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The Power Of Your Attention & Working With Insomnia | Louisville Chiropracor | Jay Uecker, D.C.

  • Aug 8, 2012
  • 4 min read

network life center, louisville co chiropractor, meditation, sleep,

Who:

Shinzen Young is an American dude. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk at a Zen monastery in Japan. He's a self proclaimed meditation geek. Thank goodness for his geekiness. It has allowed him to develop a system that takes much of the enigmatic meditation forms from Buddhist history and makes them user friendly to those of us who don't want to have to become a monk to obtain the results of these practices. He's been teaching this system around the world for a decade or so, and teaching in general for over twenty years.

This retreat was sponsored and run by Sierra Retreats. I had heard good things about them and I understand why now. They know how to run a retreat. They do retreats all year round. Check them out if you're interested in doing a retreat.

Where:

The retreat was at the Highlands Retreat Center in Allenspark, Colorado. They do retreats as well as family reunions, camps, etc... It's a beautiful place. The rooms were hotel style rooms. They were very clean and comfortable.

The Highlands Retreat Center staff was amazing. They were very respectful of what we were doing and went out of their way to provide us with a good experience. The food was amazing. I've never eaten so well for ten days in a row in my entire life.

What:

We sat for 7 to 9 hours a day (in 30 minute to 60 minute chunks), for ten days, in silence. We had the freedom to do as much sitting or as little as we wanted. The desire of the group to do the work was motivating and so I pretty much held that schedule for the whole ten days.

In short the techniques involve tracking the things that let us know we're conscious, basically: mental talk, mental images, physical sensations and emotional sensations. There were a couple of instances where I sat for two and a half to three hours. The pain would get intense in my legs and my butt but I found that if I turned towards the sensations it would start to break up and be tolerable. I had the sense that I was being purified by the pain.

We would practice parts of Shinzen's system and then there were process groups in the morning and afternoon where we would get to talk to him and run our experiences by him. It was very helpful to get immediate feedback since there were some very interesting and strange things that I experienced.

Why:

Why would anyone sit like that for extended periods of time? Well, if you think back on your life, during times when you've been involved in some activity that's meaningful to you--maybe a sport, a hobby, or a special time with a loved one. You may remember times when you were distracted while performing this activity and you may remember times when you were focused and present with the activity. There's a good bet that during the times when you were focused and present, the activity was much more satisfying and you were probably much more effective at it, too.

The exercises that I mentioned above are like presence training. This increases the baseline level of presence in our lives at all times, even when we're not consciously trying to be more present. Consequently everything we do becomes more satisfying and everything we do is more effective. In practical terms, the background level of satisfaction and effectiveness in life begins to increase, no matter what life is throwing at us. Another way to say it is you become more integrated into the ebbing and flowing nature of Nature.

The Take Away:

It's like when you go traveling... It takes you out of your usual routine on all levels. You meet new people and see how they live their lives, you see new landscapes and it gives you a new perspective on your life. It changes you. Well, there's a whole world on the inside and most of us haven't done much exploring there. I went just around the corner, so to speak, and I'll never be the same.

Other tid bits that might be interesting:

  • Problems sleeping? Mindfulness meditation techniques can help. I discovered first hand on this retreat that it's not necessarily about getting a good night's sleep. It's about getting a good night's rest. Whenever I've done a retreat like this, sleep has always been kind of a crap shoot. On this retreat I discovered that I could use these mindfulness meditation techniques to help my body relax while my mind kept going. As long as my body was sufficiently relaxed, and thus got rest, I found that I felt great the next day even though I didn't actually sleep. And, when doing these techniques I would generally fall asleep anyway, also solving the problem.

  • Song in your head driving you crazy? After one retreatant commented that she had a song in her head that was driving her crazy, I started to realize that I too had a constant sound track in my head, and it started to drive me crazy, as well. It was either Marvin Gaye or James Taylor most of the time. I found that each song was associated with subtle, unconscious emotions. I used the mindfulness techniques to sink into the emotions and feel them more completely and the songs have gone away... so far. It would be the same for any number of unwanted habits that someone might have.

  • Pain Mindfulness meditation techniques can be very effective in working with pain. I found that if I could actually go toward pain and get curious about it, it would begin to break up into its parts: physical sensations, emotions and thoughts. It would generally turn into vibration and eventually break up all together. It was a very empowering experience.

Mindfulness Meditation:

If you're interested in checking out what's possible, I've been doing a mindfulness meditation workshop every other month or so. Click here to check out the next mindfulness meditation workshop...

 
 
 

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