Native American Flute – 2 Hours Music Therapy For Meditation, Relax, Yoga, Concentration

Like any other young urban professional (yuppie) with high aspirations for life, I’m usually firing on all cylinders most of my day/week/month/etc.  My busy schedule is mostly self-inflicted but I think it’s less out of a need to stay busy and more out of a need to take advantage of every ounce of life that I can out of my day (maybe those are the same thing I don’t know).    Whether it’s professional responsibilities (working), personal intellectual growth (reading books, playing music, etc), social events (parties, bar, Social Boston Sports), fitness activities (running, lifting, sports, etc), scheming future ventures (I’ve got my hands in a bunch of possible future opportunities), planning my weekend adventures, or anything else, I’m always on the move.  My landlord has actually nicknamed me “Speedy Moses” because the only times we see each other I’m rushing off to one thing or another (not sure about the Moses part but oh well, he’s elderly so I don’t ask too many questions).

A typical day in the life looks like this:

• Wake up 20-30 minutes before the train leaves for work (having taken a shower the night before… hopefully)
• Hastily get dressed and eat a bowl of cereal (maybe)
• Buy a coffee on the way to the train (if I don’t make it a night ahead of time)
• Barely catch the train (often running to catch it, although once I’m on it it’s quite peaceful, I love to fly by the gridlock traffic on the highway while I’m reading a book or taking a nap on the train, neither of which you can do while driving)
• Catch a bus or bike to work
• Work for 4 hours
• Workout during lunch for 30-45 minutes and shower
• Work for another 4 hours (eating lunch at my desk somewhere in there)
• Catch a bus or bike to the train station
• Sometimes I make dinner or do laundry
• Find some time to write a blog post or two
• By now it’s at least 11pm and I’m in bed usually before midnight

I’m constantly go-go-go, spending minimal time in silence or stillness.  I imagine many yuppies have a similar lifestyle that is constantly on the go.  During the month of July I’ve decided that I’m going to do a meditation experiment where I’ll meditate every day for at least a half hour.  I don’t really know the first thing about meditation so it’ll be an interesting life experience to slow down and focus my mind for at least a half hour every day.  I’m not sure the last time I spent a half hour in total silence during the week.  On the weekends I do this quite a bit because I escape to New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine where things slow down and I can be quiet in nature.  The city is a tough place to relax and find peace (are either of those possible?).

To get a grasp on what meditation is and what different kinds are out there I went to Les Internets for some investigation.  I quickly became overwhelmed with the different styles, religious practices, and pure information that’s out there on the subject of meditation.  After spending an afternoon going through internet page after internet page this is what I came up with:

• They recommend at least 10 days when trying out a new meditation sequence to see if it’ll work for you.  I decided that I would do 7 days and do a different type of meditation each week, it seemed to fit well with my 30 day constraint.
• Week 1 – Guided Meditation.  I’ve found a bunch of YouTube Videos and free MP3s for guided meditations where a voice will walk you through different meditation sequences.  I figured that this would be a good place to start considering my ignorance toward meditation, it could help me get my bearings on this new activity.
• Week 2 – Reflection Meditation.  It seemed that all religious practices had this aspect where you would read a passage and reflect on it during the meditation, really focusing on that experience, walking yourself through it and thinking about what it meant to you.  I went on a religious pilgrimage to Israel last year and kept a pretty detailed daily journal.  I plan to read one different entry each day and meditate on that experience.  In this way I’ll mix in some religious aspect to it as well which seems to be very common among meditation practices.
• Week 3 – Chakra Meditation.  There are 7 chakras on your body so I felt this would be perfect for a 7 day meditation sequence, one chakra per day.  From what I read briefly it seems that you focus on energy points throughout your body (chakras) and visualize white energy (cleansing energy) flowing through each chakra.  It is believed that this helps align your chakras and clean out any negative energy that may be residing in one or more of them.  There’s a lot to learn so I gave myself a few weeks to get spun up on it.
• Week 4 – Zen Meditation.  Some practices of meditation such as Vipassana aim toward a thought-free mind where you are completely at peace.  Zen Meditation however is all about experiencing what is happening right now, not what you will do or what you have done in the past, but what is happening right now so you’re 100% in the moment.  I’ll be backpacking in the Colorado Rockies during this week so I felt like it’d be a great experience to become Zen with my surroundings and try to be truly present in the moment.

I have to admit that I was completely humbled to find out how little I knew about meditation and how much there is to learn.  People spend their entire lives practicing meditation techniques while I’ll only be trying it out for a month to see if it’s something I’d like to incorporate into my lifestyle.  This is not to mention that there are hundreds of different styles of meditation, how one could possibly get a grasp on it is beyond me.  I don’t expect to fully understand anything but I plan to do a lot of reading, research, and meditating.  If anything, it’ll force me to slow down my life’s pace and take some time each day to sit in silence with my eyes closed and think.  Wish me luck on this new lifestyle experiment and if you have any suggestions or comments please send them my way via Twitter @, , or comment on my blog.

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