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I don’t want to float through my days distracted by routine. So, I am trying to look at meditation (focusing on the feeling of my hands running through water when I wash them and recognizing that even this is a privilege - or saying hello to my neighbors on the stairwell even when I’m running late) as a more abstract form of resistance. So when Aaron Bushnell sacrifices his life in form of protest against genocide, I have the capacity to pause and actually feel & understand the weight of it. It seems like it should be easy to do, but it’s a lot easier to doom scroll, or get tied up in work, and the world needs our attention. So I am trying to be better.
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If you have something in your life (literally in any form) that brings you outside of yourself and brings you to a state of peace, hold on to that. Realize that this is your form of mediation and stick to it regularly. My life is moving very fast and I lose sight of those things sometimes, and when I do I go insane. Right now my meditation is being in Ableton or Blender but I want to get back into regular mediation in nature since Ableton and Blender are also my career now lol.
Jul 12, 2022
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This is (I think?) a form of meditation, but it's what I use to calm my mind, especially when I've woken up in the night and need to get back to sleep. I learned it from my favorite dance teacher who starts every class with this exercise. What you do is just tell yourself things, in sentence form, that are true about wherever you are right now. Majority of them should be sensory things. Like, "I feel my sweat pants on my leg." "I feel the heater blowing my hair." "I hear a car passing outside." "I see a gray sky." "I taste the apple pie I had for dessert." Just statements about what is true right now -- and this is the important part: WITHOUT COMMENTARY. Of course, because you have a human brain and this is what it is hard-wired to do, your will start supplying commentary anyway. So when that happens you just notice it, and absolutely don't judge it or anything, it's just another "fact of the moment" -- "that was commentary." You acknowledge the commentary and then go back to stating other (non-commentary) facts until the next bout of commentary, which you then acknowledge and move on from -- or until you fall asleep, which happens shockingly fast for me once I notice and move on from my first bout of commentary. Eventually you might feel like you've run out of facts so you can start saying the sentences over to yourself, with more space in them to take up more time, and somewhere in there, a sense of peace develops? A place where, just for a moment, thoughts get lulled into taking a break? I find that as soon as I notice that I'm in that peace, huge thoughts come FLOODING IN, and then I have to calmly and gently be like, "this is commentary. back to the facts." It's refreshing and it takes a very passive form of discipline, like, you should be as relaxed as possible -- lying on the floor or on a couch, not holding a single part of your body up, maybe eyes closed, total release, but not *total* because the thoughts do need to be guided -- not controlled, not judged, not even stopped. Just guided, like re-routing a little rivulet of water that's rolling down a hill.
Feb 11, 2024
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i have yet to be able to sit still and turn off my mind and meditate the traditional way, but i’m a big believer in finding physical actions that allow one to enter that zone…i know when i’m active with my hands when drawing or playing an instrument, my brain enters a different state thats soothing and is the only time where no other thoughts are coming into my head. i have a friend that doesn’t eat sweets but she loves baking treats because the actions relax her. my uncle is a surfer and he says surfing is the only time he feels his brain is totally clear of any other thoughts. i don't garden but i imagine those that do find that space too…
Mar 23, 2024
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Did this tonight. A really lovely way to spend the evening.
Jan 21, 2024
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