A digest for conscious living
My family and I were invited by some close friends of ours to their house in the country-side this weekend, so I was not able to post on Friday or Saturday night. I did manage to continue my practice and did not miss a day.
My meditation is back on track now. The difficulties I had concentrating last week are gone. On Friday I allowed myself to skip my breath counting excersises at the beginning of the meditation and instead began by letting go of any particular goal- I just focused my attention of the feeling of breathing. Somehow this change of routine also precipitated a change in perspective. I realized that I had been holding on too tightly to the idea of successfully completing the breath counting excersises and that this was getting in the way of my meditating. The counting itself had become the distraction- ambition had become involced. Once again I am reminded that every meditation is different and I need to listen to my insitnct and be open to alternative methods and routines in order to keep from getting stuck in a rut.
For years now, I have been dealing with chronic pain in my back. Although most of the time my problems are not severe, I regularly have pain that I consider at the very least a nuisance and sometimes a downright burden. For quite some time, I believed that the stiff muscles and discomfort in my shoulders and back stemmed solely from the many hours of the extremely unergonomic activity which is playing the violin. Over the past three years however, as I am no longer a professional orchestral musician, I have reduced my time on the instrument considerably, yet the condition of my back has not changed at all. It has now become clear that although playing the violin certainly contributes to my back problems, it is not the sole cause.
Over the years, I have taken up yoga, had massages, been to physical therapy, and had chiropractic and accupuncture treatments, in order to try to resolve the issues of tension and discomfort in my back. Although all of these were helpful in their own way, over the long term, my problems are still with me and I have yet to find a lasting solution fort his problem.
Last week, I stopped by a bookshop during my lunch break, and happened to notice a book on one the shelves. The book is called “Self Hypnosis – techniques and applications in daily life”. The book is fundamentally a book about self healing using self hypnosis as a means to influence the subconscious and thereby the body. As I read through the introduction and into the first chapter I became more and more interested in experimenting with the techniques of self hypnosis described in the book. Not only might it be a way to help me decrease my back pain, but I feel that there are other applications that might be interesting to me on other levels.
It seems to me that there are some strong similarities between the state of self hypnosis as described in the book, and the state of meditation as I know it. The book presents some fairly straight forward ways to actually communicate with the subconscious in order to identify the root of a particular problem in the body or mind. I am especially interested in these ideas, because although I know that through meditation I am able to delve deep into my subconscious, I don’t know how to influence it in a particular way and I think this book might provide me with some tools to help me to commune with my subconscious in a more pragmatic, western way.
I will write more about my experiences with self hypnosis as soon as I get further into the book and experiment with the techniques.
Goodnight,
Kikta