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Being brave
lobster
Crusty Veteran
in Meditation
Being brave in the face of fear has many forms. For example before a game of rugby . . .
Bravery rituals exist in martial arts, I still occasionally do the sanchin kata, which I have been taught in Kempo and tai chi styles.
This morning feeling fearful (too much strong coffee). I found during a body scan pre meditation, a hardness in the liver, which I relaxed. Fear gone.
Anything you use?
2
Comments
I breathe and sit. I just breathe, and sit, and bring myself into the moment, because the current moment holds nothing for me to fear.
I practised Qi Gong (Hell, I taught it for a long time) and I have shamefully allowed that practice to pass. I will have to remedy that....
Thank you soooo much, @lobster!!!!! I adooooore rugbiers. Rugbiers are my doom and my perdition, with the All Blacks and the maori ritual at the top of my list. :clap:
You lit up my day!!! More testosterone, please!! Keep it coming!!
Edit: Second time I watch it and it gets better every time. I can predict a long morning in front of the computer :thumbsup:
Kia Ora,
They start young....
Metta Shoshin
)
Being brave for me (when I am able) is allowing fear it's own birth, life and death without trying to squash it down or usher along to somewhere else.
Thanks guys,
Too much of a wuss to take the @how route . . .
I'll take the proactive path.
Violent sport such rugby and the more cerebral 'blow their heads off' computer games are one way to excite the aggressive penchant. Or watching staged media based conflict.
This is hard wired in the biological.
Would you have one of these Buddha Babes on your shrine?
Bravery is useful and may be necessary when one needs to see clearly, but may also just be a natural quality as with kindness, for those further in the path.
@lobster That is a Garuda doing a Dragon Stance (as from the 8 golden moves kata for instance)! Cool. Where did you get it?
I have realised that I have a serious problem with grinding my teeth. I thought it would be easy peasy just notice and relax thing. (Not because I am naive but because I have successfully battled of tinitus at several occasions and even got rid of this kind of tension before).
But now the more I notice the more occasions of grinding I realise. The scale of it is staggering. And normally I just do relaxing and a forcefull assertions before falling asleep to end doing stuff while asleep. (learned the techunique that when I was 5 to stop peeing in bed
) .
But this time it is not helping at all. The trouble is I do have had a lot of stress lately and my mind is totally at peace with it. It is my body that is acting up.
I have up till now always viewed the body and mind as the same...
Strange. I feel like I am missing something vital here...
/Victor
@Victorious, accepting something is bad for us, mentally, does not always stop us being attracted to it, physically.
Your mind knows it's bad. Your body still has to make that connection; and if your BODY releases tension and stress, this way, then that's your body's method. Your Mind is one thing. That's actually not to difficult, to get it to acquiesce; convincing the body it's a good thing to give up, is more difficult - if a replacement isn't found.
What can you find that might convince the body to quit bruxism and focus on another outlet?
Your body and your mind are two aspects of the same thing...its for precisely that reason that our bodies ' act' out stress..
Its the body's speech..that person who is disturbing us is ' a pain in the neck '.
That situation which seems intractable ' makes us sick to our stomach '.
That unresolved stress ' grinds us down '.
We are not vaporous spirits imprisoned in flesh..we are a whole.
Body and mind arise together , always changing. Always interacting.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has always known this, and taught this.
When I did my course on Shiatsu, I think I learnt more in those three years, about what extraordinary things human beings are, than I had ever learnt before.
And am still learning.
@Citta and @federica
I have tried to consider the mind and body as one but obviously there are processes in the body that I am not concious about (duh). And goes even deeper than the unconcious parts that I can do something about.
It seems I must either try to become concious of these processes or start seperating mind and body in my attempts to get somewhere.
In any case thanks for the feedback.
I too am still learning.
.
/Victor
One strategy that many find successful @Victorious is to concentrate on one bodily process.
The most common , because it has a pedigree that goes back to Shakyamuni Buddha and is extremely convenient, is to use the breath.
The idea is not to become conscious of each bodily process...the idea is to develop one-pointedness of mind.
The result of that onepointedness is ( over time ) to integrate the skandhas..bodily, psychological and emotional. This does not happen piecemeal . but is a result and fruit of onepointedness.
@Victorious I just listened to TNH speaking about meditation. He was talking about xraying your body with mindfulness.
Start at the head and work your way down, noticing any tensions. Also to thank your body for being so amazing!
He said your heart works without sleep everyday to keep you alive. Be kind to it and loving.
Massages are great to release trigger points that hold stress. Deep tissue!
Go well my brother!
The thoughts you choose to put into your head can deeply affect your body.
Dr Zachary Bercovitz said "Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds."
This is true. on a much milder level, when I talked some workshop attendees through a visualisation during which, at one point, they all had to imagine sucking a lemon, they all reported afterwards that their mouths began to water at the mere thought of it.
With one notable exception: one lady didn't like lemons, so she visualised a Terry's Chocolate Orange.
Needless to say, the instruction didn't work with her.
It raised a few groans at the time, when she related her experience, but it's proof positive that where your Mind goes, therein goes the Energy too....
Thank you everyone for the input. Just to make things clear. I do breath meditation and have done for a long time. I have also done body meditation for some time and I have moved on to noticing the mental processes. Even in daily life and not only in sitting meditation.
I have also practiced the standing pole of Itchuan which is related to qi gong, tai chi and bhagva and learned to fokus the energy of the body/mind with, if I may say so, some success.
That which is bothers me to no end is that I thought I had better tabs on the processess both of body and mind. This is really a annoying weakness that I have encountered. I just cannot get a grip on the root of the problem. chances are its in totally another place than I imagine.
But now I have some more "keys" to use. Thanks.
Obviously it is related to the stress I am experiencing but ...how? Dont worry I will crack it.
.
Sorry for hogging the thread. @lobster. Just goes to prove were my mind is right now.
.
Lets get back to the Issue of Being Brave.
/Victor
@Victorious, the Garuda was either guarding the Buddhas supper or found on the Internet . . .
.
The mind/body/emotions and eventually field of awareness are one . . . physical relaxation as you know makes one a more able combatant. Eventually you can stop mad elephants in their track by a calm being. One of the Buddha attributes.
The aggressive teeth grinding, you are aware of.
Something like this might be helpful?
http://www.promatcher.com/articles/How-to-Get-Rid-of-Stress-and-Tension-With-a-Self-Face-Massage-1842
Just hogging the thread again to say I solved it. Most patterns are easier to break when substituted with something else. I worked at it the entire weekend and finally managed to substitute the closed tight jaw for a slightly open one. That also solved another problem that I or rather my partner has, snoring! :clap: .
@lobster I am incorporating it into my budostance. I am a little divided on that since in confrontation the jaw should be closed tight. But I am guessing that that is where it is coming from in the first place.
Since my body feels the stress and I have adopted an aggressive strategy to handle it the body goes into a fighting stance and clenches the jaw...too tight.
Maybe if I keep a closed but relaxed jaw...hmm. Might have to work more on this.
Thanks everyone!
/Victor
So, basically, you did precisely what I told you to do....
Well done, good job..!
.
(I'm glad you've found something to counter-act it....)
Sounds like a plan. Non snoring, result. :clap: .
I always do what I am told mam.
.
But seriously thanks everyone. I did try several of your suggestions. The problem was since it was in my budo stance the issue was within my cultivation. What a backstabber. No wonder I couldnt find the root when I was looking in the wrong place!
You always find something in the last place you look.
so always look there first..... :crazy: .
... and while trying to relax I only made it worse! Since I relax into my budostance...
Have you had this kind of problem? When trying to relax tension to relive stress/fear it gets worse?
In my case it was because I had actively worked fear into my cultivation. Bad Victor...
/Victor
Yes indeed.
There are degrees of opening to the fearless component of being. The lowest recognisable form of bravery is confrontational in its nature. People may be afraid of ignorance, fear, pain, life, death, dharma, clowns, sangha but mostly their own mind. So this we challenge as it arises.
Later on these issues become more subtle and we may find we have to bravely fulfil a capacity to not confront but allow transmutation to occur. @how touched on the personal practice nature of this component.
One day we find ourselves picnicking in the hell realms. As we look around at the ferocious masks of the demons in Huhuva, we realise underneath are the fearless faces of Buddhas . . .