Wolfdog's Adventurous Journey Into Dream Yoga

Well, as promised, I've decided on making meditation a part of my life. I don't know if you're still around here sivason, whether this course is still going or whatever, but anyway if anything this might serve the purpose for me to check back on my progress as I go with the practice. I'm planning on making daily contributions to my workbook, laying down my practice for the day and my thoughts on the experience as I go with it. It may not be necessary to post daily, and no one is particularly obligated to read it. I just feel the need to express the results of my practice (at least personally) in order to further confirm and reaffirm my commitment to the practice and to check back on it and be sure that I'm doing what I said I was going to do. I understand meditation is a journey, a continuous learning experience and that's a trait I'm particularly interested at when choosing something to learn about.

Now, I read the "Basic Skills: Lesson 1" thread and I have some questions about what was discussed in it, specifically about the first level of the practice. The question is: Is it productive for a beginner to become aware of a set number of sensations (whichever they may be) throughout the meditation than to focus our awareness on just one of those sensations? The reason I'm asking this is because I read one or two books before about meditation, particularly mindfulness meditation (since it was of my particular interest when starting out, and still is), and I remember the recommendation being that the idea was to become aware of something (anything) and remain mindful about it. The most common example of course being, the awareness of the breath, and maintaining awareness at all times of our breath. Then, if one where to get distracted, one would calmly return his/her focus or observation back to the breath. Also, I remembered reading that the times one where to get distracted said person could focus on whatever the distraction was at that particular moment, and after some time return to the primary focus of observation. So, as I see it, the whole idea appeared more as a passive observational practice than an active one. The way you've outlined the practice, it appears to lie more towards the active side, since in this case we're choosing what to focus on and jump from our object of focus constantly throughout the practice. So, I'm getting a little confused about what to do, and don't know if each form of practice changes the whole meditation experience or if it doesn't ultimately matter. Anyway, I'll begin my meditation according to how the practice is outlined in the Basic Skills thread.

Another question I have has to do with the time the practice might take. What would be a valid time length for the practice to take? Is 20 minutes sufficient? Or should we strive for a consistent hour of meditation? Or, perhaps (and this is the one I initially adopted) one could begin meditating and end the meditation whenever one feels it should end, regardless of how long the practice might get?

Well, that's about it. In case you're wondering, I'm interested in the "Feel an Intense World" version of meditation and it's the one I'm going to practice on for the time being. I'll begin the practice this Monday, the 15th of December. My initial plan is to meditate for at least 20 minutes a day, for the 7 days of the week. The overall time length of the practice isn't limited, so if I find myself continuing meditating well past the 20 min. mark then excellent. But I do want at the least 20 minutes of meditation, not less. Naturally, as I get more proficient or experienced with the practice, I will increase the minimum time length accordingly.

Alright, well then I'm really looking forward to this journey, hopefully it turns out to be memorable and a timeless learning experience. Happy dreaming y'all.

Day 1: 15/12/14

Time: 21:56 - 22:18

Total Time: 22 min.

So, I began meditating with the idea in mind that I was going to focus as best as I could on the most obvious physical and even emotional sensations I could feel. I sat on a chair, just outside of my house in the backyard. As soon as I sat down and closed my eyes, I became aware of 4 sensations which I felt throughout the rest of my practice: the feeling of the chair as I sat on it, the feeling of my hands resting on my lap, my breath, and the intense pain on my back as I tried to remain in a straight position while sitting. This last one is the biggest cause of the end of the meditation. It just feels so uncomfortable sitting there and remaining aware. I always resist moving my position at all when meditating, as it breaks down the awareness one was trying to cultivate. Over time, however, the intense feelings of pain subside as the body gets used to the feeling and that's when one begins to ease in into the meditation. Apart from the physical sensations, most of the time I felt very annoyed about the amount of unpleasantness I was feeling. Some times I felt an intense urge to scratch my ears, or my arms as I grew some heavy itchy sensations around my body. But I persevered and hoped the sensations would end soon, which they did as I continued meditating. In fact, one way I dealt with all these obstacles was by dedicating my complete attention to them, as if those were my primary target of observation.

I must say one gets easily sleepy as the time goes by during the meditative process, though I always catch myself during this moments of distraction and immediately direct my attention to where it belongs. Now, as a beginner, the amount of times I lost awareness was enormous. I would say I couldn't even sustain 6-10 seconds of awareness before committing once more to the imaginative daydreams my mind had created. Most of the time, I was thinking about what to write after the practice ended! At one point, right through the end of the meditation, I was so deep in thought that the only thing that woke me up to my senses was a random bark from my dog. What's even worse, I was so distracted at that time that I can't even remember what I was daydreaming about!

Regardless of the initial problems I faced at the beginning of my practice, it was nice to see that by the time I finished meditating I was much more relaxed. I still have lots of questions about the outline of the practice. For example, I kept doubting whether to direct my awareness where I wanted, or let it guide me, remaining in the moment. Likewise, I didn't know whether to focus on every obvious sensation at the same time, or one by one. If so, for how much time? And what do I do about distractions? Do I ignore them and return to my objective, or do I observe them passively as they come about?

Anyway, I hope all this doubts are cleared up the more I continue to meditate. I am, after all, just starting with the practice.

Day 2: 18/12/14

Time: 17:23 - 17:47
Total Time: 24 min.

On this occasion I decided to focus on a single thing at the moment of my practice. I waited for my own intuition to guide me towards my object of awareness. To my surprise, I didn't imagine I would be taken to observe the functioning of my heart during the meditation. Nevertheless, I took the idea with much excitement and proceeded to focus almost exclusively on my heartbeat. I could feel it with great strength, not only at my chest, but all the way inside my head and ears. For a couple of seconds at a time I could lose myself in its continuous and automatic rhythm, and I got incredibly comfortable just by following it.

However, my mind, although much more calmed than on previous occasions, found itself wrapped in a back and forth motion between the goal of my practice and the countless stories fabricated by my own imagination. Nonetheless, I felt a little more prepared about confronting these situations and chose to dedicate them a fraction of attention, if only to see what could happen. Surprisingly, the moment I fixed my “sight” directly at a thought, it immediately stopped its course of action and disappeared from existence. Overall, the thoughts kept reappearing as soon as I returned my inner gaze to my target and continued to increase in number the longer I kept meditating. Many times these thought processes led me to guess how much time was left for me to end the practice. I have to admit I felt annoyed, as I didn't want my impatience to become the cause of the early end of the meditative session. Again, I simply noted the nature of my thoughts and nothing more.

In addition to my own heartbeat, I also spent the rest of the time being aware of my breathing and noting the obvious sensations between my body and the chair I was sitting on, just like in the previous session. I have to note that both the temperature and environment were both conductive to a relaxing meditative session, I had no problems in relaxing and I felt no urge to move while sitting still for the whole length of the meditation. As a final point, once again the instances I could remain aware amounted to just a few seconds (3-5 sec.), though this is naturally a reflection of my inexperience with meditation and a reminder that I must continue practicing.

Day 3: 19/12/14

Time: 18:20 - 18:41
Total Time: 21 min.

This session presented far more obstacles and distractions than in any of the previous sessions. I immediately became aware of my breathing pattern, working on prolonging the seconds I could find myself at present with my breathing. While at the beginning I felt I had increased the time I was in awareness (or at least I thought so), it quickly fell off now by a growing uncomfortable sensation around my body. It's a little confusing, for even though I felt deeply relaxed (I was getting very tired) I also sensed an unpleasant tightness in my legs and back. I tried focusing instead on the pain but it was too much to handle and I broke awareness 14 min. into the practice. I stretched my body a bit and returned once more for the remainder of the meditation. On top of that, the last 4 or 5 min. were almost a cluster of thoughts shooting to my head from everywhere. I took this as a challenge and passively observed each and every thought process as it came about in my mind. While I wasn't entirely successful, I managed to at least note the times when I was getting distracted or sleepy, and immediately restored my awareness back in place.

I've found out that sleepiness is becoming an issue now, as I'm drowsing towards the end of the meditation. Other than that I think it was a decent practice session.

Day 4: 20/12/14

Time: 17:35 - 17:56
Total Time: 21 min.

This meditative session was very similar to the one I had yesterday. The target of my awareness obviously stayed the same, with the particular difference that at times I was able to notice more subtle sensations I hadn't been aware of. Many times I became aware of my own face, my eyelids pressing on my eyes, and the weight of my whole body as it sat in silence. I took this new sensations like any other, just passively observing them as they came to my notice. For the rest of the practice I returned to my original goal(s) of awareness.

What's also interesting is that I successfully managed to remain alert for the whole meditation. Once I started drowsing I rapidly took notice of it and corrected my way back to awareness. Likewise, I was able to do such process with the rest of incoming thoughts, with a few exceptions. I approached this more as a game: becoming aware, losing awareness by an upcoming thought, noticing my distraction, focusing on the thought at hand, thought disappearing from existence, returning to awareness. I kept repeating this complete cycle since the beginning of the session until it ended.

Took a break of about a month from any practices due to the holiday season. Now that that's over I'm back on track with my meditation practice. However, I plan on making some few changes to the structure of it. Instead of posting every single day, I find it best if I just make a quick overview of the whole week of practice. This makes the whole thing less time consuming, seeing how most of the sessions bring very similar results. So, instead of writing the same kind of experiences every day, it's best if I resume the whole week of practice in one single post.

That being said, today marks my first official week of meditative training.

Week 01: 19-25 of January, 2015

Being this week my official return to practice, it's no wonder I faced numerous obstacles during my meditative sessions. It took me considerable effort to reach the 20 min. mark for each day, but in the end I successfully meditated for every single day of the week. During each session I had to apply an increasing amount of effort to remain aware of any tactile sensations, the most important one being my own breathing pattern. Every time I tried observing these sensations a thought process would immediately form in my mind and distract me for what looked like minutes. Then there was the sleepiness or tiredness of the whole situation. There were several times I kept falling asleep and alerting myself back to focus, being how relaxed I got as the time went by. In the end this was a tough week for practice, though I tried to make the best I could of it.