The Right Way

After noticing the pain in my wrists (which may or may not be caused by yoga), I convinced myself that the pain was caused by my high levels of stress and low energy. After a few days of no pain and meditation, I went bowling on Saturday and the pain came back. This just proved that my theory was most likely incorrect and the pain is probably caused by some physical issue. I will need to take care of my wrists more, but this is not a health and fitness blog so enough about that topic.

The positive thing about the pain is that it provided me the opportunity to take a step back and look at my life. I noticed that my life was filled with tons of activities, but I also had high stress and low energy. A month ago I meditated more often and read books on spirituality. Now I chose to watch sitcom re-runs and surf the web to search for one more hilarious picture of a cat. When did I diverge my focus from spirituality? I am no longer improving my life, but instead entertaining my time away.

The interesting part is that my focus was not only gone from my spiritual journey but also from work and extra curricular activities. Luckily, I noticed this important turn of events and will remedy the situation. The first thought I must ponder is "What is the difference between watching TV and reading a book on spirituality?"

The big picture answer is there is no difference. My life will most likely not be affected by such a small decision. So how do I make the right choice between watching TV and reading a book?

The right choice is individual specific and based on the current circumstances. The first step in this process is to acknowledge there is a choice. The conscious mind can then logically assess the situation and the unconscious mind can provide further insight. As a guideline to do the right thing, I use The Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. If the outcome of the decision follows the Eightfold Path than it assures that the right decision is made.

If I go home from work and my conscious mind decides I should read or blog but my unconscious mind wants to watch TV, then I will use the super conscious mind as a hammer to enforce the right decision. If it turns out that my energy level is too low or I'm too wound up to focus on a book and instead should have watched TV, my conscious and unconscious mind will use this new found experience the next time I make a similar decision.

This method has one great benefit. Once I start making the right decisions in my daily choices, such as going to the gym, meditating, or reading, then I will more likely continue to make right decisions in m y life. A similar outcome happens for wrong choices being made because a wrong choice will perpetuate more wrong choices.

Suffering through Yoga

I was introduced to yoga a few months ago and I really enjoyed it. I immediately went off and bought a yoga mat, investigated a few studios, and tried a few classes. It was a different from going to the gym because I had to focus on the balance between the mind and body. Breathing consistently and mindfully became very challenging while performing intricate poses. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge and was having a great time exploring it!

Lately, my wrists have a dull, consistent pain during the day. I have been very fearful and cognizant of carpal tunnel syndrome since high school. I used to come home from school and use AOL Instant Messenger for a few hours. I became really fast at typing. Then I would play my guitar for a couple of hours. This routine continued through college and graduate school. Both were very intense activities for my wrist. I also lifted weights and the slightest mistake would send a shooting pain through my entire forearm. I need to be very focused on my wrists while working out, typing, or playing my guitar.

Yoga has some very intense positions. At some points I thought I was ripping my arm out of my socket! Unfortunately, it was the basic positions which gave me the most agony. Downward dog and Plank caused me immense pain in my wrists. Not necessarily while performing the position, but the following few days I experienced discomfort. This caused problems at work because I sit behind a computer and type all day. I knew I had to come up with a solution.

Whenever I experience physical pain, I ask myself a couple of questions to determine where the pain is coming from. The first is always, "Did I do anything obvious that would cause pain?" If a bone is sticking out of my arm, then yes, the injury needs to be handled by a doctor. If the injury is not that extreme, the next question is always "Am I stressed?" In one my earlier blogs, I mentioned that I was feeling discomfort in my abdomen while running which was caused by my incorrect handling of stress.

Pain is the body's way of indicating that something is wrong. We take pain relievers so we can continue on with our normal activity rather than to stop and think about where the pain is coming from. If I reflect on the past few weeks, I have been rather stressed and ignoring meditating daily. I have been watching slightly more television and hanging out on my laptop more. My energy level is higher than it was a month ago, but not by much. Maybe I am taking on too many extracurricular activities and not having enough time for the things that I need to do.

The pain in my wrist could very well be from the yoga positions or they could be from stress. At this point, I am unsure of cause but the obvious solution is to take a recess from yoga until my wrists heal. I will also need to focus more on my stress and gaining energy. I will need to meditate more and not stay out all night on the weekends. Within a couple of weeks, I can attempt yoga again with more energy and less stress. Hopefully the pain will be gone and I can go back to doing yoga!

Understanding Anger

I recently experienced anger again and so many questions arose. Why was I angry? What caused this anger? Was my anger justified? Did I perform the right action? Was it worth being angry? I wanted to look closely at this experience and determined where this anger came from.

The background and specific circumstances to the incident are irrelevant. We have all been angry at someone and most of these situations arise because "he did something so wrong that he needs to be put back into his place". A typical response to anger is to march over there, raise your voice, point out his errors, and fix the situation. How many times does this solution work? Will the person ever look back and say "You're correct, I'll do what you think is right."? As soon as he opened his mouth to respond in a cool, calm manner, I realized that I lost control and I my actions were wrong.

Before my anger arose in me, I was sitting there feeling no animosity towards the situation. Then in a blink of an eye, I lost all control. If I did not have control, who gained control over me? The unconscious mind. Understanding the mind takes much insight and perspective into one's life. The unconscious mind decides what music you enjoy, comes up with that awesome gift for your girlfriend, and is the driving force behind spontaneous living room dance parties. It has many other great processing functions associated with it as well. The other side is the conscious mind which has a global perspective on situations and is highly logical. It slowly analyzes situations and is primarily used when making big decisions, such as should I take a new job offer. Both parts of the mind are very important to being successful and have their own strengths and weaknesses. I will go into more details on these differences in subsequent blogs.

While listening to the situation unfold, my conscious mind was analyzing the facts of what he did and gaining the global perspective by looking through his eyes at the situation. While it was in control, it realized that his actions were legitimate and he did not do anything wrong. The unconscious mind was looking at these facts and valuing them and rapidly coming to its own conclusion. Then I heard a new piece of information and the unconscious mind processed this information to be the worst possible thing to occur. The conscious mind also agreed that this was not good and gave full control to the unconscious mind to do what it wanted, which was to be angry. The unconscious mind had tunnel vision and disregarded all the information I collected. It did not care what anyone else said. It was ready to do anything needed to solve the problem.

If one reaches this point, there is little one can do. One should try to avoid giving full control to the unconscious mind because it lacks that global perspective. It does what it wants with little regard of others or what is best for you! One can sometimes anticipate the unconscious takeover by seeing that the mind is processing things extremely rapidly. At this point, if you focus on your breathing and clear out your mind, you may avoid a bad situation.

If my conscious mind was in control, there would have been a different outcome. I would have went in there and approached him with empathy. We could have both resolved the situation and came up with an amicable solution.