Monday, July 18, 2011

more tips on meditating

As I said last week, I went to a meditation retreat this past weekend. It was my first retreat, and I went with some trepidation. After many hours of sitting and walking meditation, however,I felt a great sense of clarity. I was feeling fairly stressed, and this retreat was like hitting the reset button. Hopefully, this will be reflected in my writing. 
I learned some new techniques that I thought I would share with you. One I found particularly helpful for my writing has an acronym called RAIN. This is a technique to deal with feelings that get in the way of clear writing. R stands for recognize. First, it is important to recognize what feelings you are having. Next, A is for accept. Instead of trying to fight uncomfortable feelings, accept them. I is for inside, which is figuring out where in your body you feel the feeling. For example, you might feel a pulsing in your hands when you're sad or a knot in the stomache when you're angry. Stay with that sensation. N stands for non-identify. Basically, this means staying with the sensation until it dissolves.
Hopefully, RAIN will brighten your day and clarify your writing.

No comments:

Post a Comment