My meditation journal

[Thittato]

Cold shower, and then 25 min yin yoga, today. It was amazing how much it helped to bring more mindfulness back to cold showering. It helps a lot just taking a few deep breaths while the water is still hot to prepare for turning it cold.

[Thittato]

And also: 2 hours of climbing yesterday, and two hours of skating today.

 

The things I'm giving the most attention to these days (in no particular order):

- My job

- Kayaking

- Yoga

- Skydiving

- Skating

- Cold showers

- Climbing

- Socializing

- Chess

- Being a psychonaut exploring my consciousness through various entheogens (being focused exclusively on cannabis these days)

 

The things I wish I was giving more attention to (in no particular order):

- Women

- Visual Art

- Guitar

- Cooking

- Family

 

So when this pandemic we are in hit, it seems like I made a re-orientation towards action sports, that seemed to cover the needs I previously had for arts and culture. Maybe because concerts and exhibitons were taken away from us I didn't experience much exchange of energies in these fields anymore, so my focus instead shifted towards action sports, where I could get that sense of creative flow and companionship.

I find it hard to let go of my former identity with being someone with artistic ambitions, but at the same time the orientation that I have now in many ways seems more healthy. Maybe I'm less of a "tortured artist" these days, and just more someone who is stoked on life and keen on adventure.

It also seems like I have totally given up on chasing women. Which in many ways is healthy because there is less of an empty whole inside of myself that I project some kind of need to be loved, and to love a woman, in order to fill up this whole, but at the same time I'm afraid of becoming too complacent about the whole thing. As my age is increasing it seems like the dating pool I have access to is decreasing, and I'm worrying if this is a tendency that will just continue to increase as time goes by. But at the same time it seems like I'm moving much closer to this idea that one should be happy in oneself before one has a chance of meeting someone in a healthy way. I certainly have a lot of experience with unhealthy relationships and none of that seems very attractive to me anymore.

I'm also wondering if I'm loosing some friendships because I don't have much of that "trauma bonding" going on anymore. And I can certainly feel very lonely at times without those people I used to "trauma bond" with. But it also seems like I'm finding new ways to experience deep connection with people. And perhaps, most importantly, there is an expanded capacity for experiencing this loneliness. I can feel into it without freaking out.

So on my brighter days I'm thinking that everybody who has gained independence and genuine self-love has had to find ways to be alone without being lonely.

Perhaps the best tendency I see in all of this is that I'm becoming less bitter, and more understanding. For instance I used to have a lot of bitterness towards many of my friends, but now it is easier to understand that many of them have lives filled up with stress.

I also used to have a lot of bitterness towards women. Why this female agenda towards men? Why shouldn't these accusations go both ways? Both genders certainly have an enormous capacity for hurting each other, so why do we only hear about the way that men hurt women?

But maybe we don't.

Maybe also women feel a lot of blame and shame from everyone around them.

And maybe being a woman is very hard.

Maybe it is easier being a man.

Or maybe it is not. Who the fuck knows?

Anyways. So I try to feel more compassion for the female experience, instead of bitterness, and I can certainly say that bitterness is decreasing and compassion is growing.

I think as I'm growing out of my former sensitive "tortured artist" kind of identity, I'm certainly experiencing some new kind of robustness that I haven't had access to before. And perhaps there is something particularly masculine about this robustness that I should be very grateful that I have access to.

The most challenging emotion that I'm experience these days is certainly loneliness.

But I have my yoga and I have my ability to feel into it - so I'm probably in a pretty good position.

My challenges has been way worse.

I think it is time to not allow myself anymore to wallow in the feeling of being a victim. I have so many tools available for dealing with the things coming up. Feeling lonely? It is as simple as doing a session of yin yoga and really feeling into it.

I shouldn't "run around" anymore trying to desperately stimulate my social network in order to never having to experience these feelings.

What about when I'm getting old and my family dies and I'm having nobody around anymore and what if I don't marry and have kids?

Well...... What if?

Just shut the fuck up and feel into it.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Thittato

[Thittato]

25 min yin yoga today, and then cold shower. So nice. Feels like I understood the trick with cold showers again. It is about opening up to fully and embracing the resistance instead of clenching ones teeth and just pushing through. I think it makes the whole difference. Yoga and cold showers seems like a really good combination for now ?

[Thittato]

25 min yin yoga and cold shower today as well. Yoga is just getting better and better it seems like. Even Downward Facing Dog is getting much deeper.

[Thittato]

25 min yin yoga and cold shower today as well. I think my goal should just be to have a daily yoga practice. And a daily cold shower. But I’ll just continue like this to build up this habit more and more. The yoga becomes so much better when it is done almost on a daily basis.

[Thittato]

20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and a cold shower, today. Going much deeper into both Downward Facing Dog and Upward Facing Dog these days. So awesome how there is suddenly a new interest and inspiration in poses that seems so basic.

[Thittato]

A good and long cold shower this morning. I noticed I was raising my shoulders as I prepared for the cold water, and then I breathed deeply and lowered them and decided to have the attitude of really letting all the cold fully in. Resistance melted away, and the cold water was really nice.

[Thittato]

20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and a cold shower, this morning. So nice to get deeper into upward-facing dog. Feels like my back is really opening up when I go deep into it. I love backbends. Yoga and cold showers feels like a really good practice for now.

[Thittato]

1 hour weight-lifting this morning, then 20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then a cold shower. It was pretty awesome to do some weight-lifting again. I've gotten remarkable stronger from kayaking, climbing and yoga. But I don't think my focus will go back to weight-lifting. I will continue to have my main-focus on yoga.

[Thittato]

30 min ganja yoga today. Wow. So good. I'm really amazed at the level of joy that yoga brings to my life these days.

[Thittato]

And then I smoked some more cannabis, listened to a nice podcast about ganja yoga, chilled out with some really nice mantra-concerts on youtube, smoked some more, and then did 25 min of yin yoga. And that was absolutely amazing. Holy smokes. That went really really deep. Such an intense bodily flow in the yoga. Just deeply feeling into it in celebration and gratitude for life.

Yoga is making me into an athlete. I mean if you do exercise every day then you are pretty much an athlete. Becoming an athlete is like a side-effect of going deeper into meditation through yoga for me. And that is pretty cool, because I totally need more embodiment.

I had some deep openings in my meditation a few years ago, and to continue to support these openings, it seems like I just need to focus on embodiment a lot. Just really inhabiting this animal body that we have.

This is the perfect next chapter in my life: going deeper with yoga.

It will help integrate everything else.

[Thittato]

50 min classical yoga today, then a little bit of weight-lifting, and then a cold shower. Seems like doing weight-lifting immidiately after yoga works very well. Before I was afraid of loosing the yogic state I had worked so hard to achieve, but I can rather just bring it with me into the weight-lifting. So as I said, yoga is going to continue to be my main-focus so that I don't get side-tracked, but if I feel inspired after the yoga then I can add a little bit of weight-lifting.

[Thittato]

1 hour vinyasa flow yoga today, and then a cold shower. So nice. It is good when my overactive mind has nothing else to say.

[Thittato]

So no practice yesterday. I was working a lot. First I did a 7,5 hour day-shift, went home and rested, and then went back and did a 10 hour night-shift. We have a very demanding patient these days, but I managed to handle him pretty well. Then I woke up today and felt pretty inspired, went climbing with some friends, and then we went out and had a beer, and now I'm home again and I just finished 20 min vinyasa flow yoga and a cold shower, and it doesn't feel like my sleep is going to get disrupted by the night-shift I did. The climbing today was really awesome. Well, actually everything about this day has been pretty awesome. I like the transition into fall. And it seems like society is opening up again and people are happy and social around here, so there is a nice and happy fall vibe in town. The 1 hour vinyasa flow yoga I did on sunday is the peak of what I have done so far in this yoga-period. It takes quite a lot to do 1 hour of such intense yoga on my own here at home. Much easier to do longer sessions of yoga when going to a class and getting group-support. So naturally my practice builds up to a peak, and then intensity will fade a little bit before another wave builds up again. The good thing about yoga is the more I do it the less I think about it and feel sort of free from it during the rest of my life. It is like a need that just has to get saturated as much as possible so that one can concentrate on the rest of ones life. Pretty awesome to have this practice going. I feel that this time I will take it really far.

Edited September 21, 2021 by Thittato

[Thittato]

A cold shower, and 30 min ganja yoga, without the cannabis, today. It was interesting to try out the ganja yoga while being sober for once. I have probably done that program 4-5 times now while being high, and everytime I get more and more used to it. Cannabis used to trigger a lot of anxiety for me, so I never really felt comfortable with it, but now, through ganja yoga, I have found the perfect way to breathe and relax into this anxiety, and it seems like a lot of it is already gone. So now I have decided to really come to terms with this anxiety, and going through this program several times seems to be a good way to do it, because that gives me a handle on the whole thing. It seems like the problem is almost gone, but I'd like to really grind it out. It seems like the type of anxiety that cannabis has been triggering for me is some generalized anxiety that I'm carrying around all the time, and cannabis is just intensifying it. Already it seems like I'm even less anxious because of this, so I'm really excited to see that cannabis is turning into a medicine for me, instead of an enemy as I used to think about it. Probably smoking weed in my teens and early twenties and experiencing this anxiety without having the tools for dealing with it was probably not good. I'm sure it amplified the problem. So now I can go back and fix a troublesome relationship with a plant medicine that has had a huge influence on my life in terms of the culture and spirituality around it. And now all the positive things it brought into my life I can appriciate even more without that strong ambivalence I used to have about it. Looking forward to my next ganja yoga session with cannabis. Maybe next week.

[Thittato]

10 sun salutations today, and then 10 kettlebell snatches on each hand with a 20 kg kettlebell, and then a cold shower. Pretty sweet and intense little program.

[Thittato]

14th session of kayaking

Started the day with 30 min of meditation, then I went to work, and after work me and a buddy paddled a river that took us 3 hours to complete. It was super-ultra-awesome. This is my first time paddling a river. I loved the feeling of being carried downstream by the current.

[Thittato]

20 min vinyasa flow yoga today, and then 10 kettlebell snatches on each hand with a 20 kg kettlebell. Super-nice.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation this morning. Very good sit. Did a little bit of kettlebell exercises after that. Then I went to work. Gosh. I was so fed up today. I've been working with such a difficult patient lately. I'm very exhausted. Fucking psychopath. But now I'll have 5 full days off. Been working too much over-time these last weeks. I'm totally not going to say yes to more over-time in a long time. On monday I worked a day-shift, went home and rested, and then I went back to work night-shift - on top of all the other over-time shifts I've been doing lately. It is way too much doing stuff like that. It is squeezing all the juice out of me - which I would love to spend on other things than crazy violent psychotic psychopaths. We get some patients with some really strong anti-social behavior. But it seems like I can maintain my stability even with such a heavy work-load, so that is very good.

These extremly demanding patients - it is always fun to look back at when it is been processed well - and my self-esteem as a social worker is increasing a lot by being challenged this way. It also inspires me to exercise much more, because these people always project a power-struggle on to you based on whether they percieve you as someone they can beat up or not.

[Thittato]

15th session of kayaking

Yesterday: 30 min of meditation and then lots of experimentation with kettlebells throughout the day.

Today:

30 min meditation

2,5 hours kayaking

and in the evening 30 min meditation after I smoked cannabis where is was sitting and just breathing deeply into the effects of cannabis in silence and stillness. This was my preparation for doing 30 min of ganja yoga. Wow. The relaxation effect that I'm sitting in now is so deep and friendly and safe. This is a really profound way of using cannabis. Holy smokes how fascinating doing yoga while high is. Yoga and cannabis is the perfect match. The medicinal qualities of cannabis comes really into the foreground while amplified by the effects of yoga. This makes me even more in love with yoga. Maybe this is what I need to get my ADHD-focus fully into yoga for once. I sometimes thinks that being a yoga-instructor might perhaps be my purpose. I already have a yoga teacher education. And sometimes I teach one-on-one in my job when I'm taking care of a psychiatric patient who likes yoga. That is one the most meaningful things I can possibly do - help psychiatric patients calm down through yoga.

Certainly there is a goldmine here.

The kayaking today was also fantastic. I'm merging the sensation of flow I'm sitting in right now with all my memories about how it feels to sit in a kayak, and I try to let the flow go into all those memories and melt them into flowing memories where my body is the perfect transition-point between the flow of the universe getting into the kayak through myself as a channel. Some force just wants to get expressed through the use of a kayak. And it is about just relaxing into that impulse letting it do its thing. There is something so intensely Zen about the whole art of kayaking. So I feel very grateful that I can experience it in the context of being a yoga-practitioner.