Third in a Series of Three.

Breathing Exercises: week three

Perils, pitfalls, distractions. Any conversation I have had regarding the difficulty, lack of success, frustration (pick one) with this practice has contained some variation on the following: “I can’t stop thinking!” So – what is up with that? A quick review of any basic instructions will reveal one thing – we were never asked to stop thinking. The mind thinks, that is what it does. The ears hear, the eyes see, the skin feels, and so on. What, then, do we do with these thoughts? First, realize that it is common to get sidetracked, lost in thought. Notice the thought, acknowledge the thought, try not to follow the thought with the story that it seems to create. We can acknowledge the thought by giving it a name. A “planning thought”, a “remembering thought”, a “future thought”. (The last two come complete with entire scenarios! What I should have done, what she should have done. What I am going to do or say.) And then – let the thought go. If it helps, you can say something like “busy, busy mind”. What will not help is to become judgmental of your efforts. “I can’t do this!” Return at once to your breathing. “In. I am breathing in. Out. I am breathing out.” Or, if you prefer, you can count your breaths: in is one, out is two and so on. Stop at ten and return to one. We can then pick up where we left off whenever we release a thought.

No matter how we have sequestered ourselves, the outside world can and does intrude. Accept the interruption and resume your practice. Once we have completed our breathing exercise, our meditation, our mindfulness practice – try and make a gradual transition back into your day. Be congratulatory! If you set out to sit for seven minutes or thirty minutes and you accomplished just that – be nice to yourself.

Hopefully these three short posts will engage and encourage. What is working? What is not working? 

Thank you.

Phase Two in which Doris gets her oats!

Breathing Exercises: week two, sort of!

Greetings – I introduced some basic practices in my last post. They were intentionally easy. Easy to begin, easy to continue. My goal was to throw an air of success over the whole activity. To move from “I can’t ______” to somewhere closer to “I can”!

Where we want to head next is to increase frequency with an eye to increasing the duration of the sit. Initially, in a given week, we want to be engaged in our practice more days that we miss. So set your sights on four days. If you miss some consecutive days, if you miss a week – just start over at your most recent level. For example – you sit for five minutes on Wednesday and then forget about the whole thing for a week. Can you start over? Absolutely – simply sit for another five minutes and commit to beginning again.

Some suggestions: consider adopting the same time of day and the same place as your time, your space. You can create a meditation/breathing spot in your home. Simply walking by will remind you of your commitment to this. Also, let family and friends in on what is happening. It may reinforce your practice once we announce our intention(s).  Of course a partner is even better! Even if you do not practice side by side, knowing someone else is in on this with you is a great source of encouragement.

So, for this week and next – sitting more often than not sitting and gradually extended the time of your practice.

My next post will talk about thoughts, distractions, and other common pitfalls.

Thanks.

Breathing Exercises: week one

(some stuff I put together for a Spirit of Mentoring group I am a part of at work)


Sit comfortably, a chair is fine – there is no one way to sit . I keep my hips higher than my knees, my shoulders over my hips and my ears over my shoulders. Arrange your hands comfortably in your lap.
Start with some deep breaths – take a deep breath through your nose and let it out through the mouth. Try three of these. Slowly let your eyes close and begin to find the rhythm of your breathing. Your attention is on the breath. Say to yourself “In. I am breathing in. Out. I am breathing out.” When thoughts come up, simply acknowledge the thought and gently re-direct your attention to the breath.
You can use a timer to measure the amount of time that you sit. Your phone or any kitchen timer is useful. Make the length of this exercise ridiculously easy to attain. One minute. Three minutes. Get comfortable with the process. You can gradually lengthen the duration.
Some tips: try and practice this exercise at the same time and in the same place every day. This will become your time and your space. I use the morning, before anyone else is up and before my day gets away from me. I began by setting my alarm slightly earlier. Plus you leave the house with a small feeling of accomplishment. There is no wrong way to do this! Keep a beginners mind and attitude. Remember learning to ride a bike?  

So - Here's what's gonna happen. Might happen. All of the photos associated with previous posts will be gone. Lost. Maybe.
Here's why: I have a crazy family member (I hope no one ever holds that against me . . .). Made even crazier by the prospect of a large inheritance (which he was/is not entitled to) and by the selective remembrances, unabashed distortion, and a seeming unending willingness to rewrite history and pillorize those with both a better than average memory and a strong desire to make things right.
Which is a long winded (believe you me it could have been exponentially longer) and slightly cathartic attempt to say: I have to change my email address.
I created a new account, and am still in the process of moving things over. With an unappreciated tenacity, Google has made the unscrambling of email, YouTube subscription and, yes, Blogger (dare I say it) Byzantine, at best! God bless them though - there must be good reason for all this . . .
Changing the authorship of the blog was perhaps the easiest. But I will lose all the photos associated with earlier posts, when and if I delete the other account. Although I had to manually cut and paste my Reading List, paring it down to a manageable seven blogs which I am 'following' (although 'reading' only one). YouTube? I will probably have to ditto Michael de Miranda (bongos), Minute Physics (what it says), Watercourseway1 (Zen, Watts) and TED Talks . . .
So, to my two devoted followers and anyone else lost here for a moment - that's what's up!
Further on up the road . . .

Jazz Fest 2012

New Orleans is . . .

John Boutte' Singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah at dba (with us singing the chorus . . .)

Singing along with Bruce all day Sunday at the Fairgrounds. "New Orleans loves Clarence!" Something You've Got.



But first:


Zara's Market. Hubig's Pies. The Saint Charles Avenue Streetcar.


Mass at Saint Augustine's in Treme' – eyes filled up during the homily, ears filled up during the rest. Later, thinking: "I heard a great drummer on Sunday. Where? Ten o'clock mass . . ."

The Trolley Stop on St. Charles.

Earth Day in Bayou Saint John. Taxi drivers (too many to mention): "look for me on season three!" will do . . .


Getting my 14 year coin at a 7:15 AM meeting in the Lower Garden District.

Red beans and rice, jazz on Frenchmen Street.

Otis at Faubourg Art and Books. World Book Night – giving away The Stand (half a dozen) at Felix's Oyster Bar.


Breakfast at The Camellia Grill!

The Rink: Iced coffee at Still Perkin'. Garden District Book Shop. Butterfly in the Typewriter. The new Offbeat!


Seeing Big Sam at Café Reconcile, only telling him half of what I wanted to and then getting a second chance that night at Lafayette Square! Looking up to see him on stage with Tab Benoit.


Elizabeth's "Real Food Done Real Good."

Armstrong Park. Congo Square. Where it all started (?) It sure felt like it . . . Leo Nocentelli sits in.

Walking in the Garden District, holding hands, to Juan's Flying Burrito on Magazine.

Jazz Fest! (Got the tickets?!?)

Semolian Warriors Mardi Gras Indians, brass and blues . . .


Ya Ka May, crackling's, Boudin Balls, Strawberry Lemonade, Muffalettas! (vegetarian and otherwise), iced Café au Lait. MANGO FREEZE!


(NORTA rocks -- $2.50 round trip to the Fairgrounds each day. (FYI: Festival Express -- $18.00 for the same trip and you got to ride a pre-Katrina yellow school bus to boot!) Taking the 91 to Rampart Street, taking the 5 to the Bywater [driver gets out at Harrah's to use the ladies room, leaves the bus running . . . ]Hopping on and off the Streetcar!)


Having honest, intimate conversations with perfect strangers.



AMB stays put in the Jazz Tent, gets misted all day, and gets the best end of the deal . . . although she does miss Men of Class Social Aid and Pleasure Club and Paulin Brothers Brass Band.

101 Runners! Let’s go get 'em . . . .

Hopping out of a cab at on Frenchman and bumping into John Boutte'.

Susan at dba, our new best friend. Sharing the bar with the chief from Treme'.

Western swing at Checkpoint Charlie's (booze, grub, a pool table, paperback books and a fully functional Laundromat!)


Mark, an intern (mechanical engineering) our waiter at Café du Monde. (Where the only engineering required is how to get half a pound of confectioner's sugar on 3 beignets).

Back at he Fairgrounds . . . Trombone Shorty mails it in and I still can't get enough: "ooh, ah . . . ooh . . . ah, ah, ah!"

The good Doctor nails it – twice!

"From shotgun shack to the Super Dome . . . wherever this flag is flown. We take care of our own." And we did!

People hilariously intoxicated . . . dude knocks a lens out of his own shades, doesn't even notice, and apologizes to me when I point this out to him . . . oblivious!

Free Sangria on Gentilly (set me back about a sawbuck for the three days . . .) $1 Lemonade through the fence on Lopez.



And then . . . .

Blue Monday.



Shopping spree (that'll help!!): Southern Candy Company for pralines, Louisiana Music Factory for CD's and vibe, Beckham's Books for Black Cherry Blues and lunch at the Ruby Slipper (There's no place like . . .)



Bellman  at the Marriott convinces me to cut it close and go back to LMF to see Jon Cleary do a live in-store. But first, sees my shirt and tells me about the Grateful Dead playing at The Warehouse in 1970 ("busted down on Bourbon Street . . ."). Says it was "the most uncomfortable place in the world to see music" (he went both nights). Tells me about tailgating at the Jazz Fest in Congo Square in those same years . . .

In-store starts on time! Cleary rocks: When You Get Back, Toussaint and Professor Longhair! (do I hafta go?!?)


Heading home, planning my next trip on the cab ride to the airport -- "Do you know what it means . . ."

3,000 hit club

Wow! What a week. Excitement palpable in the tri-state area as Derek Jeter closes in and then masterfully surpasses the 3,000 hit plateau. A great honor for a great ballplayer, a great teammate, a great Yankee and, presumably, a really great guy. Takes me back to the night that Ron Swoboda crushed number 3,000! It was drizzly, as I remember, some late September chilly weather keeping most of the crowd at home. I went to the game with my neighbor George, his boy Elroy and we lounged in the comfort of the Spacely Sprockets luxury box. More remarkable than the rarified air of numbers with commas and all that was the fact that it took 'Rocky' almost 45 full seasons in the bigs to reach this milestone! Averaging almost 70 hits a season and a victim of the pre-bionic platoon system Swoboda, much of his upper body now replaced by robotics, seemed calm and collected during batting practice. "I think I can play a lot longer" the burly right-fielder quipped during a pre-game interview with Lindsey Nelson III. The game lumbered on and in the bottom of the seventh, Swoboda disconnected himself from the dugout charger, took a few tentative swings, and strode to the plate, a green LED flashing barely visible beneath the snow white home uniform. The Rawlings-MacGregor Pitch It machine silently delivered pitch after pitch. The crowd grew quiet, the only audible sound the whirring of the despised mechanical contraption located in the center of the diamond. The machine seemed to hitch and shudder. "Bring back human hurlers!" bellowed one of the faithful. "Yeah, and then we'll be back to counting pitches all night" I muttered underneath my breath while she studied the lines on my face. I must admit I looked a little uneasy when the 'pitcher' finally delivered. Swoboda glared, the spheroid flew, and with a resounding "pop" of polycarbonate bat meeting naugahyde ball -- history was made.

Congratulations Derek! Welcome aboard!

Older than that now

Older than that now. Older then than now.

I just watched "No One Gets Out Alive" on Ovation. (They are going pop music-crazy this week – right now I am recording Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, a documentary that promises to put the concert in "its historical perspective" which mean what I do not know.) "Alive" is a one hour tribute to Jim Morrison replete with the necrophiliogical ramblings of Ray Manzarek who has made a cottage industry out of semi-inept keyboard playing alongside a died-too-soon rock legend.

So here is the deal – why is it that departed rock stars, some departed rock stars, have a certain age impinged on them. Meaning they never look their true age. Morrison should, through my eyes, look like the twenty something punk that he was. Janis too – should look all of her twenty two years. Pigpen – a young man drinking himself to death. But they don't, they just don't. They look older, not wiser, older.

True, some of this could be due to the ravages of the excesses that bought them an early seat in Rock and Roll Heaven. Much like the coroner who examined Charlie "Yardbird" Parker and determined the thirty-four year old to between fifty and sixty.

Lennon – older than the above, to be sure, less ravaged too, but he will always appear to me to be my elder. Cobain – there's the rub, there's the 'some'. To me he does look like a twenty seven year old. Is it because I never wore Nirvana Boots or sported a Nirvana Haircut? So is it my infatuation that colors my perception?

A twenty-two year old ordering a caramel whatchamcallit looks like . . . well, whatever she looks like it is nothing like the woman belting "Piece of My Heart" at Monterey.