My intention today was to meditation in the sun, disguising my practice as sunbathing with headphones (or earbuds, if you want to be trendy or an Apple fanboi). As soon as I walked into the sun, a cold front moved in. The wind started blowing hard and my skinny ass was not going to be able to hold out any longer than a few minutes having left my shirt in my apartment, you know, because I was ...sunbathing...
New plan. Luckily, I there is a jacuzzi next to my freezing cold pool. The jacuzzi is not freezing. In fact, it's almost too hot. I know the temperature is not to exceed 104, so says the sign, but it always felt hotter than that. I'm back to aqua therapy. The nice thing about meditating in a hot tub, tub, or jacuzzi... drowning out noise. I use one of the steps in the hot tub to rest my head with the water level just passing my ears. All I could ear was the rushing of the water. Kind of a relaxing sound. No iPhone needed (not that I'd bring it in the water anyway - not that attached). I did set my stopwatch to note the time spent.
One good thing I found while meditating in hot water, is how quickly I relaxed. Something about the heat combination with the breathing, the heat making blood flow probably more efficiently, spreading the oxygen throughout my body at an incredible rate. It felt like hyper-meditation. For obvious reasons, I wouldn't recommend this approach for everyone. In fact, it's highly discouraged for many people, so be responsible with your body and know your limits. I'm exploring mine. I've also been in really good shape practically all of my life with no record of family heart trouble, etc. Just please be careful is all I'm saying. I'm no expert. Just a guy opening himself up to the power of the universe for guidance.
In my session, I felt a variety of things. After a few minutes and with each strong breath, I felt random sensations in my teeth (of all places), tingling on my chest and hands and a flush feeling on my cheeks. My face was the only part of my body that was not submerged in the hot water. I'd imagine my cheeks would eventually start to sweat but this felt different. Almost like Novocaine from the Dentist when they got closer to your cheek then the tooth with that needle. So I could feel it, and then I could like feel it. I concentrated on the cool oxygen and air entering my lungs. With the cool breeze, my lungs welcomed the relief the rest of my body was force to operate without. I imagined the air running through my body, stimulating and empowering as it flew through my system... then I returned to imagining nothing.
The heat eventually got to me. It could almost feel sweat trying to escape my body even through it was submerged. The remaining exposed areas of my face poured sweat, increasing my irritations with stillness. It did not take much longer to lose my focus completely. It became more about convincing myself to keep breathing and ignore the discomfort, then it did about meditation. We ask ourselves to breathe all the time, under stress, panic or shock situations. I figured if I was trying to convince myself, I was no longer in the session.
I slowly got out of the jacuzzi and walked into the 40-something degree pool just next to it. That was cold and quite a body shocking experience. I threw myself underwater to cleanse myself of the discomfort, jumped out the the pool and allowed my body to stop steaming. Quite a transition. The heart beat so hard that I could feel each pulse everywhere on my body. Heart beat... Nah, more like Body Beat. I love it.
Today's session 10:32...
I think I'll meditate myself to sleep, see what that does. Possibly make up for lost time, even if it was a hyper-meditation session.
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