Meditation, Concentration, and Discombobulation!

Everyone's favourite meditating monkey. I love Rafiki!

What, a blog on Wednesday? Oh, snap!

Due to The Tempest opening tomorrow, I decided to put my weekly post up a bit early. I doubt I’ll have any time to do it tomorrow. I tend to shift into panic mode on opening nights and get absolutely nothing done.

On with the rant!

So, I had my first panic attack in quite a long time a few days ago, and that inspired me to write a post about my methods of relaxation. Just a warning, though, this is going to be a pretty rough blog, as I’m having one hell of a time concentrating while going through med withdrawal. I’ve been dealing with feeling like my skull is being crushed in a vice, shaking hands, and random jolts of adrenaline sending shockwaves through me.

            As a yoga instructor, I’m no stranger to meditation. In the last few years, it’s become a very popular practice in the US. Whether it’s a highly spiritual method or one that focuses completely on biological response, meditation does wonders for relieving anxiety, stress, and calming and focusing the mind.  Now heading into the meat of fall semester, I’m watching my friends and fellow classmates begin to get bogged down by the stresses of schoolwork, their jobs, and other things occupying their time. As usual, I feel pretty useless and unable to help them, save for cooking for them, dragging them out to dance their stress away, and occasionally providing entertainment as Drunk Dee.

As a few people in my life know, I suffer from GAD, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a condition characterized by excessive worrying, even when there’s nothing to worry about.

…Okay, so that’s a piss poor summary for what GAD is, so for a better explanation, read this. Like most psychological maladies, it’s a little different for everyone, but the basis is the same: Dee worries a lot about a lot.

Aaaanyway, my meds take the edge off of my symptoms, but every once in a while they’ll creep up, and after a couple of years, I’ve developed a system of meditation that calms me down and breaks the downward mental spiral of concern/anxiety/panic/despair into which I plunge during a rough patch. I want to share my methods in case any of my imaginary/invisible readers are stressed out students like me, or if you guys are even just curious.

Before I list them, though, I need to lay out a few weird and mildly disturbing disclaimers. My method of meditation is a combination of biological stimulation and relaxation and imaginative visualization. This method works for me because I’m a touch/physical sensation-oriented person, and because I’ve always had an overactive imagination. I mean really overactive, and really strong. I distinctly remember a practice I had in first grade: when I found I was hungry before lunch, I would mime dunking a cookie into an imaginary mug of milk on my desk. I recalled the taste the chocolate chips, the crunch of the cookie overriding my teacher’s voice, the feel of milk seeping onto my tongue. Somehow that tided me over until lunch. 

            And no, I don’t do that anymore, though I do imagine I’m eating steak and crème brulee during those impoverished weeks where I eat nothing but cereal and rice. ;)

In a word, nom.

            Anyway, another disclaimer: the visualization really works for me because ever since I was young, I’ve had a very strange ability to dissociate from a situation. On a minor level, this means that while I’m reading a book, you can stand right in front of me and do a screaming naked chicken dance and I won’t notice at all. On a slightly more creepy, I-should-probably-get-this-checked-out way, when I’m pushed to an emotional extreme (it’s only been fear so far) and I can’t take any more, my eyes roll back and I’m gone, off in my head, and pretty damn nonreactive to what’s going on “outside.” I won’t share where I “go” when that kind of thing happens, but I can visualize the place strongly enough to distract me from whatever is scaring the flying fuck out of me in reality. I know, I know, that’s weird and concerning and probably a little scary, but to tell you the truth, I don’t mind it. It hasn’t happened in three years, anyway, as nobody’s tried to scare me to death in that long, so it’s all good in the Land of Dee.

            Yep, I told you this blog would be rocky and discombobulated.

            All right, so, I’ll share with you some of the meditations I do with my yoga students, all easy, and my two meditations that help me with my GAD and other stress. One is entirely touch-oriented and one is heavily visualizational (yes, I made up a word, shut up, I’m a writer, I’m allowed.)

            A good note here, never question what you’re seeing or analyze it while you’re seeing it. Just accept it as figurative reality. Most people don’t have my weird dissociative ability/problem or uncontrollable imagination, so you probably won’t experience anything frightening or disturbing. Even if you do, there’s time to question what you saw later. Don’t shatter the meditation if you can help it.

For the Yoga meditations, you’ll want to lie on your back in savasana, or what we morbidly call corpse pose. Lie on comfortable flat ground (I’m always on my yoga mat) on your back, facing the ceiling. Take a deep inhale, exhale and let your feet relax, letting them rest. Your feet should be about hip width apart, and your arms at your side. Turn your palms up, pressing the backs of your hands into the mat/floor. Let your hands relax. They may not stay palms up, but try to keep them in that general pose. Now turn your focus to your breathing, lengthening your inhales and exhales, focusing on the sensation of your chest rising and falling, your ribs expanding and relaxing. Feel the tension in your body slowly melt into the floor, each limb releasing and relaxing. Try to acknowledge any thoughts you may be having and let them go, rather than focusing on them. (Example: Hm, who played Batman in that hilariously awful 1960s movie*…? I’ll look it up later…)

The Candle: This is my favourite focus exercise to do before I have an exam or something important where I really need to sharpen my mind. It’s very easy to do. Once your body is relaxed, visualize a candle. Pick a colour, shape, and size for the candle. Using me as an example, I tend to see a simple white pillar candle. A yoga student of mine pictured a pink heart-shaped candle, for some reason. Another saw one of those country candles shaped like an apple pie. Whatever you see, just go with it. Visualize the candle unlit, as if you had just come upon it. Take in its shape, its colour, details about it-does it have any chips or damage, or is it perfectly whole? Is the wick new and the candle solid, or has it been burned before?

            Now light the candle and focus on the flame, whatever size and colour it is (I say this because sometimes my candle has a green or violet flame. It isn’t always yellow.) Watch it catch the wick, leaving it black in its path, and watch the flame flicker and dance. Watch the wax soften and begin to drip, watch the candle slowly melt beneath the flame, watch the candle grow smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until there is nothing but a tiny flame in a puddle of wax. Extinguish the flame and watch the tendrils of smoke curl and evaporate.

Healing Light: This is one I don’t personally do, but the yoga instructor who taught me is a big fan of this one. At the base of your forehead, envision a healing light of any colour and brightness. Feel the warmth of the light on your skin. Now the light expands and travels slowly down your body, down your neck, your chest, over your arms, your torso, your hips, down your legs, to your toes. Feel the glow of the light all over your body, melting away your tension and anxieties, healing you.

Disclaimer: This meditation will not give you glowing hands.

            Okay, now, on to my personal meditations. I soothed this latest panic attack with my touch-oriented meditation. Honestly, it’s not really much of a meditation, and I don’t know how much it’s going to help someone who isn’t…well, me. But here it is anyway.  I call it my Rain Meditation because I used to run out into my yard when I was younger, lie on my back, and let the rain fall on my face. Now that I live in a yardless apartment complex, it’s a little difficult to find the privacy to do that, but I’ve found that the shower works even better-more skin for the water to hit. Anyway, I just step into the shower and focus on nothing at all but the water falling on my skin. It’s harder than you think, honestly, especially when your heart is racing and your throat is closing and you’re hyperventilating and your mind is going over all the things going wrong in your life all at once (welcome to GAD!) It takes a lot of concentration to shut off your brain. For me, I have to leave the most skin open to water possible. I sit on my knees, bow my back, and let the water fall on my spine. Then I do my absolute best to focus on nothing but the soft pelting of droplets hitting my back, of the sensation of my hair getting heavier as it dampens, the water running in rivulets down my face. Like I said, it’s not technically a meditation, but it is for me. Nothing less than excessive tactile stimulation can quiet my mind during stress. Touch has always soothed me, and if anyone else out there is like me, then my Rain Meditation will be a perfect way to relax.

            And now for the big one. This meditation is what I call The Room. When I had just been dumped by my then-fiancée, I couldn’t sleep. I started looking up visualization exercises that would help dull the heartbreak and quiet my mind enough to sleep. After a while I found this exercise, and it worked like a charm. Ever since then, I’ve done this almost nightly. The Room is a very elaborate visualization meditation, and it’s designed to let your imagination run freely. For people who don’t usually let their minds wander without censoring, it might be a little strange, but you’ll learn a lot of things about yourself.  I’ll give examples of the things I see when I do this, though it changes a lot.

            Okay, so, I don’t see any point in writing it all out when the link above has it laid out in much better detail than I can describe it. In short, you go down an elevator, down the stairs, through a corridor, and into your room.

            I guess I could describe what happens to me.  The biggest thing to emphasize is that my mind is a strange and unpredictable place, and when I “let my imagination go”, it can get weird.  I also think that things get weird because I do this right before I sleep, and it may drift from a meditation exercise into a dream. In fact, I’m sure that’s happened before.

            My elevator basically stays the same. It has gold doors and brass buttons, and the floor numbers are in a row above and light up when I hit that floor. It’s a very dimly lit elevator with rich red and gold patterned carpet and a mirrored back. Normally I get into the elevator, watch the floors go by, and pass through the elevator uneventfully, but every once in a while something weird happens in the mirror. Sometimes the mirror gets foggy, sometimes I see shadows in it, other times figures-mostly just hands-actually come through the mirror and reach for me. Like I said, I’m a freak.

            The 21 stairs I head down are old stone steps, and there isn’t a door and or brightly lit corridor at the end of them.  Nope, my staircase ends at the base of an underground lake, very Phantom of the Opera-esque. My “Guardian” is, of course, dark and obscure; he’s clothed in white and has an ornate black mask obscuring his face. After I pay the toll, I get on the boat and the Guardian/Chiron guy takes me to my room, Room 17, giving me the huge iron key to it before he leaves. My room is in the base of a cavern-like nook on the lake, and the door is huge and either solid wood or some sort of stone, depending on the day.

            Structurally, my room doesn’t change much; it’s huge, marble, and warmly lit with soft golden light. There are pillar candles everywhere and various platforms and sheer fabrics hanging from the domed ceiling. It kind of resembles rooms in the palaces of Ancient Egypt—the best pop culture parallel would probably be something out of the Prince of Egypt. There is always a big, dark pool with floating candles, lilies, cherry blossoms, and rose petals. I always end up taking a dip in that pool. There’s also always a gigantic mirror, half-covered by a hanging curtain. Everything else about the room changes. I’ve come in there and it’s been snowing ash before, like the fallout of a nuclear holocaust. Everything was grey, but it was beautiful. There have also been trees there, kind of like a forest sprung up from the marble, and occasionally I see an animal or two, most often a huge white wolf or a white stag.

A comparably close example of the ash fall.

            As for the whole communicating with your subconscious, higher self, or spirit guides that they mention in the link, well, frequently someone comes to or through the mirror to talk to me. Sometimes they’re characters from the things I’ve written or am writing. And sometimes that doesn’t end well for me, because not everyone who comes through that mirror likes me all that much. There have been occasions where someone has tried to pull me into the mirror, and for some reason I resist that, knowing that it’s not a good thing for me to be on the other side of the mirror.

            Sorry I went on a bit long about that. Yes, I’m weird, and I doubt anyone else’s room will be as strange and stream-of-consciousness as mine. Most people tend to censor their imaginations, leading them in a certain direction, trying to make the “story” make sense, even during self-hypnosis and meditation. My advice would be to try not to do that. Just let it go. You’ll see strange things, but you’ll learn a lot about yourself.  For instance, I have no idea what my Guardian, the mirror in the elevator, or the occasional nuclear winter in my room mean, but I’m sure as hell going to try to analyze them and figure it out.

            Anyway, this train wreck of a blog post has run its course, I think. I hope these meditations are helpful to those who need to unwind, relax, or discover more about themselves. If anyone feels like discussing what they saw in their Room meditation, I’m more than happy to talk to you about it. The Room is particularly fascinating and fun to pick apart!

The stone stairway to my subconscious.  Yours will probably look different!

*Just so you know, Adam West played Batman in that hilariously awful movie. Fun fact. Adam Weeeeeeeeeest…!