11h15 am
20 minutes

Very aware of all feelings and sensations today. It seemed every time my head tilted slightly the smell of a bonfire filled my nostrils, reminding me of an awesome evening the night before. Legs tingling, left calf feeling like I'm going to get a charlie horse, head kind of hurting, and then the cat decides to repeatedly headbutt my hands because he wants some lovin'.

At the 20 minute mark, kitty won and got scooped up and snuggled until my alarm went off.

Sometimes I feel like this journal is more of a way for me to keep a record of my distractions than a record of my meditation practices.

8 am
25 minutes seated

Tired, groggy. Out late last night celebrating my new found employment with an amazing mental health agency. Headache. Fun to observe headaches, as mine tend to move around my brain and don't stay in any particular area. Found it too difficult to kneel so I "sat" in savasana.

Feelings of longing and grasping as I should be back in Chicago for Thanksgiving but I'm here, and missing my family. Allowed this feeling to spin into a story about how I should suck it up as I'm the one who chose to live so far away. These thoughts are the ones that make me the most upset, I think, especially because my grandparents aren't getting any younger, and they pretty much raised me, and now I see them perhaps once a year. Things like this shouldn't make me sad... it's impermanence, and a natural process to get older and move out and live your life and experience awesome things, and I have! And I'm grateful! And I realize that growing old and death are a part of life.

I started to focus less on what I was missing and more on loving kindness, to myself and my loved ones that I couldn't be with today. Thankful to be gainfully employed. Thankful to have two "homes", along with family and friends in many other cities across the world. Thankful to be ridiculously in love. Thankful for my cat, the roof over my head, my yoga, my meditation, public transportation, free health care, my happiness, my sadness, the people who annoy me, everything everything everything. The TV show Glee even! My teaching! My teachers! So much to be thankful for on this day and always.

Happy Thanksgiving :)

I find it so hilarious that whenever someone tells me to let go, I get more and more angry. I just couldn't let go of The Grump today. I have nothing to be grumpy about.

Sat today before asana practice. I couldn't stop moving, couldn't stop opening my eyes, couldn't sit up straight, couldn't stop looking around the room. I was so not there it wasn't even funny. I just fucking annoyed by the time the teacher came into the room, which spilled over into my practice, and annoyance just turned to sheer anger and rage. I felt absolutely nothing throughout practice and several times, almost got up to leave. I didn't feel like practicing today, but went anyway hoping that I'd feel different after, and no. I don't know. Lately I've just been uninspired to sit, uninspired to practice, and uninspired to teach. I really hate these periods (although I must say they do turn me into a better teacher) and I'm grateful to have some time off next week after Wednesday. Of course, I'm hating the fact I'm not making money and hating the fact I ended up not being able to go home for Yanksgiving but downtime and a stay-cation in Toronto is perhaps what I need.

So today, I think I'm just going to be Angry Buddha. Tomorrow hopefully I'll be a different Buddha. And Ill try not to make my flow class this evening too intense, for the sake of my students. :P

11h15ish
on the subway

Hi! Remember me? I practiced on the subway today on my way home from teaching. I find if I draw awareness to my breath while on the subway and close my eyes, I'm less likely to fall asleep and miss my stop.

Bout of insomnia last night brought about bells of mindfulness. Resisted the urge to panic and spin stories about how I'm going to be up all night and pass out in my classes this morning, and just made sure I kept my eyes shut, my forehead unwrinkled, and my breath calm. Feelings of anger towards the cat as he kept clawing at my window catterwauling because one of the neighbourhood cats decided to sleep on my patio furniture, which apparently pissed Phoenix off. He didn't stop until I yanked him away from the window, tucked him under my arm like a football, and forced him to lay down next to me. Ahhh quiet. I think I fell in and out of sleep around 2 am. I don't remember sleeping, missed both alarms, and the only reason I woke up was because Phoenix was biting my face. I somehow managed to fly out the door in ten minutes, ignoring my morning mindfulness practices.

Fighting sleep on the subway home. Also feeling paranoia and disgust as people are coughing and sneezing around me and not bothering to cover up. Wondering if deep vs. shallow breathing are more/less likely to earn me H1N1 with people seeming so sick around me. Distracted. Relief as my subway stop was called and I got to leave the train - relief from leaving the sickos or relief from "sitting", I couldn't tell which :)

1h50 pm
25 minutes seated

I just want to point out... I'm such a huge bliss head. hahahah.

Began sitting by contemplating the fourth foundation of mindfulness. Mind quickly moved to other things like, boys, money, and jobs. Felt this huge bubble of happiness just above my heart and couldn't stop smiling. Or rocking from side to side as if I became a metronome. Stillness, apparently, wasn't an option for me today. I didn't notice my alarm go off, but noticed I had finished my sit when I impatiently opened my eyes to check to see if I was almost done. Weird.

Last night my "sit" was a fifteen minute guided meditation in one of my yoga classes. I hadn't done guided meditation in a long time and I enjoyed it. I need to see if there's anything around here that could offer me that on a more regular basis.

Yoga'asana has been really strong lately. I feel like I'm over my laziness hump and back to actually doing productive things. Like, you know, moving my limbs. haha

Taking Refuge #3

Thanks for posting these again Frank! This Taking Refuge is about sangha, which is simply people who come together to challenge things like greed, anger, hatred, etc and are fully committed to awakening. I really, really love the concept of sangha and am so blessed be in such a great one with fellow teachers, students, coworkers, friends and practitioners.

1. Do you have contact with people living with/in wisdom and compassion, or who aspire to do so?

Yes I do! I decided that when I wanted to make positive changes in my life I wanted to surround myself with people that I respected and held high regards for so that I could continue to grow on my own little journey in life.

2. Do you feel isolated? If so, why?

Sometimes! Isolated in the sense that I'm physically alone (in the human sense, as in without a roommate/partner... but there's always the cat) but I know that if I reached out, made phone calls, sent text messages, etc, I would be surrounded by friends. I don't really think I'm ever truly truly alone or isolated though.

3. Do you make any effort to attend gatherings of committed practitioners?

Yes! I make an effort six days a week to go to a studio to practice physical asana, I attend kirtans, and basically hang out at the studios I teach at. I remember going to teach in Ottawa this summer, and I didn't know Tracey or Paula or anyone over there. Tracey picked me up at the train station, welcomed me with open arms, brought me back to the studio and within minutes everyone was treating me like we'd known each other for years. I like knowing that I can go into probably any Moksha studio and feel that I'm going somewhere that is close to home, to a community of people who share a common goal with me. It's a pretty unique experience and I find it so hard to describe the feelings and emotions connected with this experience in any sort of language. But it makes my belly really warm and my heart engorged and it feels like a bonfire is blazing behind my eyes and my lips permanently turned upwards. :)

4. Are people all the same, different, both or neither?

You need to operationally define what you mean when you write same different both neither :P

We can say we're the same as we're all made up of the same fundamental elements. This gives us a basic connection to everything that does (not) exist on our planet.

Slight variations in DNA allow us to develop unique characteristics which set us apart from other human beings. Living and social environments further help to nurture us, providing us with external experiences to develop more ways of setting ourselves apart in our belief systems, taste preferences, intro- or extro-version, etc. Which is also why we can say that we're "different".

So because we are all made up of the same things, and we vary from each other due to millions of little factors, we can also say we're "both" the "same" and "different". Which would mean, we would also have to be "neither" because it's all nothing anyways.

:)

11h45 ish
15 minutes in a hot room before class

Before anything else - I'm totally adding nail clipping and filing into a bell of mindfulness. Thank you, Leah.

Again, I "just sat" before I "just practiced". I kept noticing how I was squinting my eyes shut, which was kind of funny. I didn't feel like I was anticipating the teacher coming up to teach the class or anything, and I wasn't grasping to stay longer. I fidgeted for a good six minutes or so before I settled into this really really cool deep calm concentration that I haven't felt in a LONG ASS TIME. I didn't even really notice the teacher had come into the room until she told everyone to stretch and I felt people move around me. And then proceeded to have one of the most intense, grounding practice I've had in FOREVER. Seriously I've created a story that I've been super failing at physical asana lately as the heat has really been getting to me, and in room temperature practices I've just been so full of judgement and all over the place. It's like I went from questioning myself why I bother to do any of this in the first place to having all these brilliant A-HA moments reminding myself why I'm on this journey (and I'm on this journey because it is a journey - a less maladaptive one than the one I was on before!)

Anyway.

Thanks for the advice Frank!