Subtle Mind

          Good news and bad news. Good news is, this was far more enjoyable and beneficial for me than the Loving Kindness exercise. I love the saying still your breath still your mind and how your breath will follow your mind. I’ve found this to be true in a lot of circumstances of my life when I get worked up and it gets hard to breath or the pace of my breath quickens. Bad news is, these kinds of exercises are still a struggle for me to stay focused. I feel like it takes a lot of energy to try to remain focused and can get frustrating. The minute I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing I couldn’t relax because I was planning in my head all the things I need to get done today, thinking about a recent love interest or other areas in my life that are prominent at this point. It took a while for me to really settle in. I tried changing my focus because at first I chose to focus on the expansion of my diaphragm as I did my breathing, but later found it more helpful to focus on my breath coming in and out. This may sound strange, but sometimes it helped for my closed eyes to look towards my nose as I was breathing to focus more. My Dad came upstairs in the middle of it which was distracting. I can’t focus on doing any homework or reading when it is not completely quiet, let alone meditate. One thing I found helpful on both the Loving Kindness track and this track was the ocean sounds. Having been raised on the coast, it’s a place of calm for me. There’s this one place I sneak away to sometimes to just get away from it all and think. I was able to visualize that and the waves crashing really helped calm me. For a brief period I must have slipped under some deep relaxation or different consciousness because even though my hands were lying on my stomach it felt as though they were by my side and I opened my eyes to see what was on my stomach… kind of creepy! It is pretty obvious that I need practice on my subtle mind. One thing that really hit me was when I began to look at it as a way of understanding my mind better and seeing what kind of thoughts my mind went to as a way of better understanding myself. When I did this my mind didn't seem to go very far into any thought because I was like hmm what’s coming up next?! Truly interested. It was almost like a white stage waiting to see what thought peeked out behind the curtain next, but that was the only time my thoughts didn't battle for my attention.

         Your mental and spiritual wellness directly affect your physical physiology, they cannot be individualized. This is why it is so important to address and aim to achieve balance and wellness in each area. I am a person who always considered myself to deal with stress well, until this class. I rated my ability to handle stress well because I never lost my cool, got angry, or visibly worked up about stressful things… but instead I realized I internalized it. My mindset is a struggle for me because of the fact that I internalize a lot of things, have a hard time shaking off confrontation/hate having tension with anyone even if it’s not my fault it still makes a pit in my stomach, with stress I’m good at dealing with it… but not good at dealing with how I internalize it. This has created many physical symptoms for me. I had clear skin all my life but once I started grad school my skin was constantly a mess. I’ve had hair loss issues they couldn't find any other reason for than stress, developed cysts that they said could be stress related, etc. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s just easier to fall into old habits and stress and certain learned responses (getting upset about confrontation or disapproval of another) are hard habits to break how you initially handle them. I’ve tried to become aware of when I feel like this, but being aware of this and changing how it makes me feel are two different things. Any tips?!