{"id":3061,"date":"2017-10-03T12:22:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T17:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/?p=3061"},"modified":"2017-10-06T12:28:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T17:28:16","slug":"meditation-station-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/?p=3061","title":{"rendered":"Meditating Between Two Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Hammock Meditation B\/W\" src=\"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/PYY-HamockMeditation-2017-800x400.jpg\" style=\"width: 500px; height: 250px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another early morning meditation session, and to be honest, it could have gone better.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t sleep last night, and as I sit here shaking my head at myself for trying to &ldquo;focus&rdquo; during a day I know &ldquo;focusing&rdquo; will be entirely impossible, I hear this voice in the back of my head that says &ldquo;but, you told yourself if you can focus on a morning like this, with only 3 hours of sleep, that&rsquo;s great brain training for when you&rsquo;re not exhausted&hellip; right?&rdquo;&nbsp; At this point, I should be able to cut glass with my meditative gaze (through my own eyelids, of course).&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t stand directly in front of me when I&rsquo;m meditating the next time I&rsquo;m freshly revived for the occasion.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t be held responsible for what happens when my &ldquo;focus&rdquo; kicks in .<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So, I&rsquo;ve have this on-again-off-again love affair with mindful meditation for the past 8, or so, months.&nbsp;&nbsp; At first I thought it wasn&rsquo;t helping at all, but I actually did begin noticing some interesting differences in the way I dealt with certain situations, and the impact it had on my lucid dreaming was pretty incredible.&nbsp; I wound up stopping for a few months for some reason, I can&rsquo;t remember why, but I started back up again a few weeks ago, maybe longer, and I&rsquo;m getting myself back on track. I don&rsquo;t know if anything is happening, brain wise, yet? But for the past few days I&rsquo;ve gotten around halfway through my indoor meditation time, which I lay down for, and one of my cats has taken to making it his mission to cuddle with me &#8211; aggressively.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know why that is.&nbsp; If it&rsquo;s just him?&nbsp; Or if something is happening to me physically, or mentally, that&rsquo;s causing him to think I&rsquo;m good cuddle material halfway through that session.&nbsp; If, for some reason, I&rsquo;m actually attracting him because of some weird change that&rsquo;s happening that I wasn&rsquo;t aware of. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It&rsquo;s always about 30 minutes in, and he comes directly up to me and after a bit of kneading he lays down directly against my leg.&nbsp; Completely ruins my session. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I know what you&rsquo;re thinking &#8211; &ldquo;why don&rsquo;t you close the door?&rdquo;&nbsp; I laugh.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know my cats.&nbsp; And this one weighs over 20 pounds. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The first time he did it I was kind of like, &ldquo;Ok, I guess I&rsquo;m done meditating today&rdquo;. By the 3rd day he did it I actually pushed him away from me and told him to get down.&nbsp; He looked at me like I&rsquo;d just popped his balloon and stole his candy.&nbsp; But today.&nbsp; Today he went above and beyond.&nbsp; Today he jumped up onto the bed, and he faced me the entire time he was kneading. Before today, he always had his butt pointed my way, but not today.&nbsp; And when he was done kneading he laid down with purpose, like he owned the joint, and he stared directly at me.&nbsp; Intensely. No blinking.&nbsp; No purring.&nbsp; No cuddle-cuddle stuff.&nbsp; No.&nbsp;&nbsp; Just &#8211; staring.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After I came downstairs I got to thinking about that cat that used to visit people in their rooms in the nursing home it lived?&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/howaboutthat\/7129952\/Cat-predicts-50-deaths-in-RI-nursing-home.html\" target=\"_blank\">Do you remember that cat<\/a>?&nbsp; It would visit people who were going to die within 24 or 48 hours.&nbsp; It would lay with them and they&rsquo;d pass away.&nbsp; Then I thought, maybe some cats can sense things about people.&nbsp; I mean, there has to be some sort of science involved at some point, right? &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Anyway, he loves to cuddle with me when I&rsquo;m working at my desk (another incredibly convenient time to have a 20+ pound cat laying in my lap) but that&rsquo;s pretty much the only time he likes to do that.&nbsp; Otherwise, he&rsquo;s sprawled out in some wide open space somewhere else around the house.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t think of another time when he&rsquo;s wanted to cuddle with me when it wasn&rsquo;t the middle of the night.&nbsp; So it got me wondering, maybe meditating has caused some sort of effect my cat can sense?&nbsp; I dunno, something to think about, I guess.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Turns out my hammock is the best place to meditate uninterrupted, and once I get the hang of taking in all the sounds outside, I&rsquo;ll be golden.&nbsp;&nbsp; Up until a few days ago I had no idea just how many different kinds of birds we have here in our tiny little mid-coast town.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finding a good place to meditate should be easier &#8230; right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104,100,99,102,103,101],"class_list":["post-3061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-focus","tag-hammock","tag-meditation","tag-mindful","tag-om","tag-outdoor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/HomeSweetOm-125x166.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3061"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3115,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061\/revisions\/3115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetyahyah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}