Creating Wellness: Unit 5 Blog: Subtle Mind Practice
For this week’s blog assignment, we were asked to complete
the subtle mind practice exercise. I was
very distracted when I first began this assignment and I had a time focusing
quite honestly. There were many things going on in my home at this time with my
kids, the dog, the phone, etc. and I found that I had to go in my room, light a
candle, and even use some of my focusing essential oils in order to move myself
from a state of chaos and unrest to the first stage of a witnessing mind in
order to be where I wanted to be to begin this exercise.
The gentle waves and laps of water were not as easily heard
at first in this assignment and I found the stillness soothing while I first
settled and stilled my mind. I have been told that I am drawn to water and that
within its coolness is where I find the most peace. During this time, I did feel the shift in
thoughts and stillness as I went from an active mind into a witnessing mind
consciousness. One of the issues that I am working on is that during the large
gaps of “nothingness” in this assignment I either start to let my mind wander
and have to get it back where it needs to be, or I get so into what I am doing,
that when she begins to speak again, I have a startled reaction. This confused
me because I was expecting to hear her voice again, but I guess maybe I was
further away in my mind that what I thought.
The loving kindness exercise was one on focusing and feeling
different aspects of what we were guided to do, and this exercise was more
calming and focused on being still and living in the aspects of a witnessing
mind. It was interesting to see and feel the differences in a similar exercise
with very different results.
Spiritual wellness is an extremely integrated part of
physical and mental wellness. If we cannot move through the stages of
psychospiritual flourishing, we will be unable to achieve physical and mental
wellness in its fullest degree. It would
then be impossible to reach integral health.
Within my own life, I have been focusing on mental and
spiritual wellness recently and have taken the focus off of physical wellness.
However, I have gone through stages of physical illness, including shingles
because I was ignoring the warning signs that my physical body was sending out
that says I needed to deal with many underlying mental and spiritual issues
from the past before I could move on. This was a painful lesson to learn
physically. Sometimes I feel that this whole process is completely overwhelming
and I begin to doubt myself when I have setbacks. I forget that my mind is in control and that I can change or
intend for things to be different. I get overwhelmed, frustrated, lonely,
anxious, scared, hurt, and completely stressed before I realize that all I need
to do first, is still my mind and enter into a state of conscious peace and
begin to let my mind heal my body, spirit, and soul. This is definitely a
learning process and I want so much to achieve integral health. But some days I
question myself more than others and wonder if others struggle as much as I do
to succeed at this whole process.
Kris Sinclair
Kris,
ReplyDeleteI think that everyone struggles in their life to achieve integral health. It gets hard at different times in life and you just have to take each day as it comes. I know it is hard to do at times, but you just have to remain strong! I have found this exercise to be the most relaxing one of them all because it allows you to just take deep breaths; I found myself almost falling asleep :)
My grandma would always tell me that "what doesn't kill us, just makes us stronger". I think this is a great motto because there has been many things in my life that I thought I would never get through and I did; it has made me a much stronger person!
Sara DeSanto
Kris,
ReplyDeleteThansk for sharing with us your thoughts. I really would have to agree with you on your blog. When listening to both of these exercises sometimes they were hard to get right into but at the same time after I listened to it for a minute than I was easily involved in. Both of these exercises for sure do something for your body and I would recommend it for anyone. Of course in life you have to take it day by day and just live in the momment. I know it can be challenging but if you just put your mind into it then you will get through it. Keep being positive and you will get far in life!
Brittany Everman
Kris,
ReplyDeleteYour point about focusing on the psychospiritual and mental aspects and letting the physical aspects fall to the wayside (sorta) momentarily is very interesting to me. I used to think that achieving Integral Health was an "all things at once" thing. Now I think I can see how that can be stunting growth in some kind of way. It's like "multi-tasking". You've got tons to do and you're doing them all at once and getting none of them done. Why not just focus on the one that needs to be knocked out and then move on to another?
Interesting. Great insight, ma'am!
James Banks
Hi Kris,
ReplyDeleteI too, found this particular exercise more challenging than the previous exercise that we did, but for myself, that just tells me that this is an area that I could use some more work in.
Like Sara said previously what doesn't kill us makes us stronger; I have pretty much lived by that saying for several years now and it seems to work for me. I always try to figure out what the lesson is that God wants me to learn from the particular situation. During my late husband's illness someone once told me that God doesn't give us more than we can handle and I have to admit that there were time when I wished that he didn't trust me quite so much.
This definitely is a learning process, but that is okay, because when we quit learning we are no longer learning. I look forward to learning more and more as I journey forward in my life.
Cherri Looney
Hi Kris,
ReplyDeleteI look forward to your blog. It is alway very thought provoking. I found this exercise easier than the last one. I found that if I wait and do them after the kids have gone to bed I can certainly relax better. I am sleeping better at night too. As Cherri said this is a learning process. The more we practice and try new things the more we learn. We are all on this journey together.
Hi Kris,
ReplyDeleteThe answer is yes..."we", meaning any number of us, also struggle with the wholeness concept. I have become so frustrated that I simply gave up and quit trying for a while. I am just starting to enjoy the process again in small increments as I still feel a sense of failure if I try to tackle something as long as the subtle mind practice this week. I sometimes feel that it is too much of a mental workout to focus on avoiding thought - there's a paradox for us. But then when we recognize paradox, we are closer to the Ultimate, our text says, so we must be heading in the right direction anyway...
Carrie Lawson
Hello Kris. It is a bit difficult to do theses exercises with many things going on aroung you. I can never get into the focus of what I am doing and concentrate enough. Like you mentioned, it can be a bit overwhelming. Getting to that poing where the mind is still is a very great challenge for me, but I did manage to do it for a while with the subtle mind exercise. It was awsome to not cling on the the mental chatter and actually achieve this. Nevertheless, those times of nothingness did make me want to think of things, which got me back to the distraction of my thoughts.
ReplyDeletekris you have a pretty blog page and when you have to listen to the ocean it helps with the way you are feeling and it calms you so much I love to hear the sound of the ocean when I go to the beach I find that I am more relaxed and have a clear mind and feeling of peace.
ReplyDeleteLisa
I found it to be very difficult as you did with the outisde forces when trying to do this. I was too busy focusing on other things that I felt were more important to me and I found that it was difficult to be able to clear my mind. The lsightnest noise seemed to bother me. I found I had to do the same thing as you and put myself in a dark room and thus being able to clear my mind as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Kris, the quiet moments when only the waves were crashing gently were the most likely times when my mind wandered as well. It was incredibly hard to keep my thoughts from going off to my thoughts regarding my kids messy bedrooms, the grocery list, or other assignments I needed to complete.
ReplyDeleteWe all get overwhelmed at times in life...sometimes daily when things are extremely chaotic...but you can get to that point, Kris, where you are confident, secure and free from the things that worry you. I pray you all the success on your journey.
God Bless,
Melissa Rasberry
It was a relief to read and hear how common this problem is for people. And I find it fascinating to have the ability to perfect the intentional stillness of the mind. I will continue to practice these techniques so that I can learn to focus and create a "Teflon Mind" as Dacher describes it.