In the Moment

By Scott Coulter I practice Zen meditation — much more sporadically than I care to admit, but I do practice it, and I have found it an incredibly valuable practice. It's a grounding force for me, something that knocks me out of my head, quiets my spinning wheels of nervous thought, and lets me breathe. It allows me to put an end to that "drowning" feeling I can get when my to-do list is 20 items long, and the time in which to do it is one hour. Being a musician/social worker/writer/teacher often means living with such lists, budgeting my time incredibly carefully to pull off what I need to pull off for my various jobs, learn the music I need to learn for various performances, and submit what I need to submit (such as, ahem, blog entries) on time (this one being a day later than I had hoped). What happens when I meditate, even for only 10 minutes, is very subtle. But the impact is drastic. I'll give you this morning's rundown. I woke up with another one of those lists (well, I still have one of those lists — writing this being #2 on it). Last night, my wife and I spent the evening cleaning a horrendous mess in our kitchen after we discovered that our dishwasher had been collecting standing water for months (possibly years), creating the most foul-smelling "swamp-in-a-kitchen" you've ever experienced. It wasn't fun, and kind of got the ball rolling toward me feeling "on edge." This morning, I was still buzzing a bit from that, and when I looked at my list, the ner...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs