What brings you peace?
Being in the now, and feeling – but not feeding – emotional sensations.
PROMPT: Peace
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Category Archives: Mindfulness
PROMPT: Comfort
What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?
I don’t, but I have a lot of strategies for being more content in the face of various situations and environments — including uncomfortable ones. These include the yogic practice of dispassionate witnessing, minimalism, travel (and specifically minimalist travel to places – the less familiar the better,) and intense physical activity.
I think comfort as a major objective in life is overrated, and virtually insures a discontented life. A life in which one can be content, whatever may come along, is a happy life.
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Feel the Breeze [Free Verse]
Feel the breeze upon your face.
Let it be all you know.
Don't ponder atmospheric lows.
Just feel the breeze upon your face,
and know:
There is a breeze.
(Though it may not be
what you think it is.)
You have a face.
(Though it may not be
what you think it is.)
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Startle Response [Haiku]
BOOK REVIEW: Mindfulness in Wild Swimming by Tessa Wardley
Mindfulness in Wild Swimming: Meditations on Nature & Flow by Tessa WardleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: June 13, 2023
As the title suggests, this is a book about combining mindfulness and swimming in natural bodies of water. It’s part of a large series of “Mindfulness and …” books, and this particular volume is a re-release of a title that came out a couple years back.
While the book does provide an overview the basic methods and considerations for both mindfulness meditation and wild swimming, it’s largely a peptalk or enticement to take up wild swimming as a means to improve awareness (as well as to bolster physical health and mental well-being.) That said, some of this peptalk is artfully, almost poetically, written, and the book is a pleasure to read.
The book discusses solo swims versus those in a group, and it even explores using onshore experiences to bolster mindfulness — e.g. using the sensory experience of the water as a focal point for practicing awareness. The around- (v. in-) water discussions are probably in part because the book uses seasons as a secondary mode of organization, and long and leisurely winter swims in lakes and rivers aren’t an option for people in many parts of the world.
I picked up some interesting food-for-thought in the book, and — as I say — it made for enjoyable reading.
View all my reviews
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Cave Days [Haiku]
Cave Monster [Common Meter]
I sit within an empty cave. It's empty, that's for sure. It's dark, so dark that nothing shines. What sound is that? A purr? I'm in this cave, and not alone, but with what I can't say. It's in the back where it's jet black -- a predator? Or prey? I'm walking now; I don't dare run. the ground is all cockeyed with stalagmites and stalactites. I grope, in need of guide. And feeling through Stygian space, I bust open my head. Warm blood, I feel, run down my face. I'm squeezed by rising dread. I hear a squeak, a mouse strolls through; then silence is restored. If only my mind were so rid of its outsized horrors.
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Plays No Favorites [Haiku]
sunlight breaks into the forest -- not favoring the tranquil yogi.
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Leaf Enlightened [Common Meter]
I stared, and stared, into a leaf
until my vision changed.
And I could see the whole, wide world
so artfully arranged.
The leaf, it mapped my universe
from atom to the sprawl.
Compressed, layer-on-layer, there
was one and, at once, all.
But before I could grasp all that
this vision truly meant,
a gust of wind did catch that leaf,
and fluttering it went.
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Satori [Free Verse]
It was a moment of silent spaciousness. In the midst of a fight, there was no enemy -- just the effortless dance of the thing. That moment expanded to the infinite, & snapped back to one tick after the tock. Since then, no catastrophe has felt too great for a smile.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 