Breath and new beginnings

A brief post to again advocate for Sharon Salzberg's new meditation book (Real Happiness) or at the very least meditation that focuses on each breath as a new beginning.

I did her meditation again this morning after a kind of difficult night, negative thoughts swarming like a low pressure system around my head, giving me a sinus headache, waking me up often.  I breathed some late last night, cried some and slept again.

Then in the morning, I did the meditation, really focusing on each breath as she suggests and seemingly out of nowhere a sense, a real, palpable sense of a new beginning, the type I haven't felt since I was much younger, maybe end of high-school, early college days.  I was afraid it would evaporate as soon as the meditation ended but it did not.  I hesitate to write about it in fear of driving it off.  But have decided to treat it as she suggests treating each breath - holding it like something precious - that needs to be held so as not lost, but not grasped at or else destroyed.

I also did her walking meditation inside, then outside.  It inspired me to use some of this with my acting class (they're already used to this by now - we start every class with yoga - they know by now they got stuck with the hippie and they tolerate me - some are even quite game...I think I must seems like some strange artefact from the past or maybe the teacher on South Park...).  I then asked them to walk like this as a person they had observed outside.  It brought up many observations from the students about physicalizing someone else other than themselves - some felt the person differently afterwards, some did not.  We then talked about issues of identity and where they live in the body and mind, how many people we are during the day.  All stimulated by one question from Chaikin's Presence of the Actor:  Who or what is it that you think cannot be seen by anyone - is it still you?

This feeling of new beginning is probably also inspired by working with The Presence of the Actor again, as that was a part of the most seminal moment in my own student-artistic development.

I am aware I will now try to grasp this feeling, hold onto it for dear life, and that will not work.  But I am grateful, very, for the release.  Many more things seem possible, my cold has lifted (thanks also to homeopathic remedies in tandem with fresh ginger & lemon tea) and I have way more energy than I've had in ages.

Enough energy in fact to change my cat''s litter box finally.  I made a decision to change his cat litter, the fact of which he refuses to accept.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry in recognition of this total refusal to embrace involuntary change of any kind even if it's for the better.  His looks he shot me were withering.  J'accuse you horrible Changer of the Litter.  I do hear him using it though so the war is - hopefully - over.  I had to move the pheromone diffuser to the bathroom - to seduce him back in to the Evil Litter.  I am now listening to him in the box though and am realizing the joke may be on me because it's way louder than the other kind.  Hmmmm.

OK, enough meditation on cat litter.  I hope the metaphor at least was somewhat interesting...

Gotta go now and finish grading homework assignments for my other class at BCC.  The fun never stops.  Well the truth is teaching acting is fun, really fun...don't tell anyone, my whole martyr thing will stop working.