1/30

Today has been rather enjoyable for me. I did not have very much homework this evening, so I started training for the CFA (Candidate Fitness Assessment) and conditioning for track in the weight room after school. In addition, I had time to socialize leisurely with several friends via text messages and phone calls. Before I sat down on the floor in my bedroom to meditate, I considered two things: what Mr. Dean had told us in class today, and what Mr. Russell said in his comment on my 1/29 blog post. I decided to focus on experiencing and observing the presence, using the perspective given by Mr. Russell on how to deal with a noisy household. Additionally, I decided not to use a timer, but rather stop when I felt the time was right.

I sat down on the floor in my bedroom, assuming the lotus position in my dark room. I closed my eyes at 9:25PM, starting upright and observing how I felt physically. Because I had worked out a few hours before, I considered this observation of my physical well-being to be important. In addition to focusing on how I felt (temperature, blood, muscles, etc), I also considered how my body perceived different senses. It was difficult for me to avoid passing judgement and simply observe what my body sensed, but for the most part I found some success. Then, my mind began to wonder. Again, I tried to only observe the thoughts, nothing more. However, I found it difficult to do so. Perhaps I was mentally stimulated prior to meditating because I really wanted to direct my thoughts and pass judgement on the ones that appeared in my mind. When I felt myself attempting to control the experience, I did as Mr. Dean said and went back to a previous step, observing my body and how it felt. Then, I would allow myself to advance back to the next step. I went back and forth between steps for a while, achieving intervals of observing the experience, interrupted by moments when my mind tried to take control. During this time, I decided to lean forward because I felt my back begin to ache a bit. In addition, my foot went numb because I was accidentally blocking blood flow to it. I moved my foot to a different position in order to allow blood flow. At the beginning, I opened my eyes for several seconds to test how meditating with my eyes open would be. However, I determined that I would have a better experience with my eyes closed. 15 minutes into the meditation, while I was emerging from a deeper meditative state, I looked at the clock to check the time. I then felt a draw back to my meditative state and decided to continue meditating. The overall experience lasted about 25 minutes. I believe that I may have forced myself to stop meditating at an earlier time than I would have liked, but I believe that I still had a beneficial experience. While my meditative state fluctuated from shallow to deep, I believe I experienced a decent amount of deep meditation.

This meditative experience was much better than my most recent ones. I think that Mr. Russell's and Mr. Dean's advice really helped me be more successful in meditating. I did a rough measure of my heart rate before and after the experience and noticed a slight decrease in heart rate. However, I would like to actually find my heart's BPM before and after the experience so I have solid empirical evidence of the effects of MBSR. I hope that next time I will be able to go even deeper into my meditative state and spend more time in deeper meditation.