Hello! I’m a resident in counseling who’s been lurking around on Lemmy for a while and I want to use this lovely community to both uplift myself and others. I had a period of time in graduate school where I was able to maintain daily meditation sessions, but with the stress of entering the workforce a lot of my good habits fell by the wayside.
It’s time to fix that.
For my first exercise today I spent some time this afternoon in my yard listening to birdsong - I could hear 5 different birds, even though I’m not sure what species they were other than whippoorwills and cardinals! I love feeling like these cute little guys are my neighbors, maybe I should put out some seed for them.
How do you use mindfulness in your own life? Would this community be interested in daily mindfulness check-ins? How else can we uphold each other as a community?
I went along to the local Soto temple for 6 months or so a while back and learned the basics of zazen and managed a few 4-6hr sits.
I found that very helpful, the tradition seemed rather wise in the ways of this stuff and made me realize I had not been meditating all those years and more just sitting in fancy way and indulging in daydreaming for chillaxing, zazen is fucking brutal.
Much of what I’ve consumed under the brand of ‘mindfulness’ is not all that great imo, the soto teacher was not amused at all with it. The material I’ve gotten via medical services, and the stuff provided to my kids in times of need, is often not worth the paper it is printed on.
That sounds like quite the experience! I’ve gone on a few vipassana retreats that were quite intense, but it is where I got the most “in touch” with my inner self and my local mindfulness community. I’ll have to look up what zazen entails!
Mindfulness as a category is so broad in my experience. I work with kids in middle school, and while those that are able to focus on small practices seem to be benefit it’s difficult to provide something deeper within a 1-hr format where I’m also supposed to meet specific treatment goals. I totally agree that much of the stuff printed is pretty worthless, when I take the time to engage and show what mindfulness does is when it is most effective.
I’m glad you found something that works well for you!