Category Archives: NLP

Emptiness in fullness

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Just because it’s been awhile since I posted about how my meditation practice is going, and that’s the main reason for this blog, here’s an update.

A few weeks ago, something happened that I wrote about in a post, Sitting, Yoga, Oh, Yeah, and Breakthroughs. I experienced something new to me in meditation. Read the post if you like.

That experience felt familiar. Associations popped up about being a young child and having to take a nap (so our mother could take a nap) and lying on my bed awake, aware but not identified with myself.

I had that experience then. Several times. So present, peaceful, open, and unattached! Empty, and yet somehow sparkling with aliveness.

I have yearned for this state to recur.

I’ve tried to figure out how I got there, and all I can say is it seems to have something to do with perspective, like those figure-ground drawings where you see either an old woman or a young woman. You can train yourself to see both.

Or it has something to do with what’s known in NLP as “chunk size.” We all have a preferred chunk size. There’s an expansion into new awareness going on here. Maybe it’s what Buddhism calls “Big Mind.”

Or both of these are happening at the same time. Or something entirely different. Small Mind likes to have something to do!

Anyway, I have no skill with this! I found the state effortlessly and luckily, and then another state arose. And I haven’t returned, either with effort or without, so far.

So after a bit, I just gave up the desire. It will happen again when it happens. Or not.

Much of my experience of whole body awareness has become about experiencing fullness. Adyashanti spoke about this last night in his first satsang in Austin, saying his meditation teacher called it “the fullest emptiness you’ll ever experience.” (That was a very nice event. I hope he returns.)

I don’t know if it’s the fullest emptiness I’ll ever experience, but I recognize experiencing fullness in emptiness. It’s a presence, a way of being, and it seems to be at or near the core of my being. And it doesn’t seem to have boundaries. And awareness of it strengthens it.

And it’s good! Or, rather, it’s goodness!

Hey, ma’am, this yoga feels good!

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I taught yoga yesterday morning and yesterday evening. Two classes in a day! I feel lucky to be able to do this.

The morning class was to 5th graders at my granddaughter’s school. At back to school night a couple of weeks, the 5th grade teachers said this year they would focus on fitness. They have arranged for the kids to get outside for 15 minutes a day, and they were seeking volunteers to help with healthy snacks and fitness activities.

When I was in grade school so many years ago, we got about 30 minutes outside every day. If it was rainy or snowy, we went to the gym. Sometimes our physical activity was organized into team sports, track and field, or games (remember Red Rover?), and sometimes it was just plain old free play on the playground — jungle gym, merry-go-round, slide, swings. It was active. It was fun. I loved it.

Last year my granddaughter’s class did not get to go outside except on rare occasions. They have PE (often in the gym) every third day, rotating with art and music.

Spending time outside every day is important, in my opinion. We need the sunshine, fresh air, and trees and sky to look at. Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, exposure to nature suffuses us with more well-being. Fifteen minutes a day is a big deal.

With so many kids being obese these days, with the decline in school lunches and physical activity, I wanted to support their focus on fitness and volunteered to teach Hannah’s class some yoga. I won’t be able to sustain it all year, but I can spare 30 minutes one morning a week for a couple of months to teach them some yoga.

In fact, it just occurred to me that I can teach a few of them to lead the class after I stop teaching!

(And of course, it’s asana practice, not really yoga. We don’t get into philosophy — but yesterday I did include breath awareness and coordinating it with asanas, and I taught them that namaste means “I honor you”.)

About half the kids had done yoga or were at least familiar with it, and half were new to it. I cherish one little boy saying, when I had them do a seated side bend, “Hey, ma’am! This feels good!”

They were full of giggles and chatter, and I didn’t make any corrections. Let it be fun for them. Let them moo and meow in cat-cow.

I completely improvised. We were crowded onto a rug, limited to seated and standing poses that didn’t take up much room, and tabletop/dog. The first thing I taught was belly breathing. I crammed a lot of asanas into 30 minutes.

At the end we sat cross-legged with our backs straight and closed our eyes and paid attention to our breathing for one minute. During that minute, I heard a few whispers and giggles, and then … about 10 seconds of pure silence.

That silence was so powerful to me! I don’t think they get much of that.

I’ll return next week to teach yoga again. I will also teach them an NLP technique, Circle of Excellence, that they and their teacher will find useful this year, and for the rest of their lives.

In the evening, my Beginner’s Yoga, Beginner’s Mind class picked up again. We did four weeks together, had a week off, and are continuing for eight more weeks. These are adults, most of whom are really new to yoga. We meet in a home, moving the furniture aside.

What a joy it is to hear about them having more body awareness, noticing new strength, having more stamina!

I don’t improvise much in this class. Because of various students’ health issues, we take it slowly. We use props. I want them to feel safe and be safe. No yoga injuries! Taking yoga teacher training from a highly experienced Iyengar-certified teacher has given me the confidence I can do this. We are gradually building strength and flexibility.

We did a nice long savasana, and I got to use some NLP trancework, addressing the healing part within, asking it to communicate clearly to the conscious mind any new information about healing it would like to share.

The Journey to Wild Divine

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The Journey to Wild Divine is a computer video game. The game basically takes you on the hero’s journey.  Ho hum, right? I’m not much of a video game player.

The novelty of this game, thought, is that it comes with three devices you clip onto the fingertips of your non-mouse hand. The devices read your heartbeat and galvanic skin response (bioelectricity), and you progress through the game by changing your state.

If nothing else, I can learn how to change my state more easily. It promises to make that fun.

http://www.wilddivine.com/servlet/-strse-72/The-Passage-OEM/Detail

I installed it last night. There’s a screen where you can see its readings of your heartbeat. My skin was a little dry. After putting hand lotion on those fingertips and replacing the devices, I got a strong reading.

I started to play the game but got an error, and it was bedtime. Will debug when I have time.

Getting it was a lot of fun! The NLP meetup was Tuesday at Unity Center on Dessau Rd. Unity Center has been sold and will be taken over by a bunch of labyrinth-loving Baptists in September. The bookstore there, Sacred Shelf, is going out of business. The game, which sells for $300, had a sticker for $160. I’d checked my bank balance earlier that day and had the money, so I decided to buy it. It’s been on my wish list for at least a year.

Then I learned at the register that it was marked down 50%, so I got it for $80. I love bargains!

It felt like it was meant to be, me and The Journey to Wild Divine.

The Buddhist precepts

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I’m taking a class at Appamada Zen Center on the Buddhist precepts. Yes, I know I’m overextended — full time job, yoga teacher training, NLP activity, this blog — but it meets only once a month on a Sunday evening.

A precept is a commandment, instruction, or order. The Buddhist precepts come from the monastic tradition and have been adapted for laypeople. We use the book Waking Up to What You Do, by Diane Esshin Rizzetto. Here’s a link to it on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-What-You-Intelligence-Compassion/dp/1590301811

Rizzetto presents the precepts as aspirations: “I take up the way of speaking truthfully,” for example.

I view the precepts as an invitation to increased mindfulness. A teacher, a book, and classmates make it a connecting, learning, growing experience.

In class, we’ll be covering one precept from the book per month. We journal at least weekly and assess ourselves periodically. I will be including my journaling here on this blog.

Photo added, two more blogging tasks

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Yay, I added an image widget with my photo to this blog!

Friend Katie suggested that I post one because people like to see what bloggers look like. Here I am!

Actually, Katie took this photo, in a restaurant after a day of NLP master practitioner  training sometime in 2009, I think.

It’s a snapshot, capturing a moment, rather than anything I prepared for, yet I liked this moment. The photo captures a moment of joy and presence. Of all the photos I have of myself, this one best represents meditating.

Hmm. I could ask someone to take a photo of my face when I’m actually meditating and post that. Stay tuned.

I have two more blog chores to accomplish: first, learning how to make the type a little larger (haven’t found a text-sizer widget for WordPress yet, am inexperienced with behind-the-scenes tinkering), and secondly, recording the “Waiting for the love of your life” post – it is actually a guided meditation, at the request of friend Jazz – and posting the mp3 file.

If you have any experience or advice for accomplishing these tasks, please give me a holler.

Six month assessment

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The year 2010 is nearly half over. I have meditated daily for 30 minutes consistently if not perfectly for 6 months.

It’s time to assess my own progress: I have entered a period in my life that is marked by experiencing myself as more whole, healthy, happy, grounded, centered, engaged, energetic, positive, loving, playful, present, alert, aware, appreciative, grateful, and full of equanimity, vitality, wonder, and compassion than I was before this year of meditation began.

Some things have remained the same from the start: I’m still working where I work and living where I live, although I have spent time really examining these two major components of life and I feel open to change. I know myself better and might make different choices now, and I can live with the choices I made in the past for the time being. I appreciate what these choices have allowed me to experience.

I’ve been fairly regular in weekly attendance at Appamada on either Wednesday night or Sunday morning and having a practice inquiry session (“meditation coacing”) with Peg each time.

I’ve continued my association with NLP: I finished assisting for the first time at Best Resources’ NLP practitioner training in April. It was more relaxed to learn it all the second time and to help newbies learn it.

I feel closer to my family than before.

I still go monthly for acupuncture and cranio-sacral work and every 3 weeks now for chiropractic treatment.

I still have my yoga practice.

Things that have gone by the wayside: I joined a gym in February. I went when the weather was cold. I haven’t been since late March. I should quit and save that money.

I also went to a couple of Flint Sparks’ classes at Appamada on the Diamond Sutra. Not sure why, but it just didn’t jell. I dropped out.

I’ve undertaken a few new endeavors since beginning this year of sitting: I agreed to be the program director for the Austin NLP meetup.

My friend Katie and I started a Peripheral Walking meetup here in Austin in January, and I assist her with our monthly meetup.

After 12 years of doing mostly Iyengar-based yoga, I began yoga teacher training this month. That’s a big commitment — in time and money. I’m deepening my practice and learning a skill and gaining a credential that I will use in my future.

I also committed to participate in the Zen precepts program at Appamada, which meets monthly for a year and includes journaling and self-observation. We’ve had one meeting so far. The course is based on the book Waking Up to What You Do. I will write more about this because it ties in with this blog really well.

I’m also taking part in an advanced NLP study group taught by Keith Fail on strategies.

So I’m full, overflowing even, with wonderful activities, learning, and sharing.

I know myself better and see a path into my future that I like, and that path leaves a lot of space for the Universe to teach me as well.

If those of you who know me in person or who read this blog notice anything that I’m not noticing, please feel free to bring it to my attention in the comments.

Mystery: strange left eye energy

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Strange energy tonight in meditation. From the start and often during the half hour, I  was aware of a different sensation above my left eye, inside my head. Not pain, not pleasure, more like the ever-so-slight pressure of the subtle body’s energy.

Even with my eyes closed, I felt like I saw differently. My sense of vision seemed to be clearer.

Now, as I type this, tired at the end of the day, I do feel like my left eye’s vision is more dominant than my right eye’s. The pressure sensation is still there. There’s a space in there that’s simply different.

In NLP, when a person’s eyes look up, it indicates they are accessing a mental picture. One side is remembered, the other is imagined, and these can be different on different people. For me, looking with both eyes up and left signifies a visual memory.

This is different. It has nothing to do with eye movements. It’s there no matter how I move my eyes.

Another mysterious so-called side effect of meditation. “The Mystery” can be really specific sometimes, like tonight.

Why not a Zen labyrinth?

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It’s past 8 pm and I’m just now posting about my zazen 12 hours ago.

I remember giving a lot of attention to my head and face during the body scan, feeling my energy body. Definitely life force that seems to vibrate so quickly it has a presence. My presence, the presence of me.

Whole body awareness, with emphasis on noticing sounds again. The sounds of traffic are different on Sunday morning than on Saturday. There seem to be fewer trucks.

I also noticed bird song coming from several directions and imagined birds in trees in my yard and my neighbors’s yards. There was one sweet bird song in particular that I associate with spring.

And sure enough, even though it is February, the mist this morning burned off, and it was sunny and near 70 degrees F this afternoon.

I walked barefoot on grass — walked a rope labyrinth during our extended lunch break that Katie had set up at NLP practitioner training — and it was a lovely experience. I walked it Zen-style — doing kinhin, hands at solar plexus, one hand held in a loose fist with the other palm wrapping it, eyes cast downward, taking small slow steps.

I couldn’t help but lift my eyes to take it all in several times. Spiraling in toward the center, pausing for a moment, then spiraling back out. I felt more open and loving for having walked it.

I bowed before entering the labyrinth, and when I finished, I turned to face the center and bowed again.

I miss practice with my sangha! Different place, different people today — but me the common denominator, bringing Zen kinhin to a labyrinth.

Body scanning practices

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Twofer today. I was tired yesterday morning and didn’t meditate until about 8 pm. My granddaughter was there, and when she left, I felt tired and didn’t post.

Hannah spoke to me several times while I was sitting yesterday. None of what she said seemed to require a response, so I didn’t respond. She’s not used to spending time with me when I am meditating and thus not available for interaction.

She had earlier expressed an interest in meditation. I offered to sit with her for a few minutes. She decided computer games had more appeal and mostly played while I sat.

I got to notice how sitting was different for me, having her there, hearing her speak to me, and not responding. She was okay with it.

This morning I did my sitting before work. Took my time today scanning my body.

Sometimes I do it very quickly, from head to toe, all in the length of one breath. I’ve had practice moving awareness and energy from crown to toe and back up my body, coordinating with my breath.

(Through my NLP work I learned some shamanic practices. The Q’ero Indians believe that light energy entering the crown comes from the center of the cosmos, and as it proceeds down the body and out the feet into the earth, it carries with it hucha, heavy energy that only humans produce. (The Q’ero say humans accumulate it from not living in reciprocity with the earth.)

The earth receives and detoxifies the hucha moving out of the body through the feet. You exhale when moving energy down.  You can also do this seated, with the hucha flowing out of the body at the base of the spine.

And then, breathing in through the feet and bringing clean earth energy up the body and out through the crown connects your little spot on this planet with the center of the cosmos, in the process clarifying you.)

At other times when I scan my body, I linger on areas that feel tense or uncomfortable.

However, sometimes it feels good to do a slow, detailed body scan. Today I did that, starting with feeling all the areas of my forehead. Then eyebrows…eyelids…eyes…lower lids…temples, and so on.

It felt just right to do that.

Sometimes I feel like such a stoner

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The good news: I wasn’t coming down with anything. That thought crossed my mind when I went to bed last night achy with a sore throat. Today I woke with no aches and pains and no sore throat.

I sat this morning before going to assist at NLP training. No guitar sounds, no sound machine. Just me and the white noise of the heater fan, which I turned off part way through my session when I felt too warm.

Awareness is the backdrop to everything. Thoughts may take up all my awareness. Then my awareness shrinks, becomes small, is limited to the thought.

Sometimes thoughts are barely discernible against the vast backdrop of awareness. Like, yeah, monkey mind is doing its thing, thinking thoughts, but these thoughts are happening to someone else far away, in slow motion in a foreign language.

Expansion, contraction, association, dissociation, attention, awareness, me, not me, being, doing, not doing… this is some vocabulary of meditation. Some may seem like opposites. They’re not. Only a continuum of experiences exists.

Maybe awareness is not just the backdrop to everything. Maybe it is everything.

Everything I know and experience, everything I have ever known or experienced, and everything I can ever know or experience, comes through awareness.

If awareness consists of the conscious and nonconscious minds, then my awareness is simply whatever I’m consciously aware of in any given moment, plus everything I’m not consciously aware of (i.e., everything else). Conscious mind is the island of the tonal, the nonconscious mind is the sea of the nagual, in Carlos Casteneda’s terminology.

The word awareness is a nominalization, a way to make a thing out of a process. The process is being aware.

Right now I feel like a stoner. Today a stoner, Friday a drunk. All welcome in this guesthouse. What’s in the fridge?