New Practice Notes

After a spell of no meditation, I'm getting back in the saddle. I still suffer with chronic fatigue syndrome, but I'm doing some short sits where I can. During the few months of no meditating I was aware of gradually getting magnetized towards the 'meniscus' of life and losing 'depth' and this felt uncomfortable. I'm not here at KFD to get overly ambitious about my practice, merely to DO the practice, and the length of sits will depend on my energy levels. I have understood through previous practice that I'm doing this process in part to move to a deeper level of acceptance with some hopes of finding a more peaceful existence, not to escape aspects of my life that may be unpleasant. I'll do my best to report my sits by way of sharing my experience with you good folks. I'm going on a short overnight retreat tonight, so I'll let you know how it goes. It's good to be back!

It is nice to have you back, Serena! I have sometimes wondered where did you disappear, as you had pretty solid practise going on. May your mindfulness be strong during the retreat!

Antero.

Thanks Antero!

Great to have an extended sit yesterday evening, in a very nice buddhist meditation hall with surrounded by golden buddha statues (albeit unnecessary, but nice nevertheless) . I started the noting practice and I am beginning to get back in the swing, but of course, am rusty, so my responses to the comings and goings are slower and not as precise. Still, I'm hoping another extended sit this morning will jump start my practice a little more. I'm reading Daniel Ingram's 'Mastering the Core Teachings..', another useful jump start. It's easy to forget how important insight practice is, and how speed of response and detailed examination can make all the difference.

I sat again this morning for 45 minutes, with a view to speeding up my response time of observing comings and goings, so tried to stay on track with around one per second as Kenneth has suggested in the past. There were times when I dried up, or repeated noting the same thing, but I managed for the most part. I do keep missing when thoughts start though, they just seems to pop up before I realize I'm thinking, and the noting comes after the thought has almost run its course. Guess I'm going to have to get super diligent to outfox them!

Welcome back, Sounds like a great start. Often the hardest part of meditating seems to be finding the time to do it, if you can I'm sure the rest will come. And either way try to stay relaxed about it(my personal challenge currently).

I've been staying with friends in Amsterdam this last week and opportunity to meditate has been rare. But I have been practising as much as possible off cushion. The short retreat fuelled me with enough oomph to notice pretty quickly when 'I' was dissipating and to pull back to mindfulness/present moment awareness. I would just say to myself 'gather' and then I could pull back into centre. This got more difficult the latter half of the week, I think because i wasn't doing the sitting meditation to support it. Sat this morning and I've lost some momentum so really getting back into the swing. Now I'm back in routine I can sit daily again and see what transpires..

Nice!
Sounds like you're getting back OK!
Keep on keepin' on as we say around here