Ooooo…I See Colors!

Well, I can’t say I fell off the meditation wagon, but I took another “break” from Yoga Journal’s 28 Days of Meditation.  I don’t know why I am so balky about this but I went and looked at the notes from the last few days I did it. I seemed to be having trouble with the breathing exercise in that week’s recording and I was puzzled by the lack of energy, which the speaker on the audio file says I should feel at the end.

I also ran into problems sitting because I don’t like sitting in my desk chair to meditate and my headphone cords are not long enough to reach the floor. The wifi on my laptop is not working or I could find a more comfortable seat.

(Photo by Ivan Prole.)

The breathing exercise that week involved inhaling; pausing, inhaling, pausing, inhaling, pausing and then a long exhale. This actually hurt my upper chest. (I have a touch of arthritis there.) This exercise has since resurfaced in my yoga practice, so hopefully I will get over it soon. Though, the breath work I did during the first couple of weeks is very simple and I find myself using it in daily life and during other meditation.

And, yes, I think I’ve found a way of meditation practice that works for me. I intend to finish the Yoga Journal email workshop because I’ve learned so much from it already, but I now realize that it takes a lot of concentration and intellectual work for me to do the meditations in the series. I realize that now I have to “Keep it simple”.

One stressful night recently I was seeking the comfort of meditation but I didn’t want to do all of that work. So, I busted out a Rodney Yee AM/PM meditation DVD and put it on my bedroom TV, where I can sit cross-legged in bed. I skipped over the yoga part, since I had already done my regular practice for the evening and just listened, but I used the simple breathing I learned from the Yoga Journal series. This was very relaxing for me and I have been doing this often over the past couple of weeks and has helped me get to sleep after a long day of stress. I’ve even ordered some other guided meditation DVDs.

One thing that interested and surprised me is that I experience the odd area between sleep and waking. I only had this in meditation once before in my life, when I took a restorative yoga class and the teacher led us through an hour long guided meditation. I was delighted to see unusual and very colorful images as I got deeper into meditation. My favorite was the time I started to visualize that I was traveling down a dirt country road in Virginia. I don’t even know if this road exists, but it was cool. I really like this part of meditation and I hope to do this more often. AS an artist, I find the visual image fascinating and I am amazed at what my own mind comes up with when I relinquish control over it.

I have to tell you, this impressed the heck out of my boyfriend. He spent most of his adult life using drugs to achieve the same thing. Interestingly, seeing colorful imagery is part of his "Why people should do drugs" argument. He thinks that, as an artist, I'd get something out of it. He also maintains that I am "terribly sheltered" because I never did drugs. But hey--both of my parents were alcoholics and I had to deal with lots of behavior that was inappropriate around children. Because of what I've seen, I have no desire to get drunk or stoned.