Renegade Yogi

Concentration practice tonight

Well, what can I say about practice tonight?

I have a tension headache, which was noticeably soothed by my relaxation during practice. But it still bit into my attention at times. Plus, it seems that the more I concentrated on my breath, the more tense I became. This is something I’ve noticed before: if I’m already tense, concentrating on something only makes the tension worse.

Tension is often your body’s way of avoiding something. Pain, emotion, whatever. If left outside of the gaze of your attention, a tense part could become even tenser. The solution is to just pay attention to it: to make it impossible for the part of your body to avoid whatever it is.

So, at certain points, when the headache was getting bad, I would focus on it. Or I’d focus on breathing and relaxing, which I don’t think is against the instructions. It just means breathing while being totally relaxed.

I suppose I’ve got some kind of pent up frustration or anger. That’s what it looks like when I close my eyes. I’ve been working on a difficult computer problem all day. That could be what it is. That’s what you get for sitting at a computer all day for weeks. I’ll take a break from the computer tomorrow.

My practice seems to be coming along. Recently, though, I’ve had some setbacks on the physical level. The biggest one has been a lack of sleep. I took a 2 hour nap today, which my goodness, was needed. Thank the good lord. Note: I am atheist, thank God. I could definitely tell that my recent slumber helped me concentrate. There’s still a little bit of sleep debt left to pay off. Tonight, tonight.