might only be able to get a few minutes of training in; but the point is to do it everyday, no matter what.

It doesn’t have to be martial arts training either. Whatever it is that you need to really rededicate yourself to: studying, practicing an instrument, walking, watching what you eat; anything – do it every day, without fail.

– Source: 2010 Lenten Challenge | Cook Ding’s Kitchen

The 2010 Lenten Challenge begins TODAY!  As for myself, I will be participating in the Lenten Challenge however I will not be doing any type of martial arts training. Instead, my challenge is to meditate each and every day for the duration of the challenge. I have already been doing this on my own missing a day here or there, but now I will dedicate myself to this practice each and every day.

On January 15, I started meditating using the Natural Stress Relief method.  There are many meditation methods out there, breath awareness based meditation, insight based meditations, mantra based meditations etc.  I’ve chosen a mantra based meditation as I feel the mantra helps to calm my monkey-mind.  Other popular mantra-based meditations are Transcendental Meditation and Primordial Sound Meditation.  Basically, mantra based meditations consists of the effortless repetition of a mantra with no breath control.

Anyhoo, both my wife and I have committed to meditation for the 2010 Lenten challenge.  For more on the challenge, click through to Rick’s blog, Cook Ding’s Kitchen.

The Relaxation Response

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meditation
Image by HaPe_Gera via Flickr

The four requirements for eliciting the Relaxation Response:

  1. A Quiet Environment
  2. A Mental Device
  3. A Passive Attitude
  4. A Comfortable Position

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson outlines a simple method of meditation.  The general idea is to meditate twice a day for 20 minutes. The first session should be prior to breakfast and the second session prior to dinner. Yesterday before dinner, I did a 15 minute session as outlined by Dr. Herbert Benson.

How is this different from seated meditation or standing zhan zhuang?  One of the main difference is the posture or comfortable position.  When I do seated meditation, I sit on the edge of the chair with my feet directly in front of me and with a straight back. In the Relaxation Response (RR), I adopted a very comfortable position, basically same chair except I tilted back into the seat my chair. Little effort was needed to maintain this posture, unlike that of my other seated meditation practice.

The mental device in the Relaxation Response is to basically repeat a sound, word or phrase repeatedly.  In the example given in the book, the word “one” is repeated on every exhale of the breath.  In my seated meditation practice, I would normally just focus on the exhale of my breath or I would count breaths. After some time, I realized that counting breaths was not very conducive to relaxation as I would try to reach a goal, 25 breaths per session/posture.  Also, just focusing on the breathing was a bit boring and my mind would often wander.  With the repetition of a single phrase, I found it easier to maintain awareness without agitation.

My first session was approximately 15 minutes and was done in the early evening, around 5pm.  I sat in my home office with my office chair turned to face a wall. The wall is blank and painted in a light earth tone brown.  In front of the wall is a small dark brown filing cabinet.  On top of the filing cabinet rests a yellow vanilla candle, a plant, my wireless router, and a burgundy colored small Zen fountain.  I placed my watch on top of the cabinet to keep track of time.  In the background, I could hear the sound of tricking water from an aquarium.

I closed by eyes and sat comfortably in the chair.  I thought about releasing tension from my body. I started with my feet and slowly worked my way up to the top of my head.  I sat quietly for about 30 seconds before I began focusing on in the inhale/exhale of my breathing. On each exhale, I repeated the phrase “one” in my head.  At first, my breathing was a bit hurried, like I was trying to force the breath.  I noticed this and relaxed into my breathing.

After about 5 minutes or so, I began feeling like I was sinking.  This is the same sensation I used to feel when I would conjure the images of my body sinking during my power naps.  During my power napping days, I thought it was a form of induced self-hypnosis, but maybe what I was doing was eliciting the Relaxation Response? The feelings of sinking were soon replaced by this feeling of expansion. As I was sitting, I felt as if my awareness expanded beyond the physical confines of my body.  This was sort of like my Zhan Zhuang Expansive Effects that I had felt before.

After a while, I noticed the sound of footsteps and it was my wife coming over to see what I was doing as she had not heard any sounds coming from my home office. I told her I was meditating and that I would be down shortly for dinner. I looked at my watch and noticed that 15 minutes had passed.  Time moved by pretty quickly as the 15 minutes felt more like 5.

This was my first time trying out the Relaxation Response and I plan to continue the training.  After the session, I felt very relaxed and all fatigue/tiredness was gone from my body and mind.  I decided to look into meditation techniques to try and counter balance the stressors of everyday life.  I have been reading that some pains/aches are the effects of stress on our body.  At first I thought this was just physical stress, but this also includes mental stress.  Perhaps the Relaxation Response can help out with my recent knee pains.