UNIT 8 questions

My biggest challenge for me to obtain my inner most flourishing is how to Calm my mind and thoughts as well as my reactions to stressful situations.  I used to be that person who would huff and puff at the person waiting at the register for someone to get a price check, or who would wear out my car horn due to leaning on it so much because someone had cut me off,  I would be the one who would say the customer was always wrong and not always right, unable to focus on work, I would have to read something  5 times in order to understand it because I was always thinking of something else or be daydreaming while someone was talking to me.  In learning how to calm my mind more and practice in these meditation techniques, I am learning more each day to train my mind, to have metal fitness and be more conscious of my thoughts and actions. I have enjoyed all of these practices we have learned in the class but, the ones that I have enjoyed the most is the “Crime of the century” and “The subtle mind”. Loving Kindness is going to take a bit of practice for me, I found this one to be a bit more difficult.  I found that the two that I enjoyed let me focus more on my inner wellness.  I was able to keep my mind more calm and was able to follow what the speaker was saying.  I try to practice them each morning as part of my routine after my physical work-out.  I have found that even with my workouts, I have been able to run a little further with less effort, ride my bike longer, able to stay focused on my readings and become calmer in situations that I am faced with at work. Sometimes before I go to work in the afternoon, I will sit at my computer desk with nothing on and just close my eyes, practice breathing slowly, notice the sounds that are going on outside through my screen door to my deck and scan how I am feeling through out my body and mind.  I notice that my mind begins to wonder and think about things such as work and I force my mind to go back to my breathing.  I do this for only about 15 minutes any longer than that I begin to fall asleep.  I use my walking, running and biking as part of my meditation because I take the time to notice all of the things that are around me in that moment.  I also practice Hatha yoga twice a week with a group at the gym.  I will continue to explore these practices and others to find what will work best for me and to change it up once in a while to see what other practices are out there.  I believe that practicing mind fitness has a huge affect on my overall health and physical fitness.

Cheryl

Monday seminar reflection

Hello class and professor,
I wanted to share my thoughts on the class last night. Professor, I really enjoyed the walking meditation reading. It is funny because I have always made time to take a walk during the day either with my dog or with out even of it is just for a short 20 min walk.  Even thought I run there is nothing like the feeling of a peacful walk.  I live across the street from a beach here in town so, I am very fortunate to have access to it.  I walk along the sea wall which is about a half mile.  While I am walking, I try to clear my thoughts and put all my focus on what is around me such as, the big wind turbine in the distance with it big white blades slowing turning, the houses across the way that sit on the water front each with docks and some with boats attached and some without.  I see the boats gently swaying along with the ripples of the water that are attached to bouyes.  When It is low tide, I see all of the sea weed left behind, shells, rocks and sand that is still wet from the water.  I notice the bushes that grow bright pink flowers just on the other side of the cement seawall, there are bees buzzin around all the pink blossoms and they smell like the scent of summer.  As I keep walking I watch all of the seagulls diving for the small fish in shallow water. They are also circling overhead looking for any food left behind at the claim shack where people are lined up to enjoy clam cakes and chowder.   I can smell the scent of french fries and fish in the air. I then, glance across the street and see all of the tall green and brown feathery stalks also known as cat tales growing.  The sun is very warm and shining on my shoulders as I begin to feel a trickle of sweat run down my back.  The side walk has just a little sand on it from the beach and I can hear it scuffle under my shoes as I walk.  The green, antique tall  lamp posts are in perfect uniform along my path with a bird sitting proudly on top of one.  I say hello to a passerby who is enjoying the same route.  There is a couple sitting on the old maroon metal benches eating clam cakes and watching the water roll onto the sand on the other side of the wall.  I notice every little thing around me and it brings me peace, calmness and happiness.   I do this often when I want to get away from the business in my life that we are all familiar with. So I guess in a sense this is walking meditation. I simply walk this half mile a couple of times to clear my head.  I think that everyone should find a favorate place to walk and actually see everylittle thing around them.

I hope everyone has a great week 8!

Cheryl

satuated saturday

hello everyone,
I just wanted to share my awsume bike ride today.  I went to yoga this morning and I simply could not focus today.  After having a bit of a rough night at work, with it being 110 degrees in the kitchen and peopel were all on edge with each other, my mind was all over the place and I was barely listening to the instructer. So as I left fustrated, I decided to go for a bike ride on the bike path here in town that runs along beautiful lakes and though a state park and in the woods.  As I left the sky looked a little grey, like stormy grey.  As I was about 8 miles into my ride and feeling pretty good greeting the many other people who were riding bikes, running, walking and roller blading, the sky began to open up.  I looked up and saw some lighening in the distance and a loud thunder. Everyone quickly rushed to their ending destinations, a few people hid under a tree and under a stone bridge. I figured well it is only rain and kept going.  Then soon a light sprinkle turned into an all out down pour.  Within seconds I was soaked, rain dripping off my eyelashing making a little difficult to see.  I was a little concerned for my road bike, but, as I road along side another guy, he looked at me and said, wow isnt this refreshing and exhilarating! I turned and said, yes it is wonderful. I soon forgot about my bike and looked at the puddles I was riding in, the birds chirping in the distance, my drenched shirt, shorts, sneakers and everything else. I said, wow this makes me feel like a kids again playing in the rain.  I watched it come down wiht such force bouncing off the lake long side of me.  As we chatted for a few more moments, he said to me, enjoy the rest of your ride.  I responded I sure will.  At the end of 18 miles, I got to my car and looked down and I was covered in water, sand and a few leaves that kicked up from my bike, I looked at my reflection in my window and smiled and thought wow what a great ride!  That did the trick to bring my back to my moment and now I feel great. More people should just run outside in the rain once in a while and enjoy how it makes you feel.  Have a great weekend to everyone.

Cheryl

UNIT 7 QUESTIONS

Hello eveyone, I hope you all are having a great week so far.  Here are my responses to the questions for this week.

1.       I found that this meditation practice was a good practice.  I have an uncle who is very spiritual, an artist of paints and wood carvings, he meditates and is very connected with nature.  I choice to visualize him because growing up he was sort of an outcast from the rest of the family and I never understood why. He had practiced and did the things that made him happy no matter who didn’t like it.  Now that I am older, I have a connection with him that I understand. He is smart, wise, happy, healthy and successful.  Although he lives in Hollywood, Florida now , we do keep in touch and I can always talk to him when I am feeling down and he always has uplifting things to say.  I am very much like him and by using my uncle as a focal point, it has helped me to see his wisdom and connect with it in a way that I can practice it.  This is his web site, you can see all the wonderful things he has done,  http://www.paulsaintlaurent.com/1.html.  The practice of mindful meditation has helped me further my own healing of self dought and lack of patience. I have learned more about myself and how to practice loving-kindness to others.   I have gone further in buying additional cd’s of meditation music.  Even thought I have been practicing meditation yoga in a group setting for over a year now, I truly understand what she is saying and why.  I can feel the energy it brings that makes me feel alive and new. I will continue to explore and true new practices in addition to the cd that I have from this class.

2.       “One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” (Schlitz, Amorok & Micozzi, 2005).  What does this phrase mean?  Today’s conventional medicine is about treating the physical symptom rather than incorporating spiritual and emotional healing and treating the body as a whole as with integral medicine.   Physicians see people’s aliments as external and treat them with medications and/or surgery.  What is missing is the relationship with the patient the internal healing.  Doctors are simply not required to learn this part of healing. Medical school offer holistic healing as an option to students and not as a requirement.  In essence all of the quadrants discovered by Ken Wilbur is essential to healing.   Physicians are just beginning to recognize the importance of integral health in the medical field.  They know that when a patient has for example, hypertension its cause can be numerous factors such as, poor diet, lack of exercise and emotional stress. By addressing all quadrants then the patient can be healed.  Therefore, what is meant by the previous phrase is that doctors need to practice what they preach.  Or in other words, they need to be more educated on the integral approach of healing along with the scientific knowledge.  When a physician practices meditation, relaxation, imagery and is aware of the mind, body and spirit connection then they can help to treat their patients on a more personable level with care and loving-kindness.

A perfect example is that my daughter who was 20 at the time (about a year ago), was having anger issues.  She had little patience and would have anxiety pretty easy.  Fly off the handle over the slightest thing.  She don’t exercise much, eats a junk food diet along with energy drinks and works at a vet where there is stress in dealing with clients.  She went to her family doctor where she then asked her a couple of questions from a questionnaire sheet then proceeded to prescribe her a low dose of Prozac.  I was very disappointed in this and firmly do not believe in any of these medications.  I let her take it for a short period of time and as a result, she felt worse, she started to become depressed and down.  She was told not to stop taking it all of a sudden due to negative side effects such as, feeling of suicide.  Once she stopped taking it, I asked her if she was ready to listen to my suggestions.  She stopped drinking energy drinks, ate breakfast and more healthy and I am still working on the exercise part (she don’t take after me for that).  She feeling much better and she is more calm than she was before.  I told her to start a journal writing down her feelings and to take a breather everyone in a while like walking her dog on the beach.  It just goes to show you how impersonable these doctors are.  This doctor is very young and has not been practicing very long either.  I think that it should be mandatory for medical schools to teach integral medicine. 

Cheryl

Monday night seminar

Hello everyone, I just wanted to reflect on the class that I listened to this morning.  Professor, what an inpiring class. I really liked the readings this week. It really made me think not only about my own feelings and emotions but others around me and how they make either bad or good choices. I like the analogy of the shooting arrow.  It is ok to get hit by it once and in my life this has happened many many times. But, knowing not to get hit by it again is the key to learning from the first one how to grow from it. But, I do know someone who has been hit by those arrows many times and will not try to avoid them as they come shooting at him.  I try to understand why he struggles with personal issues that he keeps going back to. I try to be there for him but, he still makes those bad choices even though he knows that they are bad.  Over the years I have learned to be aware of my thoughts and actions to learn from them and that has helped me to grow and become stronger. Athought I still struggle with some areas, it does get easier each day.  I actually thing before I react to things more often now and It has made me a much more calmer person.  Thank you for a great class once again and that I am sorry that I missed it due to work, but, I post my thoughts here on the blog and share my emotions.  Have a great day to everyone.

Cheryl

Sunny Sunday

hello everyone,  I just wanted to share this link with everyone. It is a flute native American meditation.  I really like this one it is calming and soothing to listen to.  I really like the sounds of native American music.  Hope you enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_19VdTakY4&feature=related

Cheryl

Unit 6 questions

Hello everyone here is my response for unit 6

1.        In practicing the universal Loving Kindness meditation, I felt more calm and happier when repeating these words over and over.  I closed my eyes in the beginning to relax and clear all of my minds chatter then I had to open my eyes in order to read these words.  When really reading them and listening and thinking about they are say, I reminded myself why I am in school to begin with. I am here to learn how to help others who are in need to become healthy through mind, body and soul.  No matter what obstacles that are placed in front of me that continuously test my strength, optimism and determination, I must remember why I am doing this and everything else can be overcome.  This is a short way to regain that inner calmness when faced with a stressor. It can be said anytime and anyplace either out loud or in my mind along with deep breaths to put the positive back in my spirit. 

2.       When I first got divorced 6 years ago, I can remember telling everyone that it was my time to reflect my time to find myself.  My kids were a bit older and I could think about who I am as person. Although I said this to people quite often, I am not sure I actually knew what it meant until now.  Those few years ago, I thought that it meant having the freedom to do what I wanted such as, going on vacations, exercising more, going to new and different restaurants, reading more books and going back to school. These were all things that I did for me and I searched for myself through the physical pleasures.  Sense I have been in school almost 2 years now, I have discovered the phase that I said so often “to find myself” meant something much deeper.  As I have learned meditations, yoga, tai chi, relaxations methods, I have learned a great deal and have faced my own evils. This assessment that Dacher describes has taught me even further what four quadrants that I need the most work in. I figure out which area that I am stuck or out of balance.  Although it may be one of these quadrants now,  I realize that down the road it could be something different.  But, for now after doing some breathing exercises and clearing my mind and repeating the questions he describes such as, “what aspect of my life- psycholspiritual, biological, interperson or worldly – is the source of difficulty and suffering? I found that I need the most work in psycholspiritual.  I am still learning to practice calmness and not consciously be aware of my thoughts and actions.  I need to replace my negative emotions with positive actions and behaviors and make choices that will make me and others happy.  I used to be very negative and thought that I had the worst luck and I was the one that had that black could above my head and I was dealt a bad hand in life. If I continued to think like that then, that is how my life was going to be. Now instead I focus on all of the wonderful accomplishments that I have done and the health of my family. If I am dealt an obstacle then it was for a reason.  I also am learning to stop or minimize the chatter in my mind so that I can clearly focus on my inner healing.  I am discovering my inner wisdom and loving-kindness.  I am practicing yoga, a little bit of tai chi and now I am learning new meditation methods.  Some work better than others. I do like the Chakras and the rainbow practice; it forces me to visualize each color and what they symbolize for each part of my body.  I also, like to sit quietly with no noise in my house and take a few moments to breathe deep and just listen to my breathing and scan my body for any tense areas and get rid of it.  Although I still have a lot of learning to do, I think that I am now realizing that it takes the mind and body connection to become healthy.

Cheryl

Tuesday

Hello everyone,  I listened to part of the seminar from last night until my computer crashed and I cant get back into it yet.  Professor, I am so sorry about your friend who passed away. I know that something like that is not always easy to deal with especially when it is to something such as cancer.  I started to read the first reading and only got half way until I was kicked off.  I found it to be a very interesting and inspirational reading. I really like that you have readings during seminar. It is uplifting and nice to hear inspiratinal stories.  I hope I am able to get back to it later.

Cheryl

Summer Sunday

Hi everyone,  I wanted to share my day yesterday with everyone.  after my yoga class, my daughter, my sister, my niece and I all went to Newport beach here on the island that I live on and there was a big kite festival going on. There were hundreds of beatiful kites, all shapes and sizes floating in the air on a bright sunny day with the breeze coming in off the ocean and the waves cracking against the rocks.  We had a picnic on the grass while we sat and watched these amazing kites.  It is days like this that I cherish with family and friends.  It is things like this that is meditation for me. I forget about all of the other stuff going on in my life for a short period of time and I always leave with a sense of calmness and happiness. 

Cheryl

ps. I took pics on my phone but cant figure out how to get them here on my the blog. I am trying!

Friday rain

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to share some thoughts today.  I am sitting here in RI and we are having a very heavy crazy thunderstorm right now.  I am sitting near my sliding glass door that is open. There are so many wonderful sounds that I am listening to. Thesound of  pouring rain is hitting my deck, roof, windows and trees.  It is pouring so hard that it looks like a fog outside.  There is thunder and lightening so powerful that it made me jump just a little.  There is nothing like the sounds of a good storm in the summer time to cool things off.  By me noticing the sounds and sights it is giving me a sense of peace keeping me in the moment and taking notice of what is going on.  Happy Friday to everyone! 

PS. I am going to have to figure out how to take pictures and post them on here!

Cheryl

Thursday quote

Hope transforms pessimism into optimism. Hope is invincible. Hope changes everything. It changes winter into summer, darkness into dawn, descent into ascent, barrenness into creativity, agony into joy. Hope is the sun. It is light. It is passion. It is the fundamental force for life's blossoming.

http://www.ikedaquotes.org/index.html

UNIT 5 questions

Hello everyone.  I hope you all had a great and relaxing 4th of July.  Here are my responses to the questions this week.

1.       Hello class,  my experience with the subtle mind was interesting.  I found myself in the beginning starting to focus on my breath. Then my mind started to drift off on what I needed to get done for the day, frustrated I brought it back, then I started to drift off to images of work, then brought it back. I tried to keep my focus on my breathing and I had to force myself about every 2 seconds to bring it back. I liked this practice but, I need a lot of practice at it. My mind is always going all the time like a tornado.  I have to learn to stop all of these thoughts and just relax and take in deep breaths.  At one point I started to doze off and was doing the head bobbing thing until I brought my focus back.  I was a little frustrated with this exercise but, I know that I need to learn to put my focus on my breath and this will take time.  In comparison with the loving kindness track, I would rather do the subtle mind exercise.  The loving kindness one will take some time to get used to in that I find it difficult to take in others pain. I think that I need to first learn how to control and recognize my breath first before I can put my thoughts on the loving-kindness.  With the Subtle exercise, I did feel more relaxed when I was done. Even though I had difficulty keeping my focus, I still experienced a sense of ease and peace and I think with these exercises I am learning to calm down all the chatter in my mind when I am concentrating on a particular task at hand. 

2.       The connection of spiritual, mental and physical wellness is a complete wellness with mind and body.  Spiritual wellness is the meaning and a purpose in life.  It is the positive thoughts, happiness, sense of calmness, having joy, forgiveness, gratefulness and loving and kindness towards others and one self.  Practicing meditations and relaxations methods are good ways to achieve this wellness.  The physical wellness is when one is free of sickness and disease, is at a healthy body weight and is eating healthy foods.  These things are all in connection with each other and when one is not healthy then the other suffers.  I am learning the importance of having this connection in balance to achieve my healthy goals. Although I exercise daily and eat a vegan diet, I need to practice exercising my mind and spirit as well.  When I am angry or impatient I notice how it affects my physical wellness. Stress, tension and anxiety are draining to the mind and body and it allows sicknesses and illnesses to take over.  I was faced with again a situation at work last night where there tension was very high.  I work in a place where it is very fast paced and sometimes there is a lot of stress and frustration.  Instead of losing control of the situation, I made an effort to think about what I have been learning and consciously make a decision to handle it this calmness and patience.  I walked away and took a few deep breaths and stayed very calm.  When the situation passed, I felt so much better and at ease, my body was not tired, exhausted or tensed. 

happy 4th of July

Hello everyone!  Just wanted to wish everyone a safe, fun, happy and healthy 4th of July!  We are having great weather here and I am about to go for a 25 mile bike ride.  I hope everyone gets out there and gets to enjoy a few cookouts, people and food! 

Here is the quote for the day. I like this one sense I am struggling just  a bit with coming out of my comfort zone and expanding my life to new and better things. 

Your character is determined by how you challenge yourself, and how you wrestle with your problems, in a way that is unique to you. This is how character is polished and become diamond-like.
http://www.ikedaquotes.org/self-mastery.html