April 17, 2003
I’m going to explain how I meditate so that I can respond to a question posed in a comment on this post. But first…
I tend to avoid following rules exactly. Rather I go about adjusting them to fit what I need/want.
When I buy a new piece of clothing, my next move is to take it in, take it out, hem it up, put in darts – whatever it takes to make it fit the way I want it to fit. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.
When I find a sweater pattern I like, I almost always don’t like the yarn or the size needle I’m supposed to use, so I go about applying the little algebra I remember to alter the gauge so that I can use the yarn I want. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.
When I cook, I never go by the recipe exactly. I like to improvise. And use lots of garlic. And invent desserts using Kefir and jello. It usually all works out just fine.
I hung a beautiful landscape photo -- that my daughter took and gave me as a gift – upside down; I liked the abstract image it made hung that way.
I will read directions and instructions that come with whatever I buy and then go about assembling or installing it in a less direct way -- often with strange results that I just decide to live with.
I can’t learn using an instructional manual. I like to do it by trial and error. That includes learning to use computer software (which is why my technical expertise is severely limited).
I think it has something to do with my liking to improvise/create processes; I think that creating my own process is more important to me than the product.
OK. Now, on to meditation.
Back in the 70s, I tried Transcendental Meditation. I took the training, got my mantra, did my 20 minutes a day for a while, and that was it. I get bored too easily and I don’t have the patience to sit still long enough for all of the extraneous details playing tag with the synapses in my brain to get tired and take a nap. But, most of all, being irreverently anti-established-religious-paths, I couldn't take the applied reverence.
I tried breathing meditation and staring at a candle. Couldn't sit still long enough to have it work.
I tried Yoga, Tai Chi, and other moving meditations. Since I was always an avid social dancer, I figured that maybe I needed to move. Nope. It all just reaffirmed the fact that I have no self-discipline.
Then – for reasons other than the fact that I have no self-discipline -- I got into therapy with a healer who uses guided imagery to lead you out of that tiresome “left-brain” thinking cycle and into more “right-brained” relaxation; he uses active imagination, vision questing, and a sort of self-hypnosis kind of thing. The process he used with me made me realize that I need something or someone to audibly lead me out of myself, away from my constantly firing gray matter neurons and into a calmer, peaceful, and healing place. I need to close my eyes to shut out the external world and let my ears focus on the siren song.
Guided imagery meditation tapes work best for me. At least they used to, when I lived alone and had all kinds of private, quiet time. (And when I didn’t spend all my free time thinking/writing/blogging.)
For a while years ago I was part of a meditative drumming circle, and that worked too – closing my eyes and losing myself in the complexity of rhythms of which I was a part, feeling the timpanic vibrations in my bones. I’m going to try that again on Saturday night – a drumming circle. I have a really pretty ceramic Dumbek – blue and white, emblazoned with a soaring bird. It’s been hanging on my wall now for three years. Time to dust it off and find out if it can still take me away.
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Old Comments (5)
jt on 17 Apr 2003
(Dag, left my email address off, and jes noticed this never posted.)
That's interesting, Elaine, and very revealing of You.
I feel obligated to point out, however, that YOUR OWN MANY BLOGS contradict Your self-perception that "It all just reaffirmed the fact that I have no self-discipline"...:-D (Took some discipline to put in the time to write this, didn't it?)
Btw, (and it's sure possible icbw), but it is not my experience that discipline is centered in the (what "The Great 'They'" call) "left-brain" and relaxation in the "right-brain". (I haven't read ALL Your posts, but) I find Your blog to be VERY "right-brain" (although the words obviously PASS THROUGH the "left-brain" in order to get typed into the computer).
Thanks fer sharing, (in spite of our political differences, which You are obviously VERY passionate about), Elaine...! Now I hafta go back and recall WHY I asked this question in the first place...;-D
jt on 18 Apr 2003
"although the words obviously PASS THROUGH the "left-brain" in order to get typed into the computer"
Ah well. That was, as we say in this neck-a-thuh-woods, a p*ss-poor analogy. If going to look at something in essence indivisible (yet at times contradictory) such as the mind, then should-a divided the mind into AT LEAST 4.
Kate S. on 18 Apr 2003
I linked to the guided imagery page and was pleasantly surprised to discover: this was the technique my drama teacher, Anne Archer (a diff. one) used in the late 60's to calm the class down and ready them for the lessons or rehearsals. I also used it on my rowdy elementary school-aged students to calm them down before classes, rehearsals and performances. And now I see it on the web! Wonderful.
Elaine on 18 Apr 2003
JT--
If you google "left-brain right brain" you get a whole lotta links, including this one: http://www.mtsu.edu/~devstud/advisor/hemis.html, which might shed some light on why I wrote what I wrote. And it takes no discipline at all for me to sit down and write. It takes discipline for me to stop writing and do my dishes or vacuum etc. etc. Different strokes; different folks.
Elaine on 18 Apr 2003
Hey Kate --
I didn't know that you studied theater! I was a theater minor in college, but, as I've indicated, didn't do much acting. My daughter studied at the Strasberg studio that's part of NYU. Shirley Knight (yes, that one) was one of her teachers. Yup, relaxation techniques are very useful in all kinds of ways. I like being led into an "inner vision quest" after I've relaxed -- always get some amazing metaphorical insights into myself that way and always come out of it feeling like I've been on a little vacation from my life (which, actually, I have.)