I did not care for the “Meeting Aesculapius” as much as I do Kelly Howells-Faith meditation. Link provided below. I have enjoyed the learning and expanding I have accomplished in this class. I should report that I don’t meditate twice a day but rather once. It was nice at first but then became overkill.  I can say that the meditating has helped me to be calmer. Mostly I do not give in to and encourage other people’s gossip. I now just let them rant on and don’t say a thing. By me not saying anything they usually stop and realize that they shouldn’t be talking in this manner. I plan to continue meditation. ~ I just got a new job this week and I have talked my boss into creating a meditation room for us as well as the patients ~  

As for the phrase, “One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself,” I believe it means that one cannot truly help another unless they themselves have sought out the same help. An example of what I mean by this is: you would not seek out someone who has never done yoga before to teach you how to do yoga. Many of the great healers have to go through and experience a great deal of unpleasantries before they are considered worthy of being a healer. It is because they have to travel the path first so they can lead others down it later. I believe this is very important for all wellness professionals. I do not think they should be obligated but it is better for the patient (client) as well as the practitioner that they have a close personal experience to relate to the situation.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s0jhWkqqts

Oh this is good

If I understand the Integral Assessment right, we were to relax our body and mind and once we felt truly relax we were to ask the questions: What aspect of my life psychospiritual, interpersonal, biological, or worldly is the source of my difficulty and suffering? What development is essential for me right now? What is my current level of development and what can I am for? What areas in my life are ready for development? And many other questions.

I really didn’t know what to expect going into the exercise, but I really thought it would open my awareness to the changes that have come about in my day-to-day life since meditating. But rather, I had the most amazing experience. I had been listing to a guided meditation (link provided below) were a few minutes into the lady says “ask any question you may have now,” so I figured this was a great prompted for this exercise.

My experience

I was listening to the guided meditation and it came to the part where I ask the question and I started to think of the first question but my body began to tingle and feel numb. Of course that is where my attention was focused. This feeling intensified into a calming peaceful vibration. At first I was scared because I didn’t know what was happening but I didn’t fight it. I heard a voice say “welcome, go ahead and ask your questions now.” So I ask, getting every question answered as if I was sitting down talking to another being. I asked the question “what areas in my life need developing?” and I didn’t get a response. I thought “I feel like I am loosing the connection. “ I want to describe this feeling like slipping from grasp of a friend who is trying to save you, but instead you fall in slow motion. No matter how much you yell for the friend to help you they cannot.

So now I am lying in bed rethinking the whole experience in awe of what just happened. I keep thinking of when body was tingling and I was scared even though it was peaceful. It dawned on me that the area I need to develop is trusting and allowing, not to fight what I don’t know or understand.   

Has this happened to any of you?

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RltgopATeSM&list=PL683F0147B702CBA2&index=5&feature=plpp_video

Subtle Mind

v  Both the Loving-Kindness and the Subtle mind exercises were about the same to me. I liked them fairly well. Both got me to think about the way I think of everything. I felt a sense of discomfort with both; in the Loving-Kindness exercise I did not care for thinking of suffering while I was relaxed, and in the Subtle mind exercise I felt like I could not relax.

v  The techniques are very different though. Loving-Kindness gave me something to think of, which is easier for me. During Subtle mind I felt like my mind wandered more, and as I have stated before it is hard for me to quite my mind.

v  I find I am better at the witnessing mind technique once I am relaxed, usually after doing a guided meditation. I feel I get frustrated when I start off trying to quiet my mind and this frustration kind of ruins the whole purpose of the exercise.  

I have been keeping up with doing daily meditations and I feel much more relaxed than ever before. I do feel like I can choose how to react in situations, whereas before my reactions were automatic. I have given up watching TV in the last few weeks. I’m not really sure if there is a correlation between my meditation and TV watching, but I seem to think so.

Loving Kindness

So I listened to the Loving-Kindness guided meditation and I like it. This guided meditation inspired me to look for other guided meditations. I found several on youtube by Kelly Howell. I find her voice to be soothing and peaceful. I do one in the morning and another one again in the afternoon or evening. I really enjoy doing a guided meditation because I have a hard time quieting my mind. I also enjoy doing meditation before I go to work, because my boss is a high energy and go, go, go kind of persons so I feel calm and centered all day.