Hey there, Nicole...it's funny to read your second comment from yesterday since I was planning to echo what Dale said plus recommending a more physical/active practice like bowing or chanting for times when you can't sit.
I can't speak toward chanting in other traditions, but the Kwan Um School of Zen sells a chanting CD and chanting book. (You can learn the melodies from the CD, and the book includes phonetic renderings of Sino-Korean chants along with English translations & our Temple Rules.)
Or, you could find any sort of chant that resonates with you & do it: I'm sure there are oodles of New Age/relaxation CDs that include chanting, so you might spend some time previewing them on Amazon.
The other thing I would add to Dale's excellent comment from yesterday is that I often write-up my daily to-do list right before I sit down to meditate. I often find it calming to know that all the "important stuff I can't forget" is written down, so I don't have to "remind" myself to think about it.
Lorraine that's a brilliant idea - the to-do-list! I often find myself remembering reading somewhere that if the thing to remember to do is really important, I will remember it anyway when I stop (maybe it was you who said that!), but this is another excellent solution. Thank you.
Nicole, I resonate with your problem. On tour I often find I have too much to deal with and my practice slips. What I try and do then is just to bring my awareness to something I am doing - in my case practicing or doing a concert - as a way to keep the practice alive until I can get back to sitting. For me it has everything to do with having a rhythm which I very rarely have so I cope with this problem all the time.
having said that, I am just sipping my first glass of wine (so am much better thank you). However, had a very mindful wood/mushroom/thyme/cone gathering evening walk.
please forgive me ... I've had a really crappy week, and feeling irritable and grumpy
I read the comments on 100 Days on a fairly regular basis. Meditation is about awareness and attention
please, please, spell Lorianne's name correctly before I tear every last hair out of my head"
it made me feel suddenly really uncomfortable that there are lots of people out there lurking and reading and criticising in their heads. I suppose I felt this was a safe place but it suddenly occured to me how public it actually is.
omg, Ruth, I swear it was NOT me who sent you that email! :-)
It is kind of odd to thing that we're "sitting on stage," as it were, with our practice being on display for anyone to watch, judge, or criticize.
But maybe that is a kind of practice in & of itself. I mean, our lives are lived in front of others, so people can always look, judge, and criticize. I find that my Inner Critic is almost always harsher than anything someone else might say, so if I can learn to share space with her (my Inner Critic), other folks' judgments don't matter as much.
But yeah, what an email to receive!
(btw, folks call me Lorraine all the time; in fact, even the priest who baptized me got it wrong, and supposedly I screamed my head off the entire time. These days, I try to be a bit more mature about it...) ;-)
wow! Ruth / Lorianne ... (which I have to concentrate very hard to not mis-type! ) what a bizarre email!
My name is mis-spelled, mis-abbreviated and mis-extended the whole time. In my previous relationship, my partner's parents never managed in four years to call me by my name correctly ... after a while I just accepted it as being the person I was to them :) I think when you grow up with a name that is frequently muddled in someway it's impossible to remain precious about it - I barely even register when it happens now.
It does sometimes feel like a private member's space here - I forget that it's all still public and published. As you say though Lorianne, my inner critic is more vocal than any external voice - though her favourite technique is to begin sentences with "They/he/she will think that ... ". It can be tricky to attribute those negatives back to the true source!
Love the to-do list idea. I think I might try that for a week Lorianne and see how it helps, and when I forget or am not in the right spot, I will employ Ruth's incredibly useful (and yet knew to me) technique - if it's critical, it will come to mind again later.
I grabbed a little quiet time on the train today, and went so far into my own space that I came to suddenly paranoid that I was on the wrong train or had missed my stop! I hadn't. Phew!
hugs all and hello nicole - I'd offer useful advice if I had any, but I'm still soooo new at all this I'm very much the student :)
Yikes. You never know what will get on people's nerves.
It does kind of help, though, to realize that when we are being judged it will generally be on the basis of something that will make most other people say, "huh?" in bewilderment. I'd vaguely registered that Lorianne's name got misspelled here from time to time, as it seems to everywhere, but I hadn't got so far as identifying a culprit, let alone needing to intervene :-)
I hereby offer amnesty & full forgiveness to any & all who have ever in the past mistyped (or who ever in the future will mistype) my name, myself included.
Personally, I believe a Lorianne by any other name would be just as sweet, or whatever. :-)
8 Comments:
Hey there, Nicole...it's funny to read your second comment from yesterday since I was planning to echo what Dale said plus recommending a more physical/active practice like bowing or chanting for times when you can't sit.
I can't speak toward chanting in other traditions, but the Kwan Um School of Zen sells a chanting CD and chanting book. (You can learn the melodies from the CD, and the book includes phonetic renderings of Sino-Korean chants along with English translations & our Temple Rules.)
Or, you could find any sort of chant that resonates with you & do it: I'm sure there are oodles of New Age/relaxation CDs that include chanting, so you might spend some time previewing them on Amazon.
The other thing I would add to Dale's excellent comment from yesterday is that I often write-up my daily to-do list right before I sit down to meditate. I often find it calming to know that all the "important stuff I can't forget" is written down, so I don't have to "remind" myself to think about it.
Good luck, and good morning, everyone!
Lorraine that's a brilliant idea - the to-do-list! I often find myself remembering reading somewhere that if the thing to remember to do is really important, I will remember it anyway when I stop (maybe it was you who said that!), but this is another excellent solution. Thank you.
Nicole, I resonate with your problem. On tour I often find I have too much to deal with and my practice slips. What I try and do then is just to bring my awareness to something I am doing - in my case practicing or doing a concert - as a way to keep the practice alive until I can get back to sitting. For me it has everything to do with having a rhythm which I very rarely have so I cope with this problem all the time.
having said that, I am just sipping my first glass of wine (so am much better thank you). However, had a very mindful wood/mushroom/thyme/cone gathering evening walk.
Bonne soirée all - or have a nice day!
by the way i received this today in the mail:
"Ruth
please forgive me ... I've had a really crappy week, and feeling irritable and grumpy
I read the comments on 100 Days on a fairly regular basis. Meditation is about awareness and attention
please, please, spell Lorianne's name correctly before I tear every last hair out of my head"
it made me feel suddenly really uncomfortable that there are lots of people out there lurking and reading and criticising in their heads. I suppose I felt this was a safe place but it suddenly occured to me how public it actually is.
omg, Ruth, I swear it was NOT me who sent you that email! :-)
It is kind of odd to thing that we're "sitting on stage," as it were, with our practice being on display for anyone to watch, judge, or criticize.
But maybe that is a kind of practice in & of itself. I mean, our lives are lived in front of others, so people can always look, judge, and criticize. I find that my Inner Critic is almost always harsher than anything someone else might say, so if I can learn to share space with her (my Inner Critic), other folks' judgments don't matter as much.
But yeah, what an email to receive!
(btw, folks call me Lorraine all the time; in fact, even the priest who baptized me got it wrong, and supposedly I screamed my head off the entire time. These days, I try to be a bit more mature about it...) ;-)
wow! Ruth / Lorianne ... (which I have to concentrate very hard to not mis-type! ) what a bizarre email!
My name is mis-spelled, mis-abbreviated and mis-extended the whole time. In my previous relationship, my partner's parents never managed in four years to call me by my name correctly ... after a while I just accepted it as being the person I was to them :) I think when you grow up with a name that is frequently muddled in someway it's impossible to remain precious about it - I barely even register when it happens now.
It does sometimes feel like a private member's space here - I forget that it's all still public and published. As you say though Lorianne, my inner critic is more vocal than any external voice - though her favourite technique is to begin sentences with "They/he/she will think that ... ". It can be tricky to attribute those negatives back to the true source!
Love the to-do list idea. I think I might try that for a week Lorianne and see how it helps, and when I forget or am not in the right spot, I will employ Ruth's incredibly useful (and yet knew to me) technique - if it's critical, it will come to mind again later.
I grabbed a little quiet time on the train today, and went so far into my own space that I came to suddenly paranoid that I was on the wrong train or had missed my stop! I hadn't. Phew!
hugs all and hello nicole - I'd offer useful advice if I had any, but I'm still soooo new at all this I'm very much the student :)
Sx
Yikes. You never know what will get on people's nerves.
It does kind of help, though, to realize that when we are being judged it will generally be on the basis of something that will make most other people say, "huh?" in bewilderment. I'd vaguely registered that Lorianne's name got misspelled here from time to time, as it seems to everywhere, but I hadn't got so far as identifying a culprit, let alone needing to intervene :-)
Can't believe I mixed up new / knew. Something under the surface about the aquisition of knowledge!
I would blame it on the drugs I'm still on ... but I think it's kind of poetic :)
I hereby offer amnesty & full forgiveness to any & all who have ever in the past mistyped (or who ever in the future will mistype) my name, myself included.
Personally, I believe a Lorianne by any other name would be just as sweet, or whatever. :-)
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