tm – That Girl Allison

When It Gets Tough

I didn’t meditate last weekend, or on Monday. I was exhausted from training, and coming down with the beginnings of a cold, and all I wanted to do was relax.

I fell off the wagon. I felt lazy. I started to beat myself up but stopped. I started up again on Tuesday and I’ve been consistent. But I need to get back to doing 20 minutes 2x/day. Vedic meditation really works it’s magic when it’s practiced twice a day.

Even more aggravating though: I noticed that I’m very restless during my morning meditation. Like, more fidgety than usual. (And I fidget a lot, but that’s a story for another post.) I can’t sit still and it’s probably because my future is up in the air. I’m not really sure what I’m doing next. And although I’m not losing sleep over it this time, my mind is just constantly racing with thoughts of WHAT AM I DOING TODAY, etc.

But as they say, when it’s hardest to sit still, that’s when you need it the most. So sit I will.

Election Day 2016

My polling place on the upper west side was busier than it ever has been before! I went by around 8:45am and luckily, I only had to wait around 20 minutes or so, but I hear it got bad in certain parts of my ‘hood. Hopefully everyone voted!

I spent my day in meditation, then a kundalini yoga class, then I cooked lunch, followed by catching up with a friend that I hadn’t seen in a while, and then we went to an Urban Zen yoga class. Everything was about stress reduction and it was lovely.

This election has been awful. Donald Trump is an atrocious excuse for a human being with some (emphasis on the word some) of the most awful, racist, misogynist supporters out there. But for those supporters who aren’t the bottom of the barrel, I get it. Sort of. You want lower taxes and you don’t want the country flooded with immigrants from cultures that don’t easily or at all assimilate. I don’t agree with the lower taxes for all. I believe that the super wealthy should start paying their fair share (again). But we’ve been seeing how loads of immigrants haven’t been assimilating into European countries and so it’s understandable and reasonable that some Americans don’t want that here.

That said, I’m not giving the nuclear code to a man who is so volatile that questions about his statements regarding a beauty pageant winner send him on Twitter rants at 3am. He is attention deficit disordered narcissistic misogynist fuckwit. I know people like him because he has no experience in government, but that is not a plus for me.

So, I empathize with the other side, but truly, I hope he loses. I hope we can wake up tomorrow to a world where it is no longer unimaginable for a little girl to dream to be president one day. HRC has a ton of baggage and is not perfect by any means, but she’s what we got so I hope she wins.

Now watch your alcohol intake tonight, please.

Game On.

Long time, no post! Apologies if you’ve noticed; I’ve been abroad. I knew that when I was in Poland for 10 days that my meditation practice would pause. It did when I went to Scandinavia last year and I made the decision to change my expectations and not to beat myself up over it. The last time I meditated was the morning was on the flight from Frankfurt to Krakow and I was OK with that. I was a little anxious that I would have trouble sleeping without meditation. But aside from that one day when I drank three cappuccinos (damn you, caffeine), I had zero trouble sleeping thanks to walking 12 hours a day (and the mulled wine, and pierogi, etc).

I started meditating again yesterday morning and it feels totally easy to slip back into my two 20 minute meditations a day. Six to seven AM are my time to meditate, check my email, and pet my cat again.

I’ll get more posts and photos up about my travels, but if you need to see photos in the meantime, you can head over to my Instagram.

(Photo is of a church in Gdansk, Poland.)

All You Can Do

I’ve been practicing transcendental meditation (aka vedic meditation) for about 3 weeks now. I’ve been meditating twice daily since January 2013 so finding the time to meditate twice a day is easy and I’m really dedicated to fitting it in every day. i’ve been stealing away to a dark call room at my office for twenty minutes in the afternoon. It’s so nice to recharge.

But my small roof gathering got in the way of my second meditation on Saturday night and I really beat myself up over it. For, like, two days. But I got over it. Beating myself up over it won’t change my missing the sitting.

Then it almost happened again tonight. The afternoon at work was busy and by the time I got home from the office, I didn’t have enough time to sit before my yoga class.

What to do. it’s generally suggested to do the second meditation between 2pm and 8pm because it’s an energizing meditation and you don’t want to be up all night if you do it at too late an hour.

So, here’s what I did: I sat and meditated for 7 minutes while I waited for the train to come after yoga and then another 11 minutes once I was on the train. 18 minutes isn’t 20 minutes, but it’s better than nothing.

I’m not beating myself up this time. I got in a lot and I’m happy with it.

Synchronicity

I completed my Vedic (aka Transcendental) meditation training this week and maybe I’m connecting things that are just coincidences, but after 5 days of practicing TM, I feel like there’s some synchronicity happening.

On Wednesday, I finally booked my plane ticket to Poland. That evening at the training, a couple came and the husband was Polish.

On Thursday, I was on the train home and I saw a dude wearing a Green Day t-shirt from their last world tour. Listed on the back of it was a city in Poland. Green Day had also just released Bang Bang that morning.

Finally, yesterday I told my cousin that I was leaving for Poland on the 18th of October and she reminded me that the number 18 is a lucky number for Jews. The letters of the Hebrew word “chai” add up to 18 and I have a gold chai that I was given at my baby naming. (I just had to Google all of that, btw, because I am a #badjew.)

Controlling Your Thoughts

I need to meditate more. Because my anxiety is brutal lately.

I’d bought an amethyst crystal bracelet at Rock Star Crystals last week for “calm” and I thought it’d been working.

Then I left a beautiful yoga class at Yoga Shanti, a studio across the street from my office that’s absolutely beautiful, last night and saw a Slack message from my boss and absolutely lost my shit. It was just a simple question but I made it mean that I did something wrong, when I’m 99.9% sure, I did not. I immediately text my boyfriend and began stressing him out. I felt really bad. I responded to the message when I got home and spent the rest of the night watching Orange is the New Black.

I’m feeling like I need to tune back in and sit in quiet stillness more often. I have a meditation MP3 from from Kris Carr that is 14 minutes long. It’s mostly just soothing music and Kris Carr reminding you every few minutes to keep counting your breath. I sat through it last night for the first time and it was Hard with a capital H. This means I need to do be doing it regularly.

A year ago this would’ve been easy. I would’ve been going to the Be Society on a weekly basis and I probably would’ve gone to The Big Quiet at least twice by now.

I made plans to go to the next Big Quiet in July with one of my yoga teacher friends. And I emailed a teacher of Transcendental Meditation who I’ve practiced with a few times in the past and signed up for his August TM course. It’s time to finally get serious with my TM training. Everyone swears by it. Oh, and I’m going on my first yoga retreat in July. Which I’m so excited for.

I need to journal more and not rely on others to talk me down off my Stress Cliffs of Death. I want to go take a Reki healing class too because those are always fun, too.

I don’t think I need meds. I don’t want to take meds. I think meds are great for people who really, really need them, but I don’t want them yet. I want to continue to learn how to control my mind.