5 things I’ve learned about meditation

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

Ommmm.

Just last post I was whining about meditation and how my erstwhile suitor always jettisons me after a torrid courtship. He’s a fickle sort, my tormentor, but he seems to have settled in for the long haul this time around. What happened? you ask. Wish I knew.

All I know is that a month ago, my husband and I were thrust into a chaotic situation in dealing with my mother-in-law’s medical treatments after her stroke. We’d thought she’d been recovering, but the truth was something far worse than we’d guessed. Suffice to say, a thousand miles from home and sanity, both of us came unraveled. And, somehow, in the unraveling, I finally found what everyone else in the universe finds in meditation.

For the first time in the months I’d been floundering and flailing, I actually found a moment’s peace. Everything went quiet, and just for the five minutes of guided meditation, I was still and in myself fully. Maybe all of the pain had finally set me up for a breakthrough, or maybe I was having a breakdown. Either way, meditation has been almost easy ever since.

You’ll note the almost. Meditation is a discipline, and when you’re a space cadet like yours truly, discipline isn’t something that will ever feel fully natural. Here are a few things I’ve learned in the process:

1. The time to begin meditating is before you truly need it.

Your breath is coming harsh in your lungs. Bands tighten across your chest when you try to inhale. Your thoughts circle in your skull, around and around, racing the Indy 500. You think, “I should learn to meditate.”

That was me, trying to head off editing’s anal madness. And it was the wrong time. When you sit and observe your breath when you can’t actually breathe, you create a feedback loop that just intensifies your anxiety as your ever-shallower breaths turn into soup in your lungs. And then you panic.

If you’re not currently anxious, start meditating now, so you have a coping tool when the tough times hit. Meditation can be a valuable tool for easing anxiety if you’ve sharpened your skills before it takes hold.

2. Don’t feel stuck with your current form of meditation if it isn’t working for you.

When you’re anxious, you don’t want to focus on mindful breathing. A body scan or chanting a mantra might be more effective. When you’re feeling furious, you probably don’t want to focus on unconditional love (metta). Instead, perhaps, mindful breathing might work better. When you’re feeling jumpy and overwhelmed, you might not feel comfortable sitting. Maybe a moving meditation or yoga might be more helpful.

If you’re having issues with a particular type of meditation, maybe you shouldn’t keep forcing yourself to practice. Keep an open mind and be willing to try something new.

3. Start slowly and if that’s too fast, take it even slower.

You’ve probably read what I have—that you should aim for twenty minutes of meditation a day. Even the wimpiest meditation trainers I’ve found on Google Play start at five minutes per session before jacking you up to ten minutes within a couple of weeks.

That’s too fast. It definitely was for me. Five minutes of observational breathing to someone completely untrained feels like five centuries.

Scale back. A lot.

In the heart of my most anxious moments, I found two minutes to be almost more than I could handle. Even then, I had to baby myself by keeping my eyes open—closed brought me panic attacks—and by watching a timer visually count down on my tablet as I counted my breaths.

Two minutes of extremely controlled, deep breathing actually relaxed me. It was the first time “meditation” actually felt like it was supposed to.

4. If you’re learning how to practice from a book, make sure the program style fits your personality.

I think I wrote about my joys in dealing with Meditation for Your Life: Creating a Plan that Suits Your Style by Robert Butera. I thought, “Bingo!” Most things don’t suit my style because I’m weird. This book didn’t either, despite its five-star rating on Amazon. It’s one of those, “make your entire life revolve around meditation” books, delving into every irrelevant aspect of your existence. Maybe the process works for some, but for me, well…

I really hate wasting time. Time dredging up endless past emotions just to be told, “The only thing that works is trial and error.” I’m not bitter. Really.

I’ve personally had better luck with 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. by Victor Davich. It’s a straightforward, breezy look at meditation, introducing a progressively more difficult form of meditation for each of the eight weeks of the program. I’m finding its deceptive simplicity almost profound and a hell of a lot easier to deal with. I’m on Week 5 of the program, “Gracious Declining,” and I’m finding I’m a lot more focused these days.

You might not, however. You might like Butera’s book, or (in my view) the surprisingly obtuse Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana. Or the classic, but very mystical, Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

If the book you’re reading and practicing from isn’t working, dump it quickly and move on to whatever suits you the best, otherwise all you’ll court is frustration.

5. Find your proper time of day to meditate.

This is, I think, the real biggie. I was meditating midday and wondered why I kept falling asleep late in the afternoon. Meditating at the wrong time can be more destructive to your energy levels than not meditating at all.

Davich, in 8 Minute Meditation, recommends meditating either when you first wake up before your morning coffee, or before you go to bed. I’ve started meditating an hour or two before I go to sleep, and suddenly, the meditational energy drain is gone. I also sleep better because my mind has stopped racing.

That doesn’t mean either of those times will be better for you. Experiment. Maybe you’ll be better off taking a few deep breaths during your lunch break or after you get off work. Just like any other aspect of meditation, timing can be equally important to your success or failure.

I hope a few of these tips might make your journey into the deeper realms of consciousness a little more bearable than mine. Good luck!

Misadventures in Meditation

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

Aren’t I pretty? I’ll eat your soul alive!

Meditation and yours truly have a long, ongoing flirtation. Over the last decade, I’ve winked and twisted my hair at my fleeting suitor and sometimes he winks back. Mostly, though, he uses me in a torrid fling and then casts me aside like yesterday’s garbage. And then I weep silently until I summon the courage in another few years to give him another try.

Not this time! This time, I’m going to conquer him! I’m going to be the one who uses him. I’m going to wring every last positive benefit from his fickle carcass and then I’m going to use him again. Or so I’m telling myself.

Until I can master him, I’m going to console myself by telling my tale.

First Courtship

Meditation and I met each other a decade ago when I ended up in another brief affair with a yoga studio in Berkeley. That flirtation was rather dull, aside from a Ganesh puja I participated in (awesome!), but the meditation class I signed up for wasn’t. What it was could only be described as difficult. Really difficult, in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I whipped out my checkbook.

The first basic tenet of meditating is that you should be silent. Unless, of course, you’re chanting. This is usually a no-brainer. Words aren’t things I utter unless I’m around people, and even then, unless I’m discussing ideas or something of vague interest, I tend to keep them to myself unless I’m debating myself in the shower. Except meditational silence isn’t the kind I’m used to maintaining. It’s a mental silence. It’s a place where thoughts flit by like little chirping birds, or drift serenely like clouds. Just a blip and then quiet.

That isn’t my brain. Not by a long shot.

Still, after trying a number of techniques over the six weeks, which, coincidentally enough, were the last few before I got married, I sensed the mind’s true depth.

I can’t remember much about the meditation itself. It must have been guided, and I must have been sitting in a chair, because I could never do the cross-legged thing for the two hours the class lasted. All I know was that the layers of my mind peeled aside like an onion as I delved deeper. Emotions went away first, then all of the random minutiae of the complete life change ahead of me. Then went my sense of the universe, my intuition. After that, I arrived at the core.

We were supposed to sit and observe that core without judging, in complete mental silence, and to tell the class about the image we received once we emerged. Mine was a lone scientist alternating between a telescope and a microscope. I knew her by name.

“She’s the unbiased observer,” I said.

I got a few profound nods in acknowledgement. Sweet, I finally mastered meditation! I thought. And then I got married and forgot all about breathing and peeling away layers of thought and listening to other people chant in the presence of harmoniums.

Besides, I’d mastered meditation.

The Fourteen Day Twenty-One Day Challenge

Flash forward eight years. Things aren’t going so well outside of the marriage department. I’m trying to wrestle with the emotional wreckage of a couple of disastrous failures, and I’m drowning in a sea of emotion. I’m dealing as best I can. I’ve started practicing yoga, but only the DVD variety. I browse to Huffington Post’s GPS for the Soul which I’ve taken to reading. It’s of dubious use, usually, but sometimes there’s something good.

This time it was an ad for Deepak Chopra’s 21-Day Meditation Challenge that caught my eye. It was free. And only 21 days. I could do that with one eye tied behind my back.

Right.

It started off well enough. I sat down and listened to the introduction. I breathed and chanted “So hum” to myself with every inhalation. The music was pretty, a nice mix of sitar and New Age synth. You know, one of my favorite things to listen to. The voice was soothing. I opened my eyes at the end of the twelve minutes oddly relaxed. Then I did it again. And again.

And then came the journey. See, I’d started the challenge thinking I was going to relax and quiet my mind. To embrace the oneness of self and universe, and to flow with the currents of possibility. To find the place beyond anxiety and pain. Except, meditation number 7 was all about delving back into crap, and dredging up random traumas in all their full detail. The kind of traumas that really aren’t, but sometimes come to mind and then go away after a few seconds of emotionless pondering.

My instigator floated on a cloud next to my serenely speeding cloud in the crystalline blue sky. Who was it? I hadn’t thought of him in years. I hadn’t needed to.

What did (s)he do to you? Write this person a letter, and read it aloud to them as you float along side by side, said my tormenting guide.

I wrote the letter. I read it aloud. As the guide of my vision spoke, I set the letter on fire and told my long-forgotten ex, “I forgive you.”

Except I hadn’t. I didn’t care enough to forgive because I’d already mostly forgotten. I spent the rest of the evening in a funk, because all the details of all the years-ago pain came back. Thanks, Deepak!

The next seven days, I listened to a bunch of chant mp3s and mentally repeated “So hum,” as I inhaled and exhaled. The irritation never quite left, and meditation’s unpleasant house-guest came for a long, exhausting stay.

The Fourteen Day Slump

Meditation’s a crappy janitor. His loud guest, Mr. Energy-Slurping Shop Vac, takes control of his flaky steerage and sucks the wrong things from my head. I’m supposed to lose the anxiety and stress of life, not what limited energy I have left. Instead, anxiety hides away from the Shop Vac of Slumber, lodging itself permanently in my chest, and my worst thoughts run wild. My will takes a deep nose-dive, and alertness gets sucked away into meditation’s voracious gut.

Yep, I’m talking about the 14-day sleepies.

I was relaxed early in the process, and the good inner peace sort of relaxation. I was harmony, I was flow, I was serenity. And then I was asleep from the eighth day on. Ten hours a night, and two more hours during the day. My waking hours were dulled and lifeless, and when I did manage to have a slight energy peak–VZZZZZZH!–the Shop Vac would suck it away.

On day fifteen, I told myself, “Enough!” and I quit.

And my sleep went back to normal.

ConZentrate! The Game is On!

Another year went by. Stuff happened, both good and bad. And then, suddenly, my mother-in-law had a major catastrophe: a heart attack and then a stroke that left her paralyzed on the left side. I haven’t been able to relax since April.

What better to blunt the edges of constant anxiety and grief than meditation, right? My suitor began another seduction attempt. I’ll help you control your emotions! I’ll help you master your thoughts! I’ll help you relax!

By making me sleep my life away? I asked him.

I knew his mischievous grin too well and that I was going to give in to his false charms.

This time, I was armed. I was going to take meditation slow and steady. I was going to start out by searching out an app with a timer. I was going to progress slowly. I was going to enjoy the process, dammit! I was going to level up!

Dharma Meditation Trainer promised a good start in gamifying meditation. I made it to level 2, then three, and then four. I breathed mindfully and allowed thoughts to drift through me as I returned to my breath. I was Zen incarnate as I waited for the chime to go off, patiently. I was peaceful, I was bored for ever longer periods. I wanted to shoot myself.

I started napping again after fourteen days. VZZZZZZH! The Shop Vac slurped out the last of my energy.

Then I thought, “I love games! I love leveling up my Steam profile—maybe I can find some way to gain achievements!”

I started ConZentrating. I got new balls. I unlocked new chants. New backgrounds for the bouncy ball that my eyes followed for five minutes at a time. Ommmm! Then, I figured with all my achievements, I could go back to the Dharma Meditation Trainer and exploit the tiredness so I could sleep again at night.

I did five minutes of bouncy ball focus just after having coffee and five-then-six-then-seven minutes of boring breathing before I went to bed.

I made it to a solid month with both. My will to live joined my energy in the Shop Vac’s guts. My creativity was starting to follow.

You won’t win, Meditation! There are lots of different forms of you I can try! With this in my head, I browsed every New Age bookstore I could find. I came across a book that sounded promising: Meditation for Your Life: Creating a Plan that Suits Your Style by Robert Butera. Well, personality influences everything else, so why not meditation?

The book was packed with questions. Exercises. Introspecting on things that really don’t require thinking about. Lots and lots of journaling. But the goal was simple: to find a form of meditation that wouldn’t suck my life away. So I did them. I delved into things that should be un-delveable. I drew stupid pictures of stick figure me and drew circles around the stick figure and wrote out everything I liked and disliked. I put in a huge amount of effort over the space of three weeks and filled pages and pages with pointless emo wankery, all in the interests of finding the type of meditation that wouldn’t kill me.

Finally, I’d had it. I read ahead, and made it to the Sentence of Doom.

The only solution is old-fashioned trial and error.

Yes, I’d just wasted weeks for nothing. I’d lost. Meditation had won. I’d been mastered.

A Labyrinthine Problem

Well, back to the drawing board. I quit my ConZentrating and my Dharma Training. My energy returned. I found a blog post somewhere suggesting that guided meditation might be the solution to getting out of my head for a few minutes a day. I found The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers by Mark David Gerson. They were pretty relaxing and focused. I’ve made a little peace with my inner critic but haven’t rediscovered my missing deep relaxation.

I’d always been vaguely intrigued by labyrinths. Something about staring into the pictures I’d seen sent me spiraling off into my inner universe and I’d read about the inner tranquility legions had achieved by tracing their convoluted paths. Besides, walking a labyrinth just once couldn’t hurt, could it?

According to Labyrinthlocator.com, my area is lousy with them. In fact, there are two or three within ten minutes of me.

Some labyrinths are inlaid tiles. Some are paved stones set within dirt. Some are spirals of paint on concrete. Guess which one I ended up trying today?

It was striking. If I stared into the heart, my mind would whirl as I tried to trace a mental course. I’d never thought white paint upon red concrete could be beautiful, but this was. Even though traffic sputtered by just a few feet away, I could almost feel the tranquility calling me within.

Yes, walk with me, meditation whispered. Bask in my promise!

I should have walked away right then.

But I walked. I watched every step as I made my way around the narrow tracks. I switched forward, I switchedback. I spiraled. I kept my feet within the confines of the lines, just wide enough for a man’s single footfall, and I had to pay attention to my balance to keep myself from toppling over during the narrow turns. It must have taken me ten minutes to reach the center, a mere five steps away from the entrance.

I didn’t feel any more Zen, even though the labyrinth was surrounded by a high bush and a stand of trees that rustled in the gentle breeze. The sun was shining, and tiny clouds scudded across the brilliant sky. I should have felt myself slip into the inner relaxed state I used to achieve effortlessly only a few months ago.

I should have walked away.

Instead, I reversed course, trying to figure out if I’d actually skirted the center boundaries. I couldn’t remember doing it. My mind tried to plot the next turn, and the following turn on the way out. I twisted and turned again. I almost left when I finally reached the exit.

That’s it? I thought. I had a second chance to walk away. How many times are you supposed to walk through a labyrinth anyway?

Instead, I did it all over again. And reversed course again. This time, I could see where I went through the near-center points. My feet were a little surer, but my mind wasn’t. I wasn’t clean or clear. Instead, I wanted to yawn.

Meditation had returned with Mr. Energy-Slurping Shop Vac, and both were determined to make me lose my zest for life.

I drove home. Then I slept for an hour, the VZZZZH! loud in my ears.

I hate labyrinths, I really do. That was the only insight to come out of this afternoon’s meanderings. Labyrinths are convoluted, tangled. They’re as twisty-turny as life is, but unlike life, which is an infinite array of choices spread out before you, there’s only one true course ahead of you. And only one way out, if you’re to honor the experience properly. I really hate that. Life is possibility. Life is change. Life is a universe of potential. Labyrinths are a deliberate restriction, a single pointless path into a center of nothing. A false universe.

And they’re boring, unless you’re contemplating them from a photo.

And where does that leave me?

Dunno. Am trying some binaural beats, and I’ll maybe do a guided visualization or two. I’ll shake hands with my inner critic a few more times and say hello to my muse.

And then I’ll get a massage. Then do a yoga class. And feel the axé in my next roda.

7 Things I Learned after Two Months of Cooking

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

I wish our pans were this new!

It’s been about two months since my cooking “experiment” began, and if I’d used that as a goal, I’d have managed a moderate success. What I wasn’t prepared for was to actually learn something more than cooking mechanics from the process. Cooking is life in its simplest form: order, chaos, alchemy, and human bonding, all set in a kitchen. Or, in short, cooking enhances life in unusual ways.

1. Cooking with your nearest and dearest deepens your relationship.

I’d always thought this was nonsense: maybe our bored cavemen ancestors used to bond over cooking, but that was only because there weren’t many intellectual possibilities to keep them better occupied.

When I first started the experiment, I’d intended to be the one who suffered, since I was the one who was pickiest and the larger source of the food problems we’d been having. Instead, two weeks into the process, my husband insisted on being a part of it.

“It’s not fair for you to do all the work,” he said. Awww!

I’m now the “executive chef,” and he’s the chopper, which works perfectly. While he chops and I sequence, prioritize and handle the stove-stuff, we talk about just about everything in under the sun. When we’re waiting for a piece of chicken to sear on one side, we hug and laugh. Kitchen time is actually almost fun!

2. Two sets of hands make grocery shopping easier.

This one actually surprised me. I’d always dreaded shopping with my husband, since he’s got a lot of the “explorer” in him. “What’s that?” he’d say, looking at the bottom shelf of what I consider an irrelevant aisle, while I’d want to scout ahead and get all of our items as fast as possible.

With a good, plentiful list, on the other hand, he gets to explore, and I get to chart the most efficient course through the store. He manages the cart, gives me a second set of sharper eyes on the items, and I don’t have to fumble with my list-and-cart-and-grocery klutziness.

3. You really do need good knives—or at least adequate knives.

I just picked up a new set after getting sick of dealing with my existing crap set not actually cutting what I tried to slice. Apparently, finger flesh penetration isn’t a reliable test for knife “goodness.” I’m not sure if my new set is actually good, but it’s definitely better, and cuts down on chopping time by a minute or two per item.

4. Cooking can enhance on-the-fly creativity, even if you’re totally clueless.

Or, maybe, especially if you’re clueless. Hate the smell of buttermilk? Half and half doesn’t reek and adds a similar heartiness. Can’t stand cilantro? In Indian-ish and Vietnamese-ish and Thai-ish dishes, a little mint adds a lot of fun. Don’t have enough cutting surfaces? A frying pan works just as well. Once you’ve gotten the knack of creative improvisation, you’ll find endless opportunities to use it when you’re not cooking.

5. Cooking brings out your hidden talents and enforces your strengths.

I never realized until I started cooking that I’m a decent delegator, a good prioritizer, and competent “scheduler.” When you’re juggling three different dishes from a dual-recipe deal, and you’re trying to coordinate both you and your husband’s activities, you need a solid sense of the flow of the activity. You need to be able to say, “Chop this first. Measure this next,” to both yourself and the person you’re cooking with after interpreting the sometimes cryptic recipe instructions. You need to create systems in the course of the process of the recipe, or to harden your logistical sense. In the process, you learn to appreciate those unexpressed aspects of your personality all the more.

6. There is value in stillness, in settling, in waiting.

Some things taste better the next day, after they’ve chilled and relaxed in the fridge.

Take, for example, some vegetarian enchiladas my husband and I made. We were both cursing and champing at the bit, hungry because the recipe was surprisingly time-consuming and a lot of hard work. Then we had to wait another twenty-five minutes as the enchiladas baked in the stove. And another five for them to sit and cool down. The tomato-cream sauce tasted decent the first day, but after a nice overnight wait, the leftovers tasted heavenly. The sauce and the filling, left to settle, had blended into a completely different whole. The epitome of enchilada-ness, if you will.

Usually, when I do anything, I aim to eliminate the stalling, the gridlock and the periods of idleness in the name of efficiency and progress. But sometimes, those moments are when magic and potentiality truly happen. In between writing periods, the stillness of meditation creates a vision, and the vision becomes a scene. A stray abandoned line of dialog becomes a character’s major turning point.

7. You can make almost anything if you have the right instructions.

That killer green curry you had last night at your favorite Thai restaurant was orgasmic, wasn’t it? You can make it! How about that chicken tikka masala that made you and your significant other drool? You can make that too! How about a bookcase? Quite possibly, so why not try?

After a few recipes, you gain a sense of what makes something taste decent. You’ve grokked the inner logic of cooking, and you’ve begun to make sense of its operating principles. By quickly skimming a recipe’s ingredients and instructions, you can begin figure out whether it’s worthwhile. This same skill help you extrapolate whether a crafting recipe is going to be a waste of time.

The Building Mentality

Perhaps the largest lesson I’ve learned is to appreciate the allure of the Building mentality. I’m talking about the urge many people have to make physical, tangible objects. That’s never been a huge personal priority: my models tend to be purely mental and internal. Crafting has been something I’ve done for very short spates of time, whenever a rare, random urge hits me.

There’s just something, though, about seeing your creation come to life after slicing and dicing and simmering and sautéing. And then eating it and not actually vomiting, though we did have a close call with some shrimp a couple of weeks ago. (Warning: always boil your “cooked” jumbo shrimp for a minute or two. Don’t trust the store!) You can actually point to something and say, “I made this!” You can’t do the same thing with Word document, even if said document is a novel and required a billion times more work.

So, cook! And enjoy!

The Mysterious Psoas– How Working with this Hidden Muscle Re-ignited My Intuition

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

And, in looking at that title, I’m thinking as you probably are, “What hooey!” Yeah, I understand. Completely. A simple muscle that joins your lower rib to your pelvis shouldn’t have any bearing on your brain’s functionality.

Some people have a very intimate and familiar relationship with their bodies; they understand what it wishes and what it needs. They don’t resent satisfying its demands or disciplining the mind to serve its whims. That hasn’t been me. For most of my life, my body has pretty much been a life-support system for my far more important brain. I’ve felt it as a huge encumbrance that weighs down and limits my intellect: the tether at the end of the balloon string that’s attached to a giant block of cement.

The body that cages the mind

About eight months ago, I drowned in the depths of a deep depression whose root cause I won’t discuss just yet (maybe later). I could barely move, and when I forced myself to take walks with my husband, he’d glare at me when I asked him to slow down. I didn’t understand what was happening to me; my feet had always seemed to move at the same speed, and so far as I could tell, he was the one always speeding up. Strange, that change! I’d always been the faster walker, leaving him to choke on my dust as my long strides took me far, far away. I’d been choking on my own mind’s metaphoric dust for two years.

To say that I was bound up to almost claustrophobic tightness is akin to claiming a mote of dust is the size of the moon. I was beyond that. If I could see beyond my inner nothingness when I woke up, it was a good and rare day. I’d force myself out of bed, but that was about all I could make myself do. My body weighed more than the sun, more than the black hole at the center of my inner universe. My mind had turned to jello, and when I’d walk, my thoughts moved through me more slowly than a snail’s slimy wriggling.

Re-connecting

Finally, something sparked based on some of the best advice I’d ever received.

“You need yoga,” my mother said.

I’d been a yoga dilettante when I was thirty. I’d purchased a full set of Kathy Smith’s New Yoga Basics DVDs and I’d done them sporadically, along with taking the occasional yoga class at my old gym when it wasn’t too crowded. I’d burned out on running with a number of small ankle and Achilles’ tendon injuries, and hadn’t had a good boxing class in a couple of years. I’d enjoyed the workouts, but I’d never enjoyed much more than a cursory sense of grounding or connection from them. The one thing I’d noticed then was that my feet felt strangely rooted to the ground, and I could feel the totality of every phase of every footstep at the end of a practice. Usually, I only feel the full impact of my foot against the ground, if I even pay attention to that much.

I hauled out my DVDs a week or two after my mother’s advice and “practiced.” I managed a couple of days a week, and slowly I noticed my moods improved. I still spent a good half of each day deep in the emptiness, but that was better than a whole day. I started collecting DVDs: Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Beginners, Rodney Yee’s AM PM Yoga for Beginners, etc., etc. I highly recommend his workouts, by the way. I’d almost created a regular practice when I got a real introduction to my mother’s yoga instructor (Nancy’s utterly awesome!) and a new addiction.

Before the addiction came revelation on a warm, but not too hot day in early June of last year. I walked the length of the Oakland side of College Avenue, seeking a little creative boost from the funky clutter-shops and art stores that make the Rockridge area so wonderful. I walked, and for once I felt a breeze moving around me. My hair followed behind as I moved, even though the air itself was still. Not only did it it fall back, but it bounced with my steps. Hunh. I used to bounce when I walked. The movement felt almost natural, but after a few laps from Rockridge BART to Broadway and back again, my calves started screaming from the unfamiliar movement. But it felt good. Really good. I kept bouncing anyway, passing most of my fellow shoppers. I took a short glance into a window, and noticed my strides were long again. I felt the expansion within as I settled into the rhythm of the universe and the flow of all around me. I could feel my inspiration slowly waken, and ideas danced just out of my grasp.

The next day, the smaller strides returned as my muscles ached, and inspiration took a short vacation. I watched my feet in reflections as my stride shrank again. I forced my legs wider as I walked for the next several days, keeping an almost obsessive watch over every footfall. If my steps felt too short, I jammed my foot even more forward before I allowed it to make contact with the ground. Slowly, I could feel creativity awaken, and a little more of the emptiness faded each day. My stride length was a direct reflection of the state of my creative health. My intuition.

In September, I started a real yoga class at my mother’s yoga studio, since the DVDs weren’t quite cutting it anymore. Now I was yoga-ing in a more demanding way with fellow yoga-ees in a wonderful and supportive environment. As winter descended, and the days shortened, I dreaded the return of the blackness. Really, to pretend I was “all better” was kind of ridiculous, but though I wanted to hibernate, the true darkness and emptiness never returned. I’d always surrendered to the season, and my mood had always gone with me, but this time, I didn’t. Well, not completely.

And what about the psoas?

One of the things that we work on most in my yoga classes is core strength from deep within the body’s musculature. We’d talked about the mysterious “soaz” muscle more than once, but I’d never really felt it, even if I’d felt myriad other benefits of a regular practice. Practice had freed my body and had slowly re-integrated my mind with “holistic” me.

After today’s practice, I finally achieved consciousness of my psoas. We’d worked the muscle heavily, including several isolating movements and exercises, but I hadn’t felt it. Maybe it’s better to say that I wasn’t actually aware I’d felt it. The psoas is one of the deeper of the body’s muscles, running behind the abdominals, and most of the yoga poses done to work with it also involve larger surface muscles like the quadriceps and hamstrings. When you’re stretching your legs perpendicular to each other, for example, it’s the thighs and hamstrings that really demand your attention, even if the psoas is doing a fair amount of the work—not surprising if you know the muscle is the thickness of a woman’s wrist.

The muscle’s oddly fascinating in ways your abdominals or your deltoids aren’t. When you cringe at a traumatic memory, Nancy told me, your psoas is the muscle that clenches your at your midsection. When you sit too long at a computer desk writing or surfing the web (guilty! and guilty!), the psoas contracts and shortens, especially after repeated exposure. When you suffer from a long bout of depression, good posture isn’t exactly your first priority. When the world and the emptiness weigh you down, you slouch, as I know all too well from experience. You cringe away from life, and your psoas suffers. If your psoas contracts too much as you age, you lose your ability to stand fully upright, since your back muscles aren’t strong enough to counter the psoas’ pull. This is especially a problem for women.

A supple psoas, she told me, lengthens a runner’s stride, and makes walking easier. Suddenly, I understood why my stride had improved with even a small amount of yoga practice, and the muscle-body relationship came clear. I forced a cringing movement to finally connect to the muscle and felt the contraction behind my abdominals. Oh, that vaguely sick feeling is the psoas protesting! I thought. As the muscle protested, so did my mind; yoga always leaves me vaguely euphoric but the contraction made me feel just a flash of dark emotion. I’d actually felt the muscle before, but I’d never known what it was. I still feel my psoas eight hours later—ouch!

Body and mind – all part of the system that is you.

Certain types of muscle movements change mood, this much seems to be almost scientific fact. Studies have shown that the mere act of smiling can induce happiness, so it’s not much of a stretch to consider that the state of one of the body’s major muscles can have a huge impact on one’s mental state. Movement and exercise are often prescribed to ease depression.

You aren’t just your mind, you’re body as well. You’re the hormones and the muscles, the contractions and expansions that move and support you through the day. That’s been a startling realization for yours truly. Appreciating that connection, and that I can heal it if I’m aware and conscious of my physicality is even more staggering. My body has usually felt like an afterthought except when a sickness forces my mind to halt. Yoga has reversed a little of my obliviousness, though I still have a long way to go. But the journey itself has been wonderful so far.

As Nancy says at the conclusion of every practice, Thank your body, mind, and breath for supporting you every day. Even when your body isn’t at its peak, your bones and muscles support your mind, your thoughts steer you, and your involuntary functions like breath keep you alive. Realizing how much I actually owe my body has made me renew my commitment to care for it.

A few random thoughts

If you’re feeling mentally off-kilter, don’t discount that the source might well be physical.
Appreciate the life and the health that you do have. Be grateful to the parts of you that you don’t usually appreciate. They’re sustaining you. They are you.
If you haven’t tried yoga, give it a shot. Just once.

Namaste.

Goal Setting Experiment Update: Total Failure

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

The failure’s so colossal, I don’t even have an accurate calendar shot… Sorry!

Yes, I failed. And badly. In all ways. I couldn’t even track things properly for a calendar shot. My resolve to use the “Don’t Break the Chain” method, the least onerous version of goal-tracking that exists, failed at the same time my resolution to journal did. I didn’t even have the will to go back and track my “secret” goal after February 4th, the day I last journaled.

State your goal publicly– the journaling failure.

On February 5th, I just didn’t have the will to force myself to write more free-form introspective tripe pulled from my Prompt Box. On February 6th, I just completely forgot, and the 7th, even though I made a mental note to resume my journaling practice, I never got around to it. By the 8th, I’d just completely given up and had no desire to resume the next week. I’d like to use my two-week long bout with the flu as an excuse for not resuming on February 11th, but really, I just didn’t want to.

I found myself avoiding blogging completely the week of the 18th because I didn’t want to admit my failure. So, not only did I fail, but I procrastinated on admitting said failure. Kind of pathetic if you think about it.

Secret goal failure — not really a failure. More a postponement.

I actually was successful at my more secret goal. I kept up the practice until Saturday, February 9, even if I didn’t “track” it. I exercised four times that week, and only when Saturday’s extremely strenuous workout made me succumb to the flu with only three hours’ advance warning did I temporarily give up. Still, the buildup and the prior workouts left me addicted to exercise, and I ended up suffering major withdrawal pangs when I could finally get out of bed on February 14th. I’m doing a modified “schedule” this week: yoga twice and the boxing-ish bootcamp workout this Saturday.

Conclusions? Not what you’d think.

Goal-tracking sucks. I’ve never been good at keeping any kind of routine tracking going for a long period. Never. So, I’m not surprised I couldn’t keep up with even the simplest method. I liked my first week of Xs, but they didn’t exactly motivate me. I didn’t care about not having a second. I usually keep track of progress mentally, so that’s not a particularly surprising conclusion for yours truly. Adding another habit, the tracking habit, to the additional two I was trying to establish was stupid, honestly.
Journaling isn’t something that’s actually important to me. In fact, it seems actively toxic. Some people find journaling therapeutic. Some people find that writing things down helps them get their problems out of their heads. I’ve always used writing things down as a method for remembering dates, facts and events, not as a way to clear mental clutter. I naturally ruminate over everything. Writing down my ruminations just added more introspective claptrap to my already self-paralyzing analytical process. What actually made me stop journaling was the topic on February 4th: “What 5 things do you want to do before it’s too late?” I already spend too much time thinking my impending death and running out of time, but this had me actively contemplating how I’d die. Not exactly fun stuff.
I’m trying to create a new habit in addition to my “artificial” experimental habit that’s actually important to my well-being. I’ve already written about my early forays into the realm of cooking; I’m trying to gain more control of my horrible diet. That’s far more important to both my short-term and long-term health than is writing in a journal. So, maybe I’m suffering from habit-forming overload, which is apparently a real concern.
Is setting a specific goal really something that should be done in the first place? This is something I’ve really been wondering about. Every last bit of motivational writing you come across talks about the values of setting specific time-based goals, and making sure they’re realistic (SMART goals, anyone?). I’ve never had a lot of luck with that approach. Somehow, no matter how specific and how “realistic” I think I’m being when I set a goal, I’m always way off, and I end up being discouraged for not perfectly achieving what I set out to do. I find I’m better off aiming for a loose future objective, and making subtle course-correcting tweaks as I go along.

Cognitive reframing?

My “secret” goal of exercising an hour (at least) four times a week is one that I’ve actually had to step away from as a “goal.” My best success in the past has come in finding disciplines I enjoy, and looking at exercise as another way of playing. At this point, my theoretical exercise schedule (and, oh how I hate that word!), is pretty rigid with four separate exercise classes, something that could drive me to insanity if I think about it that way.

I’ve already mentioned that I loathe too much structure and too much “tracking,” I think, and if I haven’t specifically, there it is. Structure to me is death. It’s routine. It’s confining and painful and the very antithesis of enjoyable. Tracking after the fact is more routine and structure added to my life. Four separately scheduled events, then, adds that much more “routine.” It helps that I enjoy said events, but if I think about them too much in scheduling terms, I find I don’t enjoy them as much, even if I objectively do.

The brain’s a funny organ, isn’t it? You can trick it and manipulate it into doing anything if you really try. That’s what I’ve been doing on the exercise front so that I keep enjoying myself. Instead of “going to classes” that happen at “specific times,” I tell myself, It’s time to go play! Suddenly the dull routine of changing clothes and driving through sometimes awful traffic to arrive at said classes doesn’t seem quite so onerous. I put on my play-clothes and I sit myself in my play-car, and I sing along with old 80’s songs as I’m stuck at long traffic lights because it’s fun-time. And then I’m sweating because I’m playing, not because I’m engaging in strenuous physical activity.

Future plans…

Maybe I’ll try the experiment again someday when a sickness won’t derail it. I really would like some real answers to come from it, and I’m curious to see if I’ll ever be able to make concrete goal-setting work for me in any fashion.

A Clash of Archetypes: Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art,” A Review

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

Temperance – She is not me, though I wish she was.

I’ve read all kinds of manifestos, from the short to the Communist. I can either take them or leave them, honestly, which is probably why I haven’t come up with one of my own. They can be motivating or distracting, boring or fascinating. I can nod in agreement with every word or wish that the words could be scrubbed from the page before my eyes. Which is why I’m not completely surprised that I didn’t find Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art to be the motivational masterpiece that so many others have.

I’ve been waging my own war with waning creativity lately, and perhaps that’s my problem. For Pressfield, “resistance” is the enemy: the writer’s block, the tardy muse, the drugs and the sex and the rock ‘n’ roll that’s so much more appealing than forcing words to appear upon a page. I can’t say he’s not right. If there ever was an enemy to creativity, it would be that unnamed force that keeps the muse at bay. All I know is that war is exhausting.

Raise that keyboard high! Let the pencil strokes fly!

So, we fight! We lift keyboard in hand and raise our pens to the fore! We heft that palette upon our shield-arm, and thrust our brushes forward. We slice and dice our ineffable enemy with keypresses and brushstrokes. It won’t ever stop. It’s around us everywhere, both seductive and violent. It seeks to distract us from our objective: getting words on the page, lines and circles on the canvas. It will stop at nothing to stop us.

You think you’re safe, don’t you? You’re ensconced in your office or your studio, staring at the wide wall of your monitor, of your canvas. You’ve barricaded the door, and blocked off all extraneous thought. You have fingers poised, ready to perform intricate actions, to bring the vision that dances behind your eyes to life before you. You ready yourself. You’ve made sure your Maginot Line is well-fortified, and you’ve allied yourself with your neighboring distractions.

How about a little cake? something whispers in one ear.

You look around in alarm. Nope, there’s nothing. No one is holding a delicious slice of indulgence over your shoulder just inside your peripheral vision. You return your attention to the blank whiteness before you. You set your fingers on the home row. You dip your brush into some basic black, then blue, and start stirring.

You’ll never be able to bring it to life, the voice says, menacing now. You think you’re good enough, but you’re not!

But I am! The voice is defiant, and you press deliberately upon the shift key. The brush feels heavy in your hand as it hovers above the canvas. And if I’m not, who will bring my creation to life?

That’s right! Just hit that key! I dare you! And then another. And then you’ll have a whole string of nonsense to cringe at! Better to back away.

But! But! You slam your fingers over the keys now. You’ve managed to write a sentence. Your first line isn’t a thing of beauty, all smudged with paint or faulty antialiasing, but it’s there. It’s a start. You can always fix it later.

And I’ll be here later to bug you! the voice says.

You think you’ve won a respite, but Resistance has breached your Maginot Line. Suddenly that imagined cake is looking pretty good, except it isn’t with you. It’s at the bakery, halfway across town. You put down another sentence, stroke out a gentle curve. You mix another color, and futz with italics. The cake screams, Buy me! Its voice is louder than mere resistance.

Suddenly, you’re exhausted. You’ve scratched out a start, but it isn’t anything close to what you intended, and your defenses are down. You should keep slapping away at the enemy with your keyboard, jabbing at it with the cruel ballpoint of your trusty pen. Instead, your head dips.

Curse you, Resistance! You’ve won!

I’ve never been a warrior, unlike Pressfield. I just don’t have the will to fight every day of my existence. He might have armor and an unflagging spirit. His words drip with challenge, and have been honed to optimal sharpness by a master blacksmith. He slays, he declares victory every day. I try to slay, thinking of the page’s blankness as an enemy, but instead I shrink away, pained. I’m slashed to ribbons even as I’m seduced by distraction.

My inner storyteller is battered and bleeding, and she seeks respite from his relentless words.

And now she’s rambling about the Storyteller… sigh.

My inner writer isn’t a warrior. My muse isn’t Durga. Instead, she’s insatiably curious. She’s innovative in her own quiet way. She wants to know as much as you do what lies ahead for the myriad characters she’s woven, and wants to spin a yarn as best she can as they interact in the world she’s sculpted. She is Storyteller, both for herself, and for anyone else who cares to listen to her words. She hears Pressfield’s stirring words and lies down for a nap.

Nope, not for me, this endless clash! It hurts too much! Just tell me what comes next!

What next? What is next? She reaches inside herself for the world she’s created from the soil of thought and reality. She feels it take shape in her hands as she feels the silken strand vibrate that she keeps connected to her characters at all times. She sees as they do, and feels the clay flow into buildings, trees, races. She watches and listens as they speak to each other. She smiles as they become all the more alive in interaction. In life.

Tell me, she whispers to them, what are you going to do?

Sometimes they comply with what she’s envisioned. Sometimes they don’t, and chart their own course. She is the last to predict, the first to step aside and let them assume control. She speaks their words and thoughts. She reveals their motivations and describes their actions. She allows them to guide her fingers over the new world she’s created and refine it. She is their conduit, their channel, and when they rest at the end of their journeys, she weeps until a new world beckons or new characters introduce themselves.

What’s next?

That should be my rallying cry, but sometimes I know what comes next and my Storyteller balks. Why should I tell the story? I already know what happens. Who cares?

Because writing isn’t always about you, I tell her, but she usually ignores me.

I tell her to put on her armor and poke and prod herself into compliance with the corner of my keyboard, but she just curls up in a ball and hides. I can’t blame her.

What does that have to do with archetypes?

I just recently started on Archetypes: Who Are You? by Caroline Myss. So far, I’m not finding anything particularly surprising about it, though I haven’t really spent much time delving into my primary archetypes to see if there’s anything I can use to get me up off my butt creatively.

Myss points out in her introductory chapter that archetypes are universal. Months before I picked up the book, I’d already intuited that Pressfield’s creativity is best represented by the Warrior archetype and that mine really isn’t. I’m not a warrior, dammit! I’m a Storyteller! When I took Myss’ test at archetypeme.com, the results didn’t surprise me so much as finding out one of my dominant archetype’s alternate names is “Storyteller.”

In case you’re curious, my dominant results were: 33% Creative, 33% Intellectual and 14% Visionary.

I can see why so many creative and innovative artists find Pressfield’s work so motivating: my guess is that they either have a hint of the Warrior or the warrior’s drive within them. Pioneers, heroes, and advocates all have to harness the warrior’s courage to impel others to change. I’m a little too laid back (a very kind way of saying “low energy”) for his words to spur me properly. Instead, I just felt tired after reading The War of Art.

The importance of ritual

If you take a look at the Amazon reviews for Pressfield’s book, you’ll see a number of comments about how Book 3 goes off the deep end in speaking of angels and rituals to the muses. Sadly enough, this was the part of the book I found the most personally applicable, even if the language was highly figurative and “mystical” in nature. Maybe Pressfield’s dead serious in viewing his language as concrete and literal, but I resonated with it on a more abstract level.

I’m going to diverge for a couple of seconds into the land of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and cognitive functions. You may or may not see the sixteen types of the MBTI as more pseudoscience and inaccurate mumbo-jumbo (I’m mixed about its true accuracy, even if I find my “type” describes me almost perfeclty). Either way, to a certain extent, I’ve found the side-theory of cognitive functions to be very helpful in understanding how my personal thought process works. Essentially, in this theory, there are four primary functions, expanded to eight based on their inward or outward direction: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and Intuition. All of these four can either be Extraverted (outwardly focused) or Introverted (inwardly focused). I’m using Jung’s spelling of “extrovert.”

My personality type is INTP (Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving), and my cognitive process stack is as follows:

Dominant: Introverted Thinking (personal inner mental model of the world outside)
Auxiliary: Extraverted Intuition (awareness of outer patterns and the complexity of the exterior universe and all its possibilities. The “wheeeeee!” in life)
Tertiary: Introverted Sensing (recollection of personal experience in all its details, awareness of how the body feels internally)
Inferior: Extraverted Feeling (longing for universal harmony, universal values, the welfare of all within a group)

If you read a lot of books on developing intuition, you’ll find that most encompass the development of introverted intuition. This is the land of gut feelings, your “sixth sense,” and the universe within you. Pressfield’s was the first I’ve ever seen that explains exactly what extraverted intuition feels like. You look and scan everything around you to get the gist of reality. Suddenly, you’re smacked with an “A-ha!” moment, which can either hit you like a brick in the face, or like a gentle whisper. When you hear of “angels” or muses actually whispering an idea in someone’s ear and you secretly wonder if the purveyor of such words is actually bonkers, maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re hearing their Extraverted Intuition talking and expressing the sensation in the most accurate way they can. The experience feels highly abstracted, so the language follows suit. Or maybe they really do believe they’re hearing angels and they’re nuts.

Pressfield’s rituals are precise, and his language, frankly, sounds insane if you’re not comfortable with extraverted intuition. He’s elaborate in his processes for preparing his perception for the act of writing. My own processes and rituals are far less precise, wacky and intense. But, really, to ensure my best writing I do have a ritual to prep my mind for the writing act. In short, I prime my perception just as Pressfield does with his muse-invocations and prayers.

Basically, I imagine what mood I’m going to try to convey for the writing session. I then visually scan my hard drive for the album that I think conveys the mood the most accurately. I take a few deep breaths, fire up the album on Windows Media Player, and then I open my document. Then I close my eyes and try to tap into my characters’ inner logic and emotions. I remember what I wrote the previous session, and let myself get sucked into their world. Without that kind of initial ritual and initiating process, my writing and inspiration suffer.

A germ of what might work for future exploration…

Who is your inner writer? Who is your outer persona? Are you a warrior? A hero? Someone who loves to slay inner demons?

If you’re like Pressfield at all, this manifesto will get your blood pumping.

I’m not. Instead, I’m thinking I need to find a way to spark my Storyteller’s curiosity to get moving again. I need to tap into her need to tell the story to others. I need to actually perform my rituals to get her interested again. In short, I need to focus on priming my perception.

Goal Setting Experiment Update #1: Success!

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

Lookie! Xs mark the spots!

Ooo, accountability works– so far!

You can see the results here– five red X marks for five successive journaling days. So, it would appear, at least initially, that being accountable seems to work… for a week. We’ll see what happens next week. I’m already not wanting to write today’s ten minutes of blather.

I have to say, journaling isn’t cracking up to be everything it’s reputed to be. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that writing things down doesn’t exactly get them out of my mind. In fact, I find myself ruminating over the things I write about all the more. My journal jar is full of all kinds of prompts about past mistakes, past regrets, and past annoyances. So, I write about them, hoping for a final cleansing purge, only to find myself reliving them over and over again in all their horrid detail. One of these days, I’ll probably spend far too long talking about the perils of my exotic personality type, but for now, let’s just say that my long-term memory is far too vivid.

I’ve also had to do a switcheroo of journaling programs. Daily Diary was far too annoying and anal for my taste. It protested every time I flubbed up my “password” (literally) and wouldn’t work snapped with my Metro timer app. So, I’m now using the far less irritating 7Days. It’s still not helping me want to journal, but at least it’s not actively discouraging me.

Keeping it quiet works too!

You see the four blue X marks. They’re right where they’re supposed to be, on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I like them. They’re so pretty! They’re a nice tangible reminder of the fact that this goal is on track to becoming a habit too. Blue’s also my favorite color, which is another little incentive.

I’m kind of liking that I’m keeping this particular goal quiet. I’ve failed too many times at setting this as a habit, so aside from experiment results, I’m glad I’m not feeling any external pressure to keep with it. The lack of stress, honestly, is making it far easier to keep on track than with journaling, even if this habit is a lot more time consuming.

Conclusions?

None yet; I think it’s a little too early. We’ll see what happens next week.

Experiment: State Goals Publicly or Keep them Quiet for Optimal Success?

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

Well, let it be said early and often that I’m an individual in need of improvement. A lot of it. I’d like to think I’m no different than the rest of us, but, really, who knows? Either way, I have a few habit-establishment goals I’m trying to accomplish, and I’ve failed at a few of them more than once. So, what’s the best way to ensure success? Heck if I know.

There are two separate schools of thought: one that you should hold yourself accountable to the universe so you can keep on track with your new habits, and another that suggests keeping quiet might actually be the true secret to success.

Which one actually works? Let’s see. But first, a little background:

State your intention! Be accountable!

About.com has one of the best quick sum-ups I’ve read on setting intentions. Essentially, the process is boiled down to four steps:

1. Get clear about something you want and write it down.

2. Share your intention with someone in a way that will supportively hold you accountable to taking action.

3. Do something today to demonstrate your commitment to your intention.

4. Acknowledge that you did what you said you would and then, take the next step.

-Marcia Weider, The Power of Intention – Four Steps For Setting An Intention

If you read a lot of the personal development blogs out there, you’ll find that setting intentions to achieve goals or establish new habits is very popular advice. I’ve honestly never tried it; as an introvert, one of my least favorite things to do when socializing is to talk about myself and my accomplishments. I also like to think I can pride myself on my self-sufficiency. So, suffice to say, this isn’t an approach I’ve ever used, or I’ve ever seen myself using.

Until now.

Keep quiet if you actually want to succeed!

Lifehacker, needless to say, advises the opposite.

A more detailed examination of the whys of keeping goals to yourself actually seems a bit counter-intuitive, and the exact opposite of why I’d think you’d want to stay silent. Personally, this is my more favored approach, mostly because I hate looking like an idiot when I don’t succeed. And I really, really, really hate admitting weakness to the external world, even to my friends.

But that’s not the problem. This is:

Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.

In 1933, W. Mahler found that if a person announced the solution to a problem, and was acknowledged by others, it was now in the brain as a “social reality”, even if the solution hadn’t actually been achieved.

So, your mind thinks you’re already through, that you’re already successful. You’ve already completed the action or established the habit, even if you’ve just primed yourself to take action in your mind. Your social reality is your true external reality.

I can buy this, completely. I have a nasty tendency to think through all angles of any problem I’ve approached, and by assessing all of the possible actions I can take, or by establishing a mental plan, I think I’ve completed all of the necessary external work to solve it. Besides, doing the actual work is boooring. Anything that assists my brain in deceiving itself that the work is already done is a bad, bad, bad thing. Horrible. Terrible. You get the picture.

So, which actually works?

We’re about to find out. Beginning today, I’m launching a personal experiment to see which approach is best with two habits I’m hoping to establish.

Writing journal entries five times a week.
Another goal I’ve failed at each time I’ve tried: I’m looking to repeat this activity four times a week.

To track this, I’ll be using the ultra-simple “Don’t Break the Chain” method. The journal entries will be indicated with a red X, and the other habit with a blue X in my lovely calendar.

Pretty, isn’t it?

Why, “Don’t Break the Chain?” I stink at actual documentation. This appeals to my utter loathing of writing things down about as much as can reasonably be accommodated if I’m going to actually track anything. Seriously, just using typical recording methods most people use to track anything requires a whole new habit to form. Ugh.

Ideally, you’ll see nine X marks, four red and five blue at the end of a successful week.

Setting my journaling intention

I intend to write for ten minutes, five times a week using my journaling program. I’ll be using Digital Diary, a Windows 8 app. My subjects will come from my journal jar: a plastic reach-in tub that holds about 200+ prompts I printed out from various websites.

Just reach on in and get a handful of insight!

The advantages to this habit are supposedly to gain inner insight, to introspect (as if I don’t do enough of that already!), and to gain a greater grasp of what makes you tick. Supposedly, miracles can happen if you write enough, or your life gels, and all of a sudden the universe makes sense or something. Either way, you’re supposed to get something beyond your usual ordinary perspective by writing about yourself regularly. Should be amusing, methinks. If any insight arises from this habit, I’ll be sure to share it.

And in a few minutes, I’ll make my first entry into my new journal. I’ll report my success (or not) on Monday, February 4. If I fail, yell at me virtually in the comments section below.

…and here we go!

For further reading: Shhh! Keeping Quiet May Help You Achieve Your Goals by Derek and The Power of Intention: Four Steps For Setting An Intention by Marcia Weider

The Weapons Mentality

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Elizabeth Calimente

Ever since the Sandy Hook shootings a little over a month ago, gun control advocates and their opponents have been spotlighted in our national political dialog. I’ve found personally that I identify more with one side of the debate than the other, though my formerly firm position supporting gun control has eroded a little over the years. All the same, I’m willing to wager that whether you favor gun regulation or no, it’s difficult to understand some of the motivations and arguments of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Frankly, I’m skeptical about the Constitutional arguments on both sides of the debate. While the pragmatic value of gun control is clear, the rights-based concerns also hold a reasonable amount of merit. The sad thing is, I understand the secondary motives of the NRA all too well, having experienced them myself.

Bearing weapons changes you in a fundamental way, and alters your very perception of reality.

Crime! And weapons!

And now it’s story-time…

Eleven years ago, I was living in a half-gentrified area of Oakland, CA, just a few blocks away from Lake Merritt. Like most of Oakland, this area was beset with high levels of property crime: during the winter, I’d frequently find the condensation rubbed away from my passenger windows by some curious burglar who never seemed to find anything of interest in my stock radio or in the piles of pointless paper in my backseat. Still, even though I’d sometimes hear the prostitutes calling or drug addicts might beg me for money on my way back to my apartment building, I’d never felt like I was in any real danger of being shot or mugged or any of a million other violent crimes.

That changed one January night that was no more remarkable than any other, aside from the fact that I’d actually bothered to attend a candle party. I had a candle-filled bag in one hand, and my purse in the other. When the man approached me, I was calm; I figured he was just on his way to his car.

“Don’t panic!” he said.

What? It was only then that I registered he was holding something vaguely pointed in the direction of my chest.

“Just hand me the purse quietly.” It was a pistol, I think. A small, evil, black thing.

All of a sudden, everything froze. I froze, and maybe I looked panicked, maybe I didn’t. I wasn’t, though. I’d gone cold, solid, logical. I scanned the buildings while hopefully pretending to look shocked. Maybe I actually was shocked. I still don’t know. Lights were on in all the buildings, and my mind flashed to what I should do next. Don’t scream for help, I’d read, because no one pays attention. Yell “Fire!” instead. I’d also read that you’re supposed to give up your money, your purse, your wallet, except, as my mind systematically categorized everything I’d need to survive a night outside.

Keys. In the purse.

Cell phone to call for help. In the purse.

Keys to my parents’ house. In the purse.

Address to my parents’ house. In the purse.

My odds weren’t looking so good, nor were my parents’ either, if this guy was more than just a mugger. I was damned if I was going to endanger them by giving anything up. I didn’t care if the man was holding dynamite; I’d fare better at his hands than spending the night outside in the cold in the middle of Oakland, hoping someone from my apartment building would find me alive and intact in the morning.

“Fire!” I screamed, turning back to him. “Fire! Fire!”

It was a chant in my head.

“Don’t scream!” He shook the gun at me. “Stop screaming! Give me the bag!”

He yanked one purse strap with his free hand, the gun still aimed loosely at me. I held the body of the purse, and he’d missed the second strap. I clutched it, still screaming, still chanting about a mythical fire. He tugged harder, and I gripped its bulk against my body until I could feel my fingers strain. He yanked, I pulled. I kept up the chant, feeling the fire burn me.

“Give it to me!” He ripped at the strap, and it finally gave way in his hand.

I collapsed against my neighbor’s fence, still screaming, as the man dropped the strap and ran toward the Lake. He’d had the strap, but I still had everything. Just as fast as he’d run away, I realized I was okay. I was safe. I could go home and relax. I took a deep breath which left me just as the neighbor’s useless old Chow barked and snapped at me through the fence after it had remained silent all through the fight. Stupid dog!

Arming myself.

I’d made it just fine through the police report, but I still ended up driving an hour and a half to Petaluma to spend the night with my then-boyfriend and now-husband. I drove another hour and a half to work the next morning. I was shaky, but more or less all right. Get some pepper spray, one of the cops had told me the night before, but I hadn’t seriously considered it.

Really, I’m a klutz. I’m also not very good at remaining paranoid about doing basic things like walking to my car at night. Mostly because I’m not good at remembering to be paranoid. I’d heard all the “safety tips” about putting your car keys in between your fingers so you can stab a night-time assailant with an impromptu weapon, but I only remembered to do that the first week after I’d learned the technique. Frankly, I’d never been bothered, so I figured such things were pointless. If I carried pepper spray, I’d either shoot myself in the eye or I’d forget to hold it at the ready.

That changed when I got the phone call.

It was another policeman, following up with some details. At the end of the questioning, I was a little shaky, but all right until the lecture.

“Next time someone holds you up, give them what they ask for!”

My gut had told me otherwise, and my mind had assessed the risk accurately.

“But I–”

“Just do it! Your life is more valuable than a purse.”

But the officer last night told me I’d done the right thing, and he’d said, “The dispatcher is in awe of you. She said, ‘But this one fought, and won!” I wish I’d had the words then. Instead, the reality came crashing down around my head, and what had felt like a major victory against fear instead turned into the paranoia I’d so dreaded. I went home from work early and in tears. A couple of hours later, I exchanged cash for a key-chain pepper spray canister.

I hadn’t won. I’d lost. And carrying a weapon was all I had to hold myself together. I’d thought I’d vanquished fear and ensured my own safety unarmed, but I wasn’t safe at all. The spray was my safety. My real safety. I couldn’t count on myself, not if what I’d done was wrong. I clutched the canister in hand and felt powerful again, because next time I’d be the injurer, not the injured.

Look! Over there! It’s a mugger! No, it’s a bush.

I had a new routine every time I headed for the car, and every time I left the car until I made it to “safety.” I’ve never been one for routines. The everyday and mundane usually puts me to sleep: I’m the only one I know of who gets bored getting dressed every day. You know, put the pants on the same way, one leg at a time, pull the shirt over your head… Booooring! This routine, though, was a weird solace.

Put spray in hand deliberately before leaving the car.
Check to make sure the nozzle’s pointed the right direction.
Make sure the nozzle clears the fingers so residue doesn’t end up blinding me later if I do have to spray.
Put one finger loosely enough on the trigger that it won’t fire by accident, but firmly enough that someone can’t wrestle it away.
Lock the car door with the free hand, while aiming the spray away from the door and close it firmly behind.
Carry spray informally at my side, so that it doesn’t look threatening to others.
Keep hackles raised just enough that I’m ready to spray if any danger actually presents itself.
At the door to apartment building or place of safety, drop the spray long enough to pull open or unlock said door.
Sigh in relief that nothing happened.

Yep, paranoid. Every time I left the car, I followed the same routine until it became a ritual of a sort. I eyed everything and everyone suspiciously on my path, even during the day. Even if I slept without nightmares, the incident still gripped me by the throat every time I had to go somewhere.

The worst part was, I expected something else to happen. Statistically, the odds of being a victim of a violent crime are virtually nil– in California, currently, 1 in 243, and in crime-ridden Oakland, the chances of being a victim of a robbery are 9 in 1,000. Again, not particularly likely. But I knew I would be again, I could feel it. I clutched my crutch with all my heart and will. And next time, I’d do some damage, all in the guise of protecting myself.

Except nothing happened. Six months later, after watching Bowling for Columbine, I finally decided to put my weapon aside. When I did, the world almost seemed to shift.

Deep breaths of relief.

Finally, my chest loosened when I put the spray away in a drawer. I could park and walk without fear, and even though I did the key through the fingers trick a few times after, I suddenly remembered what it was to feel secure. I could finally bask in my victory, just a little, and as the days went uneventfully by, I felt my world return.

I was safe, just as most of us are, almost every day.

More than that, that belligerence within me died as well. Once I let go of the weapon, my desire for revenge seemed to dissolve as well, like a toxic vapor. I could go about life, unarmed, and unencumbered. And, more than that, I could finally recognize that I actually had done the right thing at the time when I’d fought my mugger. He’d been more afraid than I had as I remembered the way his voice had trembled. The way the gun had quaked in his hands. The way the likely toy gun had wavered up and down as he’d threatened me.

I’d built my world and my perception around the presence of my weapon. I’d allowed it to narrow my perspective until all I could see around me was threat and flight and fear.

Debates, debates.

I’m guessing something similar happens in the minds of those who do a concealed or open carry. They’ve got weapons, armed against a dangerous and unpredictable world, and they’ll use them.

It doesn’t matter how statistically unlikely it is that they’ll ever suffer any crime, because the world is dangerous, and they’re ready. And they want us all to be just as ready. They’ll risk accidents and theft of said firearms because it’s better to be prepared, even if there’s really nothing to prepare for. It doesn’t matter that they’re just making the world more dangerous for the rest of us. Who knows how much danger I put innocents in carrying around something far less lethal? To think about accidentally pressing that trigger, just because I was ready still sends chills down my spine.

I get where they’re coming from, I really do, even if it frightens me.

What this means for the whole gun control debate, I’m not sure. But I do get both sides, even if I don’t want to.