Better than breathing

[flexagon]

Full disclosure: the vacation has not been perfect so far. The most notable thing, if you saw me, would be the black eye, which I got when, um, part of an elliptical machine fell on my head. (It was mostly my fault, and I'm okay.) I also chipped a tooth, which amazingly I was able to get fixed the next morning because someone cancelled their 8AM appointment with my dentist and I called them at 8:08. (That, friends, is good tooth-karma). I've had two different people tell me they're "unimpressed with my vacationing skills" thus far, but no, this is how good I am at vacation: such things are not nearly enough to ruin it. I vacation onward. :-)

I'm writing to share my favorite "be present in the current moment" trick, and that is: pay attention to gravity. Somewhere, right now, it's pressing you into whatever is supporting you. What's pressing? How strongly? Where? Does it feel good or bad? Other parts of your body are pressing down into, or dangling from, those supporting points or areas. How do the lines of force run? Are your shoulders and hands being held up by the body's structural systems, or by muscular tension -- or are they the supporting system, in which case how are you reading my blog while doing yoga?

This trick is not as widely known as taking a few deep breaths, and it wouldn't work well in orbit, but in general it works just as well for me, and can sometimes be faster. For advanced enjoyment, try swings, trapezes, balance boards, handstands or subway surfing.

What are your tricks?

Comments

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

paying attention to ambient sound. this might just have to do with which senses i organize the world with by default, and happening to use a different one.

[flexagon]

That is interesting. I'd never have thought to think about sound first, and now I'm having a really hard time verbalizing why. Maybe it's because sounds are almost always distractions rather than valued inputs, in the vast majority of activities in my life?

[soong.livejournal.com]

i like the gravity suggestion. hopefully i'll remember to pass that on.

i have a singing bowl that I have on occasion rung and listened to and 'followed its sound into silence'.

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

My god...I'm glad you're reasonably OK! Eek.

I have a couple of tricks to be more present. One of them is to focus all of my attention on my breathing, and the other is creative visualization.

[flexagon]

What do you creatively visualize? I'm curious, because that sounds like what I do when I want to not be in the present.

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

Generally it involves leaving the static and the crap that is getting in the way of being present.

For example, one year after the recruiting season was over, the Bear and I took a little weekend roadtrip to Santa Fe. As happy as I was to get out of town and to be going to Santa Fe, my mind kept going back to the stuff that had been going on and the stuff that was coming up. I was having a hard time turning it all off so that I could enjoy being away with the Bear. As we were driving away, I imagined all of the static and lists and STUFF in my head as being like long, thick, heavy spider web-ish looking things that twisted through the wind and caught in the cotton stalks that were left over from the harvest. I imagined the web getting completely stuck there, and I focused on that image as we drove. Then if my mind wandered to the static, I forced it back to the image of the tangled webs in the fields.

I was able to leave things behind and we had a great trip.

[heisenbug]

I still think it was at least as much my fault as yours. You wanted to ask the neighbors for help (although actually they may not have been home).

The "vacationing skills" comments probably had less to do with your injury and more to do with the fact that you've been to the office twice this week.

[apfelsingail.livejournal.com]

Ugh, LJ can't decide if I'm logged in or not.

Stay-present exercise: sit up straight, feet flat on the ground, take a few deep breaths. Pick a sound to focus on, and listen to it for a minute. Pick something you see, and focus on that. Pick something you can feel (like your jeans, a cat, etc.), and focus on that for a bit.

So, um, why are there references to being at Zillian? :-)

[flexagon]

Well, Wednesday was for a flu shot I had scheduled before the vacation was planned. Tuesday was actually work, because something came up, but it wasn't bad enough to jolt me out of vacation mode. I'm home again!!