Zen Meditation

Zen Garden












I've been in Japan for 10 excellent days and had the opportunity to take a Zen meditation class. The class was at the Shunko-in Temple, Kyoto, with the Rev. Takafumi Kawakami giving the class.

Rev. Takafumi Kawakami said that Zen Buddhism is concern with making the right choices in the moment. Focusing on now, can change your past and your future, with every decision opening up a different set of options. Unfortunately, most people are not focus on the moment but are lost in the past or the future. This is especially true with modern life.

Meditation is one way to help you focus on the moment.

In the class we focused on our breathing in two 15 minutes sessions.

First, we focused on the bridge of the nose when we breathed in. The focus is here because the area is very sensitive. We were told to breath in deeply.

Next we held our breathe for a short time.

Then we exhaled slowly and after we had finished we paused before repeating the cycle again.

After the sessions, I felt very relaxed and energized.

The Rev. Takafumi Kawakami said that it's best to practice often, even for a minute or two a day rather than doing a long session.

Shunko-in Temple website - if you go to Kyoto, you can stay at the temple. They have rooms.

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2010 Health Targets

Keep aiming for the target and you'll get there


I know, I've posted them a few days late but here they are.

My approach to adopting these targets won’t be to do them all at once. Instead I will introduce them one at a time. I want to make them lasting habits and I believe that changing habits is a difficult process. So that's why I'll do them one at a time until I feel that they are established habits. Also, I’ll record on an excel spreadsheet how I’m doing with the targets.

Physical Goals

• To do some form of strenuous exercise (more than walking (though walking two hours plus I'll include as strenuous) five times a week. Currently, I do this about 1-2 times per week. I plan to make this a focus in either March or April.
• To do some muscle work, not much, but some, to build up my chest. My girlfriend thinks that I’m like a dinosaur, because all my power is in my legs and my arms and chest are puny. I might make this a focus later in the year. I'll see how my body is after establishing a five times a week exercise regime.
• To do introduce a new sport into my regime, probably tennis. Currently, I go for a run and swim.
• To learn to scuba dive. I plan to do this in either February or March.
• To learn to dive down whilst snorkeling.


Dietary Goals

• Return to eating a lot of vegetables and doing more home cooking. In February, I’ll do a lot more of this.
• To cut out sugar from my diet. I see sugar as far more harmful than fat. I remember reading somewhere that sugar has no nutritional value. Also heard people talking about ‘Sugar Blues’, a book that sees sugar as an additive drug with many side effects. This will be the focus for January. I’ll cut out soft drinks, cakes and sweets, things that obviously have sugar. I’ll check some products for sugar, but I live in Taiwan and my Chinese isn’t that good. I won’t check at restaurants to see if sugar has been added to their cooking.


Drink Goals

• To become a moderate drinker. By this I mean I can drink two or three glasses for enjoyment and then stop. I also want to get into the habit of spacing my drinks with a glass of water. I’ll keep a track of this by recording the days I don’t drink, the days where I drink moderately and heavily (more than 3 pints). This will be a focus in May or June.
• I want to stop drinking all soft drinks that have ‘refined’ sugar in them. I stopped last month, except for drinks that replaced alcoholic ones. I want to stop all together and only drink water or 100% fruit juices as replacements for alcoholic drinks.
I want to increase the amount of water I drink.

Mental Health Goals

• Be more positive
• Be more focus on what makes me feel excited. I'll publish the things I want to achieve this year in a blog post (in January). Also, I'll make a poster of them for my computer table, so that I'll see them everyday and I'll keep them in mind.
• Follow a low information diet as recommended by Tim Ferriss 'The 4-Hour Working Week'. I currently don't read the news, except for headlines on Yahoo. I used to do the crossword as well but now, I'll only do it if someone else has started one. Not reading the news is a habit but a shaky one at the moment. Also, I want to sort out my computer usage, so that it focuses on my goals and not on wasting time. This will be a focus in February.

My Health Audit

I did a health audit to see what things I'm doing right (or at least ok) and what things I'm doing wrong. I will follow this post up with goals for 2010 early next year.

My Health Audit

Physical

Positives

I do exercise 1 or 2 times a week
Eat a fairly healthy diet.
About the right weight for my height
Look a bit younger than my age, especially after the magic of a haircut.
Have about 95% of my hair still
I know how to play a lot of sports and consider myself physically capable of doing most things.
Don’t smoke
I've cut down on the total amount I drink
Get up early

Negatives

Should exercise more
Drink to get drunk, when I do drink. I’ve tried, half-heartedly, to drink one beer and then one water but I haven’t so far found a way to drink moderately i.e. drink for enjoyment rather than to get drunk.
My body has unexplained aches and pains
Often feel lethargic

Mind

Positives

Still have dreams I want to fulfill.
Still curious about things.
Love traveling and have some hobbies.
Can speak and read some Chinese
Have done a lot of research on language learning
Creative and still make ‘art’ and am interested in doing ‘new’ things in the stuff I’m interested in.

Negatives

My mind is pretty cluttered
Make slow progress towards goals
Don’t fully commit to things and goals
Rely on books too much for learning new skills, when doing and listening to people who can already do it, would be more time effective.
Tend to get ‘lost’ on the internet and end up wasting time and energy reading stuff that is irrelevant to my day and ultimately to my life.


Plan changes to improve

Stop reading the news and random stuff
Develop an internet protocol, where I do things first and ask myself do I really need to know this. Is this really that important to me.

Spiritual

Have a rough idea of what I want to do with my life.
Have an open mind
Believe that beliefs are just that.

Negative

I don’t firm up my believes and have no daily routine to keep myself focus on what I want to do.

Diet

Used to eat a very healthy diet that easily had ‘5’ fruit and veg a day.
Eat a reasonable diet that contains greens, some fruit and a mixture of white and red meat and seafood
Recently stopped drinking fizzy drinks.

Negative

Don’t drink enough water. Much prefer tea, coffee and beer over it.

Do the thing I've overlooked an area in my health audit? Have you done something similar? What health objects are you working on?