meditative implement changeup

Update/202204121627: Making an effort to reincorporate meditation back into my day. Trying one round when I first wake up, and then a second NOT in the evening as I used to do, but it the middle of the afternoon, as it tends to be the time that the dangerous drift starts. No clue if I’ll stick with it, but it’s something to try, as I do recognize the anchoring value contained therein. Journaling/running/yoga routine stays the same.

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Ended my 20-year meditation practice near the end of last year after finally admitting that I needed something else – another tool, sertraline – and that it, meditation, wasn't doing the job anymore.

(That being said, I'll echo something Rick Rubin said to Marc Maron, that while he, at the time, had stopped meditating after doing so since he was 14, it remained a tool that he always had should it be needed; right now, it's a tool I don't need, or, rather, would like to try to accomplish the same job without it (though I do use the occasional pause and three deep breaths to re-center myself when I feel myself going off-kilter or in danger of slipping into an invasive thoughtloop.)

Other than meds, the current replacements are running and yoga, less sedentary pursuits which I've been doing for more than a decade anyhow – only I now approach the former as a kinhin / walking meditation practice – and, most importantly, journaling more frequently (at least twice daily, morning and evening) on a regular schedule: though I've scribbled daily illegibilities in a journal every morning for even longer than I've done either running or yoga, I've now embraced it as an at-least twice-daily anchor, a free-form replacement for a sitting meditation practice.

For the time being, it's proving to be a far more beneficial path to "letting go" and anchoring myself in the present. Should that change, I’ll roll with it.