Plugging In the Charger

21 Nov 2015 3 Comments

by TheRestlessRaven in chakras, day to day, doubts, energy, practice, tai chi, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

For countless reasons, my individual Tai Chi practice has been slipping the last month or so.

My mornings I have ended up sleeping in, my week days have been skipped here and there and my weekends have been spent dealing with life in other parts of the country. Taking me away from my regular routine.

One could say; it has been chaotic, to say the least.

Right on the tail end of all this madness, came along a chakra awareness class meant to stir all your shit right up in front of you in order to, well, to START deal with it. It is a great class, turning into more of several guided therapy sessions than I originally thought, but hey it’s about time I dealt with some of that deep emotional programming anyway.

All this life and self work has really sent me up into my head. Leaving out the balance of body mind integration work and started to lead me back towards that stress and anxiety that got me pushed me down this path in the first place.

In other words, the cable was plugged into the phone but unplugged from the wall.

In class we are working on the 83 form. I have been frustrated in my lack of focus and practice time outside of class in turn leaving me feeling unfocused and unclear in class, but not having time to practice in class because we are learning the next move. Thus continuing spiral of frustration and anxiety.

This is the second full weekend I have had in awhile and I realized today how much I had been missing while skipping my morning practice.

I started the day feeling pretty grumpy and tired.

6 AM was too early this morning.

After we cleaned the guan, the senior students worked on the 83 more. My mind was everywhere, forgetting the moves, thinking about groceries, work… you name it my mind was there.

At one point i was getting frustrated in Tai Chi itself, didn’t even know why I was there or doing it because I felt totally disconnected from it.

Thats kind of when I figured something was really wrong.

After about an hour of this internal struggle, something inside me finally woke up.

What I need to do is STFU and practice, I thought to myself.

So that’s what I did.

I stayed in front of the mirror, refused to let myself get distracted and worked. Around the 5th time through the section we had been working on I was finally starting to feel connected to my body again. Allowing myself to quiet down and slowly experience each move. Letting the motion of my body lead my mind through its energy patterns.

Pure Joy.

The rest of the classes went very similarly, quiet, focused intention on every move, every inch, every position.

Finally the calm is back taking over my brain, like a long drink of cool water after a long hike.

The stress and the anxiety are still right there at the edge of my awareness, I think they always have been. Tomorrow will be more slow, quiet intention as I return to the daily practice I am so reliant on. My hope is through a combination of this chakra class and tai chi I will be able to deal with some of the larger fears and stresses that live deep in the foundations.

I am reminded once more, happiness, contentedness is not a constant state. There are always fluctuations, external or internal, that will shift me around from one end to the next.

I must allow myself to relax and stay connected in those moments to keep the mind and body clear and relaxed or the old patterns start to emerge.

 

Added Bonus!!! My 24 form from about 6 months ago. Captured it in the studio and will be capturing another one soon for comparison!

 

The wall of fear

15 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by TheRestlessRaven in day to day, fear, focus, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

I keep a wall between myself and the world around me.

A large, hideous, cold stone wall. I can see it as I close my eyes, its tall, its gray, and its numb. Comfortably numb. Its the wall that keeps my empathy at bay.

The wall that keeps me from commenting on the pain I see in someones eyes.

The wall that keeps me from telling a stranger I love them when its clear they need it.

The wall that keeps me acting “normal”. Keeps me in line and following all the social norms of the people around me.

The wall that bounces inquiries about “How I am Doing” back with “I’m good”. When in fact I could fill a good 20 minutes expressing the multitude of emotions and feelings I was having in that exact instance.  Instead, bouncing off that expanse of wall with the generic, flat, canned response of “I’m good”.

The wall that keeps me from blurting out at the talk of money, or how to get more, that I don’t care about money. I don’t care about how to get more of it. I don’t care about changing my life to be more financially solid. What I want is to have a community of people around me that care about each other.

That want to expand self knowledge to the next level. To looking beyond this fantasy world that we build around us to make us feel better about having absolutely no goddamn clue what the hell is going on. Building these stories around us that hide the fact that we are actually all making this shit up as we go along.

Whenever I say that, people think I am kidding. I often find myself wondering if they think they are actually aware of what is going on around them.

What truer form of creation can you have then to take the day as it presents itself and make something of it. You have an idea, but that’s all you have of how the day will unfold or what you want to get done.

You will never know how that day will actually happen until you are in it. At that moment you have a choice.

You can choose to ignore the beauty around you and push through only focusing on the task in front of you, or you can look at it in the beauty of the moment, the beauty of beginners mind.

How would you look at that moment if you allowed yourself to see what was around you for the first time. Never again in the history of the universe will what is around you exist in that way again. Can you spot the miracles?

How many completely unique things can you spot in that moment? How many of those things speak to you personally? How many of those things are related to you? How many of those things are because you are there in that moment?

I am tired of this wall. I am going to melt it with the fire of a thousand suns, I am going to work towards taking it down piece by piece with my bare hands if I have to in order to uncover the pain that it hiding from me.

Pain and fear, so many fears. Pain I want to feel, I am tired of the numb. I just want to open up the real me and start living without limits.

One with the Earth

13 Nov 2015 1 Comment

by TheRestlessRaven in breath, chakras, meditation, small victories Tags: , , ,

I find it much easier to stand while meditating.

I have been taking a course that is designed to allow a deeper understanding of yourself through increased awareness of the chakras and the emotional charges inside them. One of the major tools of this course is a guided meditation introduced in a standard sitting position. A position that is not one that my hips and lower back relax into easily. Regardless, I have been trying to settle into it without much luck.

As the first imagery is introduced I am instantly met with resistance. My mind gets stuck in the hips and back as they fight to find a relaxed position. The imagery in particular is one of rooting. Sprouting roots from my feet and perineum (root chakra) and allowing them to penetrate deep in to the center of the earth creating a link between me and the planet. Needless to say, my roots don’t go very far.

So I decided to try something different. Yesterday I went back to standing and was immediately greeted with a different experience.

I started at the train stop in the middle of the street. As I took a couple of breaths and let my mind sink to my feet, the world around me instantly became muted and distant. I could feel my body melt downwards and my stress just liquefy and flow down in to my feet, which immediately got a very physical pulsing sensation in the arches. I felt connected to the earth, as if my lower half and the earth were one piece and it would take a massive force to move me from my spot and I hadnt even begun to try to root yet.

To put this to the test, I decided to continue on the train when it got there (only partly due to there being no seats).

I stood in between the doors as I got on and took my stance.

Again, I was immediately shown that same grounded feeling. This time, however ,I was starting to notice a distinct tingling in my dantian and my intention would pass through it. Kind of like the feeling associated with “getting the chills” but localized to a particular area.

I was solid, the train and me were one. The normal turns and shifts that would cause me to shift my feet were nothing more than a tiny ripple, diffusing in to the ballistics gel of my body. It was by far the most grounded I have ever been on the train and it lasted until I hit the subway where I then took the rest of the ride to write down my experience.

Structurally and mentally that was the most grounded I had become, however, the guided meditation itself had its issues. The roots still have trouble getting deeper than a couple feet and moving on to the other stages gets muddy and lost at times. So, there is still a lot to work towards, but these little victories help me know that I am making progress.

I am going to continue experimenting with different postures, the fact that some are more difficult just tells me I still have things to work on and I look forward to discovering what they are.

Alex_Grey-Spiritual_Energy1

Laying the foundation

10 Nov 2015 7 Comments

by TheRestlessRaven in Breaking the rules, life, routine, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Its easy for me to fall in to depression.

When I was in my 20’s I tended to have huge spikes of happiness followed by equal magnitude lows. I refused to take medication for it, often falling to self medication, but slowly started creating a routine for my life.

I discovered, through the reading of many self help books, that a routine could help me manage more consistently day to day and start to get some of the major swings under, relative, control. It took multiple years to get to a point where I was able to create a more constructive life for myself and has lead to several great friendships and life events that have created an great foundation for me to work with.

The progression of my free time has also evolved. Before I started this little routine building procedure, I was feeling overwhelmed with the minuscule  amount I was doing everyday. My day would consist of going to work, about 8 – 9 hours, making some sort of pizza or otherwise easy to cook “food”, then sitting in front of the T.V. until I passed out. That was too much for me and I often wondered how I would ever find time for anything else.

Fast forward to now, I find myself going to work for 8 – 9 hours, cooking something from scratch for breakfast and dinner, working out or meditating for an hour before work, leading\practicing tai chi after work everyday, spending up to 14 hours on the weekend studying tai chi and finding time to spend some time with the people the amazing people in my life. All that, and I am still wanting to find ways to do more.

I look back and I am amazed at how far I have come and it all started with the idea of just creating a routine.

8 years it took me to grow that. One layer at a time and just now the concrete has started to cure.

There has always been a catch, however, when I find myself in the same routine for too long it becomes stale. Being in the same place at the same time everyday doing the same(ish) thing each time tends to get monotonous and I would fall in to old habits to mix things up, usually involving drinking too much, just to make things feel fresh again and revive my perspective of my progress.

The last couple weeks have been packed with travel and a commitment to continue my practice in between. The whole time maintaining this idea that I will be able to get back to “Normal” and be able to continue on this tightly packed schedule I have. But, today as I see several weeks of full practice ahead of me, baring any other unforeseen life events, I realize how valuable switching things up is. Going in to the next couple weeks I am excited to put my whole focus back in to my practice and my studying, i will again be able to pour all my extra attention in to it all the way up until thanksgiving break. After which, there will be another pause and then an intense couple of weeks back in to practice.

I am starting to realize sometimes it is the lack of a routine that helps to keep the routine alive. It breaths new life in to it and challenges it to make sure it is still valid. My routine is not my life, it does not define me, it does not dictate my every move, but it is a PART of my life. It is the structure I can deviate from, the rules I know so well that I can begin to deviate from and create new experimental art.

Without that, I am just blindly throwing paint on to a canvas.

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Finding Time

06 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by TheRestlessRaven in listening, meditation Tags: , ,

It’s next to impossible to find time if you never make the time.

So how do you get yourself to make it?

The motivation is somewhere in there, it pops up late afternoon in the most inconvenient time, but for some reason your body is lead and your limbs don’t seem to respond to your brain anymore. What is it that blocks you…. Some imaginary force? Well, completely imaginary actually, right up there in the brain with the rest of it.

Is that the ego?

Convincing you, “its better to just lay here and soak up the bliss of the morning fog for just a couple more minutes.”

Or, perhaps, it is a valid response to the stress and exhaustion from several days of hard work and emotional turmoil, in which case, maybe you should be taking it easy?

The only person that can truly know you, is you. As the saying goes, “Know thyself”

I happen to think that mental battle, that layer of exhaustion, the ego, whatever you want to call it, needs to be better understood in order to know what it is really coming from. Much like when training your physical body, you must know the difference between good pain and bad pain. Is that pain in your leg just muscle ache caused by the intense workout from yesterday, or is it in fact an early indication of an injury that could cause serious harm.

Both of these indicators need to be paid heed, but, while one requires rest and treatment, or even perhaps adjustment of technique. The other just requires a different set of exercises or a longer warm-up.

Its hard to know which one is which, the only way to tell is through listening, experience, and paying attention to everything that is happening internally. Your mind, your body, your spirit. They are speaking and through the mere intention of listening, your will begin to hear.

That should be your guide, only you can really know yourself and the games your mind will play.FB_IMG_1444706583738

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