errantember

As I've mentioned before, I'm taking some commitments this month in solidarity with

spottedvasa, who is in a Zen monastery for a month. She just completed her second week there, which was spent in total seclusion, with no access to phone, e-mail, etc. I'll be talking to her in a few hours to see how that went.

For my second week of commitments, I added to my "get up no later than 10 AM 6 days a week" three additional items.

1) Breathing Exercises in the morning
2) Meditate at least once a day
3) Dynamic Yoga before bed

So far I'm happy to report a nearly 100% hit rate! I had a sleepover date night where I skipped the yoga, but I got a similar exercise with my partner instead.
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Starting today,

spottedvasa will be going on a one-month zen retreat at The Great Vow Zen Monestary. There, she will meditating for hours a day, only getting five hours of sleep per night, and generally having her reality forcibly shifted into a different, more contemplative state. I'm looking forward to hearing about how it goes!

In solidarity with her, I will be doing a total of four one-week long commitments of my own. Many of you may be aware that I have a very bad track record when it comes to any kind of reasonable sleeping schedule. And when I mean bad, I mean that I routinely sleep well into the afternoon and into 12-15 hours of sleep.

So, for my first commitment, I will get up at 10 AM every day this week without fail. Once I leave bed to shut off the alarm, I will not go back until it's time to go to bed the next night.

So mote it be. :)

Future commitments will probably involve getting rid of junk and acts of service to others.

I was listening to this Radiolab episode called Words.

They were discussing what happened when neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke that nuked part of the left side of her brain, rendering her mind-chatter silent.

One big change for me over the past few years is that I can generally do this at will.

It's not perfect, and I can't do it *all* the time, but I can do it with great success most of the time, and I choose to spend a lot more time in that internally non-verbal state than I used to.

Not that that's necessarily obvious from talking to me.

It's changed me, though.

A lot.

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Entries tagged with zen

Weekly Commitment Report, Week 2

Retreats and Solidarity

Zen States

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December 2015

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