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02-03-20, 10:51 AM | |
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Day 39 - Jason Stephenson, The Secret Garden.
Day 40 - beach walk; water, wind and wildlife meditation. Completed! I have to say, it did not go the way I planned. My intentions were to have some more active practices, more Kundalini, and to practice mindful and nutritious eating habits. In the interest of having a positive mindset, the highlights of this sadhana were:
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02-05-20, 09:30 PM | |
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I guess today is day 36 for me? That went quickly!
I did another practice from the Jenni Rawlings site today, but this one was with a guest teacher, Francesca. I really liked it--it was a slow, full-hour practice focusing on the thoracic spine. Henry, interesting HR results. Maybe I should check mine after doing meditation more consistently for a month.
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02-07-20, 10:30 PM | ||
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Quote:
I was also reminded of this recent message from Jessica Smith, quoted in another thread.
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." The Velveteen Rabbit |
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02-08-20, 12:17 AM | ||
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More about heart rate, meditation--and resuming vigorous exercise
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There are also procedures for tracking heart rate during meditation and similar things, related to tracking things called "heart rate variability" and "heart rate coherence," but I'll want to read more about the scientific thinking before I try those methods. I'd also prefer a wearable monitor that lets me view data later; having to move and having to track the data in real time would interfere with the actual meditation. I've begun more vigorous exercise again and am tracking my heart rate more than usual, heh, if only to look for unusual occurrences (and also because of curiosity). Last night, I began an eight-week interval program (not HIIT). It's familiar: I last completed it some twenty years ago, and I've had some restarts in the past year, but I've had problems that have changed my plans--in each case, not related to the program itself but to some other thing. I wrote that last sentence simply to say that I do have some experience with the first workout. This first workout was as easy as it's ever been, even though I hadn't done any exercise that vigorous since late last year. My heart rate at the end wasn't highly elevated, I wasn't out of breath at any point, I perhaps didn't even break a sweat (though it was cold, heh), and I didn't feel overwhelmed or "bad" in any other way. (Yes, as you readers may expect, the program begins lighter. I'll see what happens by week 3. ) Tonight I did the Harvard step test, which I've done before. I do it because of convenience, though, and I haven't been treating it as a very telling oracle. I've consistently scored in the "poor to fair" range, even when successfully doing strenuous workouts, and even though the page says, "The step test can be quite demanding," I've never found it that way at all. (I've also noticed that "220 - age" and even more refined formulae don't seem to apply well to me, and at supposedly high heart rates I don't feel overtaxed, and when I try the "talk test," I can even sing. I've always suspected that my body is an outlier.) Tonight was similarly light-feeling, as it's always been for me, but this time I was in the "above to average range" (towards the average end), even though, again, I've just resumed strenuous work. I'm still not treating this change as very significant, but I'll probably be doing this step test at times, at least to see how I change. (Also, I just tracked my pulse: it was 67 as counted over a minute, 25 minutes after I took the test. I probably haven't had a reading like that before.) I'm still thinking, at least tentatively, that the meditation has had unexpected benefits, but I'll probably ask for other guidance at some point.
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." The Velveteen Rabbit |
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02-08-20, 10:24 AM | |||
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Quote:
Quote:
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02-08-20, 10:29 AM | |
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One more thing...
I just went to the Harvard step test info Henry linked to above to remind myself of what the test involves. I saw the pulse rate age ranges for men and women (not sure how much gender is a factor, but I won't get into that ). Anyway, there was a period of time where my RPR used to be around 60. Now when I test it, is generally around 70-72, and I sort of had this impression that my current RPR was "bad," or at least not as good as it used to be. Well, according to those charts, my RPR is in the "good to excellent" range even for an 18 year old male!!! Ha, just goes to show you that self-criticism well get you nowhere, especially when you don't have all the facts.
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02-11-20, 10:20 AM | |
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More yoga nidra from Melissa West:
Day 29 (February 2): meditation, reading, yoga nidra: Yoga Nidra for Exhaustion Day 30 (February 3): meditation, reading Days 31-33 (February 4-6): meditation, reading, "attempted" yoga nidra: Yoga Nidra for Sleep Yoga Guided Meditation 20 mins (each time, I fell asleep very quickly, during the non-meditative introduction, in a way that really showed that I was sleepy, heh, not that the introduction was "effective" or boring! ) Day 34 (February 7): meditation, reading, same yoga nidra but while staying awake for most of it Day 35 (February 8): meditation, reading, same yoga nidra but while staying awake for all of it Day 36 (February 9): meditation, reading Day 37 (February 10): mediation, reading, Yoga Nidra/Sleep Yoga for Anxiety I chose those first two not because I was exhausted or in need of a sleep aid but because they were shorter, and then I chose the anxiety one simply because it was easily linked from the sleep one. They have their commonalities and their own emphases. An idea of mine is to do what I mentioned as a possibility in an earlier post: there are several more that I haven't tried yet, and I may try each of them. (One of them has "daily yoga nidra" in the title. I haven't listened to it yet, but the text description doesn't seem to quite match a reading of "daily" that means a literal daily frequency. Nevertheless, that idea was my first reading. I doubt that I'd do daily yoga nidra at this time of my life; I doubt that I urgently need to do it daily, I'd do other things that have some level of overlap, and I'd have other priorities for my time. Even so, I can see myself doing yoga nidra more frequently than I'd been doing it before.) In the meantime, I'll decide what I'll do next with asanas, and I intend to post here about it. I also intend to have more responses, including (1) some more things about heart rate and (2) some thoughts about "awkward" asanas, for instance that body proportions and the like will be part of what each person considers awkward or not. (I'll post in more detail about asanas after reviewing the posts in this thread.)
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." The Velveteen Rabbit |
02-11-20, 12:53 PM | |
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Henry, you are motivating me to try more of Melissa's practices!
I finished my official 40 days on Sunday. I didn't do any asana yesterday but am continuing my daily meditation practice this month (with Sharon Salzberg).
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02-15-20, 11:00 AM | |
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Days 38-40 (February 11-13): meditation, reading, "attempted" yoga nidra: Yoga Nidra for HSP and Overwhelm
(Again, I fell asleep during the introductory material, mainly because I tried this very late.) "Day 41" (February 14): meditation, reading, same yoga nidra (done earlier in the day, without falling asleep) This video was simply the only yoga nidra of hers in my "Up next" list that I hadn't tried yet, and therefore it was easy to find, heh. I wasn't interested in trying any particular video next, and I probably won't use any special sorting criteria besides ease of finding and video length. That is, some of the remaining untried videos are under 30 minutes, and at least one is around 45; I'll try to do the longer ones on more leisurely days, if only to reserve the shorter ones for less leisurely days, until I've tried all of them. Despite a possible impression from the title, this video doesn't seem to differ extremely from her others that I've tried so far, such that anyone who likes and benefits from the others will probably like this one too. There is some mention of the concept of high sensitivity in her introductory material, but not much, and it seems to emphasize that HSPs (Highly Sensitive Persons) may especially benefit from yoga nidra, not that "HSP yoga nidra" is for them alone and not for other people. I still intend to try her others as well and to write about them here, even if that writing is just a report with a link. This isn't a formal extension of the sadhana (I don't oppose the idea of an extension, but this continued posting just isn't one). I just like the idea of trying all of those yoga nidra videos, and it's most convenient to post everything in the same thread if I'll try the other videos in the coming days (and not, say, next year). I've also never had a very strict idea about matching asana-based practices to a sadhana timeline, either. I also finished reading the work that I intended to finish during this time. I'll probably start another sadhana soon, if only because the basic idea is a useful mnemonic one for my reading. Other reading, more gradual reading, continues, as does the meditation; those are the "meditation" and "reading" in my reports of the coming days. More later! I haven't forgotten about what I mentioned in my last post.
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." The Velveteen Rabbit |
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