After another crazy day at work with meetings, visitations, and follow-up from the previous day's events, I came home this evening with a hunger for deep relaxation, renewal, and guidance.
This video fit the bill for what I craved.
For whatever reason, I felt that I needed to retreat inwardly before being able to engage with any other task or person in order to have any sort of productive evening. Sitting on the futon where I have most often been doing my times of meditation, I closed my eyes and allowed the guide to speak through the recording. Ocean waves have always been a sound that has brought forth great comfort, but also have had the ability of leading me toward slumber. I sharpened my mind to not focus on the waves as the calming hush, but to tune into the point at which the sound builds the greatest in the wave. This kept me alert at the beginning of the session so that I could then focus upon the guide's words.
There was something very relaxing about the way the guide spoke. Maybe it was because his voice was behind the wave sounds and flute that made it less abrasive than other videos I've used? Maybe there was something simply within his voice? Maybe it was because it felt as if he was only speaking to me? The guide's voice allowed me to go deeper than what I've been able to do in the past few days, and it was much needed. His pattern of returning to the breath, and leading efforts toward pushing away thoughts in the mind were perfect for finding balance and refreshment.
Although the video was all of 10 minutes long, I was able to continue with the pattern of breathing and keeping unwanted thoughts from entering into this time. After a round of breathing, I did a body scan to find that the bottoms of my feet were extremely sore from the amount of walking, running, and moving that I did throughout the busy day. I moved my hands onto the bottoms of my feet and let the weight of my fingers rest on the arches. After a few moments, I moved my hands to my knees, which also took the brunt of the day's movement, focusing on the areas where tendinitis has wrecked havoc for the past 5 years. My hands remained in this position for the next 10 minutes as I focused on the life force that flows throughout my body. I had been told by a physical therapist years ago that the concept of "biofeedback" has been a practice that has aided individuals in the reduction of pain and increased recovery time. The practice is based on placing great amounts of focus and attention to areas where the injury is located in order to increase blood flow and to stimulate neurons linked to local cells. I always thought of it as a unique concept, but never put much faith in it. Today, was different. I remained in my position for 10 minutes focusing on my knees, and began to feel a tingling sensation in the area that I was focusing. By the end of that time, the edginess of the pain was less, and the length of time needed to ice them was less than usual.
Deep relaxation is a tough thing to achieve, in my opinion, but not impossible. It takes a genuine desire to want to stop everything, be in the moment, and allow oneself to essentially become "nonexistent" to the world surrounding them. For me, the sensation of deep relaxation is one that I need to come to about once or twice each month when everything around me has become too much, and the demands of life become too heavy. Thankfully, the practice of mindfulness has aided in the assistance of accepting and responding to daily occurrences that otherwise would cause me to shut-down and retreat out of fear, anger, or some other negative feeling. A combination of both these practices (daily mindfulness and periodic internal retreats) are proving to be a nice recipe for inner peace and external awareness.
No comments:
Post a Comment