Thittato

45 min sitting meditation today. This has been one of those days where everything has felt wrong. Meditation offered a little bit of relief, but not much. Probably feeling rejected has triggered this. At the very least I’m glad there is little need to elaborate. Before I would have been going on and on endlessly, but now I can simply conclude it has been one «one of those days.»

Today my meditation was done singing mantras together with a group of 30-40 people for 1,5 hour. Was feeling a lot of resistance at first, but felt like my attitude towards resistance has gotten more grown up, so I quickly just surrendered into it (even though it continued for quite a while). Much better to just be with the resistance instead of freaking out.

20 min vinyasa flow guided from youtube today as well. I’m a little heartbroken because I got rejected by my crush. I think she was chasing me for quite a while, but I didn’t catch on before it was too late. So she ghosted me when I was actually starting to get interested, whereas up until this point she was the one initiating contact. I haven’t had much contact with women lately because I’ve been going through so much stuff, but now I think my positive and out-going vibe is starting to come back since I’m finished with this very demanding therapeutic process, and all this yoga is really boosting my sense of flow, so probably it is just good to get rejected just to get used to that again so that I don’t take it so personally. Anyways, I’m going to the bath-house to try to sweat it out in the sauna and to increase my sense of masculinity in the cold-baths. It is funny - I meet a lot of people who are inspired by Wim Hoff when I’m there.

20 min vinyasa flow guided from youtube today as well. Just a lot of gratitude today. And I love the discipline of this. Discipline is what I need more of in my life. Especially since I have so many interests that keeps pulling me in all kinds of directions.

20 min vinyasa flow guided from youtube. It felt more like a flow today than before, and I’m also much more connected with my breath through-out the practice.

90 min Iyengar yoga class today. What I noticed today is that I don’t feel awkward in class anymore. Besides that I started skateboarding on longboard yesterday, so it was pretty cool to cruise to the yoga-class, and then afterwards I cruised over to a pub to play Chess with a friend, and then back home. Never done skateboarding before, but I do snowboard, so longboarding seems like a really awesome way to transport myself around here in town. For one thing it is more fun and quicker than walking, and when winter and snowboarding season comes I think it will be pretty cool to see what doing some kind of board also in summertime will do to my snowboarding. Been really starting to feel lately that wow, 3,5 year in intensive therapy is actually over and that it probably gave me the desired effect. For one thing it seems like I start to attract much more healthier friends than all those stoners I grew up with and that I had a lot of unhealthy co-dependence shit going on with. Basically I just have a huge kick on lots of activities and I’m starting to notice that straight people are not as boring anymore as I used to think they were. I’m even connecting much better with all the mainstream people at my job. So yeah, I will definitivly buy another one month pass at this yoga-studio when this one is done, because it is simply just awesome. I think this is exactly what will change me from someone who has for a very long time felt «half baked» on the spiritual path into someone who is actually cooked all the way through.

90 min Restorative Yoga class. These classes are simply brilliant. Was a little bit fed up after that yoga-festival, but now I’m getting the enthusiasm back. I was also quite fed up with my own tendency to get so totally identified with my projects, ie. with this yoga thing going totally up in the identity of it. I think that I will at least buy another one month pass when this one runs out. I’m probably very close to having this as an integrated part of my life that doesn’t have to be such a big deal anymore. The whole process sort of becomes automatic when joining a yoga-studio. No need to struggle alone. Only thing I have to do is to show up. And then a compassionate and friendly teacher will guide me through an awesome session together with a lot of group-support from the other students.

Also went to a 75 min Hot Power Yoga + Yin class after work. It was really really sweet. I love those heated classes. Half the class was power yoga and the other half was yin. Perfect combination. Tomorrow I’m having a day off, so I’m going to start the day with a 90 min Restorative Yoga class, and then I’m going home to work on my newest drawing-project. Seems like orderliness and cleanliness is really working out well. I’ve found the spot in my mind that has been giving me the wrong permission to space out from what needs to be done, so now I’m no longer lying to myself about this part of my life - instead I break the orderliness and cleaning routines down into manageble micro-steps that are not really painful at all to both plan and execute - but actually quite fun.

30 min sit this morning. Felt sad and vulnerable, but it felt good to just be with this.

30 min meditation this morning. First I went to the ocean and took a swim. Also yesterday later in the evening I did a one hour vinyasa flow with a buddy, and then we went and took a swim in the ocean. Jumped out of bed this morning, and then did some laundry and dusting before swimming and meditation. I totally think that is the clue to maintaining my home - I have to see it as an on-going project that never ends where I have to do a little bit of work every day. Feels extremly much better to have it orderly and clean like this. Now I can go to work later this evening without worrying about my clothes not being fresh and clean. Damn, what a mess my life has been. There must have been some denial in all this that fortunately I can no longer maintain. That is another thing I’m grooving on about meditation these days - how it fosters an attitude of being really honest with oneself. Must have been a lot of denial in my mind, and there probably still is, that I’m really keen on exposing.

20 min meditation this morning. It was really nice and I regretted not having more time to it before going to work. I have a new orderliness and cleanliness project going as my appartment keeps degenerating into chaos again and again, which is kind of strange since I really enjoy taking care of my home when I’m in the groove with it, but somehow I’m not able to maintain it. Now my place is clean again, and this time I’m determined to keep it this way. I could sense a new attitude coming this time as I was putting my place back together because it was much less an «all or nothing project» but more something that is always on-going. Perhaps I’ve had some unwillingness to admit that I can’t just put it back together and expect it to stay that way by itself.

30 min meditation this morning. Dealing with various frustrations, and my mind didn’t quite settle down. It was more hovering around. Felt like a failed meditation until I wrote this and felt that this is also a state that I can embrace.

30 min sitting meditation today. Very nice energy-flow in my body, and my mind was getting really still. I love it when I go beyond that «manic buzz» that I often get into. Perhaps that is why I feel inclined to do so much yoga these days because often when I meditate I get a lot of energy going, but this energy often turns into some kind of «manic buzz» so I’m taken out of presence again because of that, but I think yoga can help me deal with this imbalance so that hopefully it will help me go deeper with my meditation.

Only did 20 min yoga this morning, because I’m trying to hold back a little bit so that I don’t get burned out. But felt really good to do at least a solid 20 min program. Been feeling really soft in my body this whole day.

Festival afterglow Did a 20 min youtube yogaprogram before I went to work. Then after work I went and did a one hour beach yoga class, and after that class I was so on fire that I went to a 90 min Heated Dharma yoga class. So much resistance was gone and it felt like I was almost flying through these classes. Only thing I have to be careful about now is that I shouldn’t get too manic about this. My energy feels a little too manic and restless, so I’m going to focus on bringing myself down again.

3 days at a awesome yoga-festival is over. It was awesome, but also I encountered a lot of resistance towards the physical, social and emotional process I was in, but now I feel very released. Did 3 classes on friday, 4 on saturday, and 4 on sunday, plus lots of extra social festival stuff going on in-between. Basically the whole thing was a little bit too much, especially since I have been working night-shifts for 2 weeks just right before this and I’ve been feeling something compared to being jet-lagged through-out this whole festival, but it was also very very inspiring much of the time and I felt I was going really deeply into many of the yoga sessions. However I wasn’t prepared for getting into such a strong sense of resistance towards the whole thing at times. It sometimes felt like being in a prison. But I mean, yoga is painful in many ways, it is really about encountering a lot of the resistance one has in body and mind, and learning to relax with that - to breathe into it - so of course that is going to be challenging sometimes. Coming back home now, I feel released and refreshed, but I’m also very glad the whole thing is over, and I look forward to return to my daily practice. I think my theme for the whole weekend was learning to find sort of the sweet-spot in the resistance. When one gets into it, and really surrender into it, there is some really juicy transformation going on, and there is sort of a love for this transformation that makes going into the resistance attractive. Of course that is not how resistance feels most of the time, because most of the time I’m not able to surrender fullt into it, but when I am that is really a juicy sweet-spot, and the memory of that spot is what brings me back to the practice over and over again.

20 min meditation to cool down after night-shift. I’m looking so much forward to this yoga-festival that starts today. Now I will have to sleep for 5 hours before waking up to prepare to go there. The festival is at a very nice yoga studio just around the block here where I live. Pretty nice :-)

10 min meditation to calm down after night-shift. Ok, emotional crisis is over and I feel awesome again. Maybe that Heated Dharma yoga triggered some stuff - it probably did. Looking forward to yoga-festival this weekend.

30 min sitting meditation today. Been feeling terrible today. I think I get so inspired with things because they offer an escape from my life which I’m sometimes very dissatisfied with, so then I can think for a little while that yoga offers the solution to everything and I get totally fixated on it. But I’ve seen clearer the energy of fixation, at least, today. It is like I get into a trance where everything else than my fixation is excluded. Perhaps much of this journey is just getting used to suffering on a very deep level.

90 min Heated Dharma yoga class. This is by far the most intense class I’ve been to. Never done hot yoga before, but it was really awesome. I totally want to do more of that. Felt a little unstable after the class, though. But I’ve been working many night-shifts lately, and I woke up after sleeping all day just 30 min before the class even though it was in the evening, so no wonder I was a little confused. Some very strong emotional stuff came up after class, but now it seems to have landed. I counted the number of classes I’ve done with other people now after I started with beach yoga again this summer, and so far I’ve done 13 classes. It is something about getting used to the social aspect of it. Been doing my meditation and/or yoga alone for so long now, so it takes a little bit getting used to doing it with other people again. All that stuff of comparison, competition, wanting to be best, wanting to be seem by the teacher, fear of not being good enough, and etc that one gets away from when only doing it alone. I think a lot of these things were triggered today, but it is probably a really good situation to just breathe into all these human experiences and learn to relax in the middle of it all.

15 min meditation during work at night-shift. My mind was racing a lot this night, and I got identified with all the various problems and scenarios my mind was racing through. As always there was some unacknowledged emotional pain in my body, and once I finally gave that pain some attention my mind calmed down. Funny that I can still let my mind race like that for so long, but the lesson is obviously the same over and over.

75 min restorative yoga class today. It was really really nice. Perhaps what I noticed the most today is that the social awkwardness of going to class is almost gone. I’m only there to relax and go deeper with my practice. It is a perfect situation to just let go.

1 hour sitting meditation today as well. Makes a lot more sense to meditate when I also do yoga, and vice versa. Both yoga and meditation makes the body and mind open up in a way that mutually supports each other.

1 hour sitting meditation back home today. Needed some rest from yoga today. Felt like a very powerful sit. Maybe my home is my little yogi-cave where I do my meditation, and then I have these three yoga studios close by where I go and practice with others. Feels like a very good support-system. Lots of gratitude and fire in this sit. It all made more sense in a way. Just got to continue to trust and surrender to my natural inclination to let this practice unfold in the way it is meant to.

90 min Dharma Yoga class today. This is the most intense sequence I’ve experienced so far after this yoga period started. Made me think I’m kind of soft-pedaling this thing a bit. Maybe if I could just find a really intense sequence that could bring my yoga up to the next level, then I could just do that, and then «go on with my life» outside of yoga-practice. My body is really ready to do a lot more advanced stuff. But it is probably good that I’m taking my time building a good foundation. At the very least there is like a very strong urge to get my physical mastery up to the next level. I want to do stuff that looks and feels like art.