Zen and the Art of Yuppie Meditation – A 30 Day Recap

Posted on July 3, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

I’m not sure I’ve ever meditated consciously before this month started. I’ve done a decent amount of yoga and spent time silent in the wilderness, but I’ve never made a focused attempt to spend time meditating. Throughout the course of July, I meditated on 26 days with lengths of time ranging from 10 minutes to 1 hour. In the process I learned a few things about my lifestyle (busy), my mind (always going), and the practice of meditation (vast and overwhelming).

First, what I learned about meditation: I learned that I know nothing about the various types of meditation and that it would take a lifetime to really start to understand even just one style. I started this month with the ambition that I would learn about all the different types of meditation to try and get a rapid and solid grasp on what works for me. I quickly became overwhelmed with the sheer amount of content on the internet that is geared toward meditation. It varies by region, by religion, and by blogger. I even found a style of punk-fusion style of meditation called DharmaPunx, who knew? I wasn’t quite sure what was legitimate information and what wasn’t, there was too much of it to properly educate myself. Therefore I decided that it would be best if I just made things simple. So I chose four different styles to practice, one each week:

Guided Meditations

Reflection Meditations

Chakra Meditations

Vipassana Meditations

I found this approach to be less overwhelming as compared to overloading myself with the entire world of meditation practices.

I learned enough to know that I don’t trust guided meditations from YouTube. This might seem obvious but where else should I have gone? A generic meditation website won’t tell me how many people are viewing it’s site (a way to gauge legitimacy) whereas with YouTube I can see how popular a given meditation is. I thought that by finding the most popular videos that I would be all set and get some great guided meditations done. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Most of them creeped me out actually. The thought of having someone that I didn’t know trying to relax my subconscious through the internet was kind of disturbing to me and I couldn’t simply let go. Therefore, I didn’t find a lot of value in doing the guided meditations. I think that if I found a practitioner that I trusted and built a relationship with over time then that would be ideal. However, as for the YouTube guided meditations, I think I’ll leave those for the millions of other people who enjoy letting strangers take over their thoughts.

In drastic contrast to the guided meditation experience, I found tremendous value in doing Reflection Meditations. I spent a week meditating on my 2011 trip to Israel. I kept a journal while I was there but hadn’t touched it in the year since so it was a good excuse to bring it off the shelves. My meditation strategy was to read one entry per day and then spend 30 minutes meditating on my experiences. Surprisingly (to me), meditating brought me immediately back to the places I visited, the food I ate, and the people I was with. I think this experience will help me to keep a journal next time I travel because then years later I can reread select entries, meditate on them, and relive the experience through my writing.

Hammock session watching the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee while we stayed in Tiberias.

My third week of meditation was Chakra Meditation where I spent one day meditating on each of the seven chakras. This was an intimidating area of practice because it has been practiced for thousands of years and has a deep history tied to a variety of religious practices. Thus, knowing nothing about the practice, I was again overwhelmed with information on the internet. This is when I went to the Boston Public Library and checked out the book, “Meditation for Dummies”. It had a simple, 2 page explanation of the seven chakras so I simply used that to help me through the week. I liked this meditation practice because it helped me to focus on particular areas of my body as well as behaviors (good, bad and indifferent).

Here's an image of the 7 chakras. (courtesy of http://www.crystalwellbeing.co.uk/)

During my last week I tried a variation of Vipassana meditation where I engaged my five senses, simply trying to be present wherever I was meditating. This coincided with a trip to the Colorado Rockies. It was a very practical meditation technique that I can see myself using in the future. The technique I used was to spend a few minutes focusing solely on each sense individually. Then toward the end I tried to let all of my five senses absorb my environment all at once. After I was done I felt incredibly calm. Being present is a hard thing to do, even in the mountains. It’s easy to lose sight of where you are and what you’re doing when you’re physically pushing yourself. You can lose sight of the forest through the trees as they say. So taking time to really focus on my immediate surroundings was valuable.

Being one with the Rocky Mountains in Chicago Basin, Weminuche Wilderness.

One lesson I learned about myself this month was that living in the city wasn’t an excuse for me not taking the time to slow down and meditate. It was actually my own behaviors and lifestyle. I missed the same number of meditations while I was in the Rockies as I did while I was in Boston. So clearly my fast-paced, agenda-driven life was common despite where I was or what I was doing. I mean, it’s hard to tell your friends or girlfriend, “Sorry I can’t hang out or talk right now because I have to meditate first.” It was a very similar experience to my month-long experiment of getting 8 hours of sleep each night. Slowing down is not something I’m used to but I see the value in it and I’ve realized that I need to make a concerted effort to be calm, spend some time in my own head, and reflect on my thoughts, my experiences and my surroundings.

Would I recommend trying out meditation to other people? Definitely. Just be wary of guided meditations online and don’t try to make things too complicated. Just sitting in silence can be extremely beneficial (and surprisingly difficult) and remember that meditation takes a lifetime to master so don’t get discouraged when it seems difficult or overwhelming.

Meditation Week #4 – Colorado Rocky Mountain Vipassana

Posted on June 30, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

For my last week of meditation this month I decided to keep things simple. One of the most seemingly straight-forward meditation techniques was called Vipassana Meditation. Wikipedia describes the practice of Vipassana as “insight into the true nature of reality”. It can be practiced many different ways so I chose to reflect on my present reality, i.e. wherever I happened to be meditating, I wanted to focus on truly being present. This happened to be well-timed because I was planning to be hiking in Colorado for a week. I figured there’d be no better place to contemplate the true nature of reality than the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Before heading to Colorado I did my first meditation at my apartment in Boston the night before I left. I sat in my papasan chair near my open bay windows and tried to gain “insight” into the reality of living in downtown Boston. For 30 minutes I tried to absorb the rain outside and the sounds of the city. At first it was quite calming but shortly after starting the meditation it progressively got more “urban”, for better or for worse. I started to focus on the sound of cars driving by, car horns, two different ambulance sirens, slamming car doors, more car horns, more rain, and I may or may not have fallen asleep for 10 minutes. The insight I gained was simply that the city is loud and it’s mostly filled with vehicles driven by people who are angry with each other. Usually this stuff becomes background noise to my daily life. The other day I was walking in Chinatown and I saw someone jump and turn around as if something scared them. I then quickly realized that it was the siren of an ambulance. I hadn’t even noticed, it’s simply a sound that I’m used to whereas it scared the heck out of who I assumed to be a tourist. Taking the time to really focus on the sounds outside of my apartment really helped to show me how loud and stressful living in the city can be. The following meditations in Colorado were significantly more peaceful.

On my first day in Colorado we visited a farm called James’ Ranch. It reminded me a lot of Joe Salatin’s farm from the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma that I read during my Vegetarian Lifestyle Experiment. At the farm I had the best hamburger that I’ve EVER had in my life. It was the freshest grass-fed/grass-finished beef that I’ll probably ever have and it was incredible. After the meal I sat down on the grass overlooking the farm and meditated for 30 minutes. I felt the warm breeze, the soft grass, random machine noise from farm machinery, and people walking/chatting. I really tried to engage my 5 senses and I think I accomplished being “present” at the farm.

The food shack at the farm prided itself in being a zero-waste facility, everything was composted, recycled, or reused in these bins. They even had a vermiculture compost (read: worm compost, like the one I built almost a year ago for my city apartment).

The next day Sarah and I headed into the Rockies for five days of backpacking. On two out of the five days I didn’t get any meditation done. There was something about hiking 13 miles around 10,000 feet that really wiped me out. We fell asleep around 5pm on both of those days and slept for over 12 hours. The other three meditation sessions however, were excellent.

Me meditating in Chicago Basin in the Weminuche Wilderness.

We spent two nights in the Chicago Basin of the Weminuche Wilderness which is a busy place by most standards in Colorado but we managed to only see a few different groups of people throughout our stay. To me it was a place where I could feel and be truly alone. I spent time contemplating the mountains, the mountain air, the valley animals (pretty aggressive goats, yikes), the glacial runoff, etc. I spent a few minutes on each sense (except taste) and it really helped me to focus on my immediate surroundings. It was really an amazing area and the only down side was that we only spent two nights there.

Despite the idyllic location, I still found it hard to take time to meditate. When you’re out camping there are a lot of things to do and to think about: packing gear, hiking, eating, drinking water, washing dishes, setting up camp, eating again, filtering more water, etc. I really had to stop for a moment and simply chill out with nature. It’s easy to lose sight of your surroundings when you’re pushing yourself physically through a series of mountain ranges. So taking the time to try and simply be present was a great benefit to my trip in the Weminuche.

After arriving back to our real-world basecamp (Sarah’s parents’ house) I decided to do a little meditating on their back deck. I sat cross-legged for about ten minutes and decided to open my eyes to look out at their yard and the mountains in the distance. That is when I came face to face with this:

Oh hey wasp nest. I'd love to meditate about the true nature of your reality but I think that this will conclude my meditation for the day.

I thought by being in the wilderness for this week’s meditation that it’d somehow be easier to find the time. It turned out that I still had to consciously take 30 minutes out of my pre-planned day to just sit and meditate. I’m an aggressive planner so each day has its list of to-do’s and if meditation wasn’t on there ahead of time then it didn’t happen. Despite my regimented schedules, I definitely still found value in taking the time to engage my five senses in my immediate surroundings while contemplating each sense individually for a period of time. There’s much more out there that my auto-pilot filters out and it was good to spend some time focusing on the “noise” as a means to be truly present. This is not a trivial task as I’ve learned so far but definitely one worth spending some time working on.

Urban Meditation Week #3 – Aligning my Seven Chakras

Posted on June 23, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

This week I tried chakra meditation, focusing on one of the seven chakras each day. As a scientist/engineer I was immediately skeptical of this concept of “chakra”, but in the spirit of learning and trying new things, I threw myself headfirst into a practice that takes a lifetime to master. The amount of information on the internet is totally overwhelming but I learned quite a bit and spent a total of 3.5 hours meditating over the course of the wek. The concept of chakra meditation centers around having specific energy points located throughout your body, each responsible for certain positive/negative behaviors/emotions. It is believed that when all of these energy points are aligned and emitting energy at the same frequency (often visualized as light) then life is good and everything is well balanced. However, this is rarely the case because life isn’t perfect. Therefore, people in many traditions practice chakra meditation daily for most of their lives as a way to heal their energy zones and reach a higher state of consciousness: Hinduism, Buddhism, Indian Tantra (has branches in both Hinduism and Buddhism), Jewish kabbalists, Sufi dervishes, and Taoists are a few examples that practice energy-centric meditation techniques.

Here's an image of the 7 chakras. (courtesy of http://www.crystalwellbeing.co.uk/)

It is believed that certain chakras correspond to particular problems, ailments or issues (I’ll explain these below). To me this is not an entirely outrageous claim. What most people don’t understand is that the human body is really just an electromagnetic machine, albeit a very complicated and organic one. When our hearts beat, when our nerves fire, when our muscles contract, when our subcellular components like proteins or DNA form, and even down to the basic atomic elements we are made up of, it is all governed by a series of +/- charges. The human body is constantly buzzing with energy from its very core (the atom) up through it’s organ systems (heart for example) and ultimately the entire body is a resonating electrical machine. So for some of these older religions and traditions to have linked the body with the concept of energy is pretty interesting now that we know a little more about how the body functions.

This is a picture of an electrocardiogram, also known as the electrical activity of your heart muscle that is responsible for it beating and pumping blood throughout your body.

Hyper-simplified explanation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). It works by using large magnets to align the nuclei in the atoms that make up your body. This can then be deciphered into an image all because our atoms have +/- charges and create a magnetic field. Our bodies are certainly vibrating with a magnetic frequency so maybe chakra meditation isn't so far fetched after all.

As I said, I spent a week trying to learn about chakra meditation by focusing on one energy center each day. I learned enough to know that it’s very complicated and it would take years of dedicated practice to even start understanding and applying the practice. Despite my utter lack of knowledge and expertise in this meditation practice, here’s an outline of my experience over the past week:

First Chakra (aka Muladhara or Root Chakra, color = red) – this energy center is located at the base of your spine/tailbone and is related to foundational issues that are core to your life: food, money, security, shelter and other survival issues. If your root chakra is not aligned or healthy then you might have issues like not feeling a sense of belonging or a constant worry about things like finances or dieting. So I spent 30 minutes sitting with my eyes closed contemplating who I am, where I belong, how grounded my life is, and other basic issues like student loan payments for example. Throughout the meditation I tried to keep my breath steady and to visualize a strong red light emanating forward from the base of my spine. This is common to all the chakra meditations, breathing in white healing light and breathing out through your chakra, thus cleansing its impurities. Again, the goal for me was to try and connect the energy from my root chakra to strong and balanced thoughts emitting themselves as red light.

Second Chakra (aka Swadhisthana or sacral chakra, color = orange) – this chakra is located in your lower abdomen a few inches below your naval. It is believed to be associated with creativity, procreation, and the sensual aspects of our lives. If this chakra is closed or weakened you may feel ashamed of yoru body, emotionally disconnected, or sexually inhibited. I spent most of this meditation session distracted because my hips are so tight when I sit cross legged. My hips, knees, and ankles were all bothering me after about ten minutes so I just laid them out straight and sat up against a wall for support. This seemed to work well, I’m pretty sure you don’t have to sit in lotus to be meditating.

Third Chakra (aka Manipura or solar plexus chakra, color = yellow) – this meditation was a bit different from the others because it involved breathing exercises. The solar plexus chakra is located just below the diaphragm so to open it up you can use various breathing techniques, I chose to use “Breath of Fire” which is a series of rapid inhales and exhales, really forcing air from your diaphragm out of your lungs. They say that this is a good way to wake you up and that it’s very healthy. I found it to be pretty silly because you can get the same feeling from exercising. I’m wondering how many zen masters are actually physically fit individuals. It seems like if you spend so much time sitting down in your own head you probably don’t have too much time for exercise. I don’t see the 3rd chakra meditation as being a viable replacement for daily exercise.

Fourth Chakra (aka Anahata or heart chakra, color = green/emerald) – the fourth chakra is located near your heart and is responsible for sadness, fear, compassion, forgiveness, and love. I did this meditation at the train station while I was waiting for my train. I arrived a half hour early and spent 30 minutes reflecting on what brings me sadness, what I am afraid of, what I’m compassionate toward, and what I love. This was the toughest meditation to do thus far because it’s easy to lie to yourself about things like fear. Sure, I’ll admit it, I’m afraid of water and swimming in open water. I’m a terrible swimmer and nearly drowned in a triathlon last summer. However, this wasn’t a hard decision to come to. Things got real deep, real fast about the life things that truly scare me. I flashed forward to a person in their 40’s who has a cubicle desk job, is unhappily married, and spends his weekends doing mundane things like going to home depot so he could remodel the kitchen. The vague possibility of this happening to me is frightening so I spent a lot of time thinking about how I didn’t want my adult life to look like. Before I knew it, the 30 minutes was over and I realized that I was finally starting to get used to the act of meditation. Without even knowing it several people had crowded the train platform and I hadn’t even noticed them.

Fifth Chakra (aka Vishuddha or throat chakra) – I was a bit frustrated with this meditation because it still hurts for me to sit cross-legged for that long. My knees start to ache and my bones are driven into the ground. I blame this on my extremely tight hips. I’ve also been biking a lot more these days and I’m sure my utter lack of stretching has contributed to that. I ended up laying down toward the end of my meditation because I found that the physical discomfort was detracting from my focus. This chakra is located in the center of the throat and it deals with issues of honesty, self-expression, and the sharing of feelings. As a typical male I find it hard to express my emotions, I either forget about them or say, “Eh, whatever” and choose not to deal with them. This is certainly not a good habit to get into so it’s something that I consciously try to do.

Sixth Chakra (aka Anja or third eye chakra) – typically when people meditate they are exercising the sixth chakra. It is located between and slightly above your eyebrows, the location where you typically go to when you shut your eyes and try to picture something. It is associated with intellectual clarity, intuition, and personal vision. During this meditation I tried to think clearly about the vision I have for my life. What do my 1, 2, and 5 year time horizons look like? What are my goals? I also reflected back on some insights that I’ve had recently concerning work and some side projects that I am working on. I went back to a few of those “aha” moments and tried to figure out where they came from. Like I said, for most people this chakra gets the most attention so it is recommended that people make sure to spend as much or more time on the other chakras.

Seventh Chakra (aka Sahasrara or crown chakra, color = violet or white) – this final chakra is where the level of spirituality reaches its ultimate climax, pure consciousness. It is at this moment that you are closest to the creator/universe/God(s) depending on the tradition. It is common to ask for guidance, truth, and spiritual cleansing. Some traditions view the energy as a snake residing coiled up at the root chakra and after a full chakra meditation the snake bursts through the crown, reaching a state of complete euphoria. I however, had a hard time with this meditation. I did it late at night after a full day of work and errands post-work so I was over-tired and had a lot of various things on my mind. I couldn’t focus on the meditation and eventually I fell asleep, waking up with 5 minutes left in the meditation. I’m not sure if sleeping is cheating but my body definitely needed the rest and I think it helped to clear my mind out from the day’s clutter.

I can’t say that I’m now a chakra meditation zen master but I definitely used this style as a vehicle to reflect on various aspects of my life; past, present, future, good, bad, and indifferent. The amount of information scattered throughout the internet is pretty overwhelming so I tried to keep things as simple as possible, reflecting on one or two aspects of my life and trying to imagine each chakra radiating strong light. During my next week of meditation I’ll be in Colorado backpacking in the Rockies so I plan to do what is called Vipassana meditation. In this style you try to come to peace with what “is”. You try to clear the mind to accept your current existence. For me this will be freeing my mind of thought and focusing on the sounds of nature around me. I can’t wait for this trip and the meditation experience that’ll come with it.

Meditation Week #2 – A Yuppie’s Reflection on a Pilgrimage to Israel

Posted on June 13, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

This week’s reflection meditation experience was 180 degrees different from last week’s guided meditations on YouTube. Almost exactly one year ago, I went on a religious pilgrimage to Israel with a group of people from my church. It was a truly incredible experience packed with new knowledge and a renewed sense why I believe in my faith. It still seems that I have more questions than answers but this trip was certainly a step (or a leap) in the right direction. While I was there I took copious notes during the day on the places we went and people we talked to. Each night before bed I would write in my journal, synthesizing the notes from that day. I knew that this would be an experience I’d look back on for a long time so it was worth spending the extra hour each night to put it in my journal.

Hammock session watching the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee while we stayed in Tiberias.

Now, fast-forward one year. I had meant to type up my notes and distribute them to my pilgrimage group but I only got about halfway through my notebook before it got lost in the shuffle of life. Also, I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time reflecting on the trip since our plane touched down back in Boston last year; I had some thoughts here and there but no serious time was spent reflecting on what happened and what I thought about all of it. So I figured that my meditation month would be a great way to revisit and relive that experience. Luckily, two of my meditation days were up in New Hampshire.

A sunny summer day at the Tufts Mountain Club's Loj, a pretty ideal place to meditate and reflect on my trip to Israel.

Another sunny day in New Hampshire. The bank of the Pemigewassett River was a pretty ideal place to meditate.

I decided that I would spend 1/2 hour meditating each day by reading one day’s journal entry from Israel and then meditating on the time/place/smells/people/knowledge/etc in that entry. Last week I did some hour-long meditations but that seemed a bit aggressive and it was a real struggle, both to stay focused and I started to get pains in my knees and ankles from sitting cross-legged for that long. The half-hour sessions were perfect, just enough time to get into some deep thought without having to stay focused for a full hour. Also it was easier to fit it into my daily routine. Here’s a glimpse at where my mind was over the past week:

Meditation 1 – Traveling to Israel and Visiting Calvary. It took us about a full day to fly to Israel and even in my meditation I could remember the sights, smells, and initial reactions I had when I stepped foot in the old part of Jerusalem. We stayed in the old city near the Church of the Holy Seplechre where it is believed Calvary was (i.e. where Jesus was crucified)
The Church of the Holy Seplechre down the street from our hotel, it was built around Calvary where Jesus was Crucified.

Meditation 2 - Bethlehem. Again we went back to the site of Calvary early in the morning, this turned into a daily occurrence because it was so close to where we were staying. Then we spent the whole day in Bethlehem which was my first time that I caught a real glimpse at what is meant by Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bethlehem is an Israeli city but it is located in Palestine. As an Israeli male in Bethlehem you cannot go in or out without a Palestinian passport (except tour groups apparently), thus the unemployment rate is 70% and there’s a large drug/alcohol/crime problem within the city
Me hanging out on a roof in Bethlehem.

Meditation 3 – The Temple Mount, Mount Zion, and the Pools of Bethesda.We got a lot of history on this day from our tour guide (thanks George!). One image that stuck in my mind was that during those days at passover, 250,000 sheep would be slaughtered (one for each family) as a sacrifice for their sins. The blood was channeled into the Kidron Valley. This image stuck in my mind as I remember being in the Kidron Valley and wondering what it would look like (and smell like) to have the blood of a quarter million sheep running through it. Also, it looked like there could be some rock climbing there as well (return trip?)
The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, where the Muslims believe that Mohammed ascended into Heaven.

Meditation 4 – Bethany, Mount of Temptation, Jericho, and Tiberias. On this day I renewed my baptism in the Jordan River, rode a camel, and saw some nomads. More importantly, I started to better understand some of the New Testament stories like the Good Samaritan and Lazarus coming back from the dead on the 4th day. They are stories you hear constantly if you’ve grown up in the church, but actually being in some of these places with someone who is very knowledgeable about religion and history it helps the stories become very real, amazing really.
The tomb of Lazarus in Bethany.

Meditation 5 - Today I honestly forgot to meditate. I woke up late-ish for work, worked, went on a lunch-time bike ride with some guys at work, worked again, went home with enough time to shovel a PB&J into my mouth and then headed to the climbing gym. I didn’t get home until about 10:30pm at which point I ate some food, showered, talked to Sarah on the phone for a few minutes, and then passed out. It was a great day with good friends and good exercise but I failed on the meditation piece which was the whole point of this month: slow down and spend some time in my own mind.
Meditation 6 – Magdala, Cana, and Nazareth. This was the day I realized that in order to really experience Israel I had to live here for at least 6 months. The amount of information and stimuli was too much to really soak in within the timeframe we had. Again it was another day full of history and visiting key areas from the New Testament. One aspect I spent a lot of time meditating on was when we visited a church built by Pope John Paul II (the first pope in the past 200 years to visit the holy land, wow) which featured mosaics of Mary and Jesus from each country of the world. The idea was to portray that everyone was welcome here to this church in Israel no matter where you came from. It was interesting to see a Chinese or African Jesus, when in fact he was an Aramaic Jew. The United States had a particularly awful piece of art, not only was it not a mosaic like everyone else, it made Mary look like the white witch from Narnia
A mosaic done by the Chinese of their depiction of Mary and Jesus.

This is the U.S. rendition of Mary and Jesus, not only is there no Jesus, Mary looks like the witch from Narnia, ugh, really guys?

Meditation 7 – Capernaum and the Mount of Beatitudes. This day was cool because we got to ride a “Jesus Boat” across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum where Jesus did most of his adult teachings and healings. We then spent some time meditating (of all things) on the Mount of Beatitudes. It was an amazing day and the trip was only half-over at this point.

The Temple in Capernaum where Jesus spent most of his time teaching, basically the 3 years before he was condemned to death. It was rebuilt to the exact same specifications by the Byzantines in 300AD, so the real church is about 4 feet below this one

It was amazing how easily reading my journal brought me right back to these places I visited a year ago. If you keep a journal I definitely recommend trying it. Read one of your entries and then spend 20-30 minutes sitting with your eyes closed just going through your memories. What did those events mean to you then, what do they mean to you now, and what might they mean to you in the future? I definitely found value in revisiting these experiences via meditation. I feel like reflecting and meditating on this trip/life experience in Israel was almost as important as going there itself. I don’t know if it’s something I’d do every day but certainly it’s something I think I’ll mix in on a semi-regular basis, especially when I’m outside in nature, I’ve enjoyed those meditation sessions the most.

Next week for me is chakra meditation. I’m not sure how much I buy into the concept of aligning your 7 chakras via white light cleansing energy but I’m always interested in trying new things and having new experiences. We’ll see how it goes, wish me luck.