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Author Topic: Follow the letter, or the spirit?  (Read 3346 times)

Leanan Sidhe

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Follow the letter, or the spirit?
« on: June 17, 2013, 11:19:18 pm »
Not sure where to begin with this, because a few different things are going on.

Okay, let's see. I joined AODA and part of that is meditation. I'm kind of unusual in western society in that I can sit in the "lotus" position comfortably. However, for AODA, you're not supposed to do that. Your feet are supposed to be flat on the ground. The two options they give are sitting straight in a chair and having your legs bent with your feet on the ground. That, I can't do for long, certainly not long enough to meditate -- due to some fun stuff when I was a kid. It really doesn't bother me or usually even impair me, and I normally just stand or sit on the floor/ground.

So I could sit or kneel on the floor, but my feet wouldn't be flat on the ground. And for the sitting option, your thighs are supposed to be parallel to the floor -- which I could do by stretching my legs out, but otherwise not so much.

The other option is a walking meditation. This would have worked great a few years ago, and hopefully, it'll be perfect in the future. However, I was recently diagnosed with an Adrenal Insufficiency -- which the doctors have yet to decide about whether or not it's Addison's Disease and low Vitamin D.

I really don't want to complain, because the medicine they prescribed me has made me feel a MILLION times better (for a while there I was in excruciating pain almost all of the time). So, way better, and I'm incredibly grateful both that they know what it is, and that it's not something worse.

The thing is, I suspect my meds still need to be tweaked a bit. If I'm doing a walking mediation, have a dizzy spell, and fall flat on my face that's not going to help anything. Additionally, we're still at the point where the guys can't really leave me unattended for long -- which just about has us all pulling our hair out, though hopefully that part will be done soon. So, if I'm meditating in a place without a lot of people, which is the only way to be reasonably sure it won't get interrupted, one of them has to come with me. First of all, I don't want to do that to them. They've already been making sure I'm not alone, as well as accompanying me to doctors appointments and stuff. It also cuts into their time when they could be doing other things. Finally, unless they focus on something else, or meditate too, they'll be bored as all get out following me around.

Last, the stance in the handbook on meditating is not to have drugs or food in your system when you meditate. It also says not to meditate close to when you eat -- before or after.

I'm pretty sure they don't mean prescription medicine, when they say that, but coffee and alcohol are included. And if I had to wager a guess, I'd say the steroids I'm on are a mite more of a jolt to the system than a cup of coffee. Nevertheless, my system needs them.

I've eaten close to meditating before with no real problems. Sometimes I'd feel...heavier, I guess after eating and then meditating. A lot of times eating after meditating helped ground me.

The Order also recommends meditating right before or after sleep, ideally right after. I could do it at other times a lot more easily than most people could, but I still might not be able to pull it off like that.

And I need to take my meds -- which I take when i get up and when I go to sleep -- with food. I also need to eat regularly throughout the day, especially because I need to put a lot more weight on now that my body is finally seeing fit to absorb nutrients again.

So. Do I follow the letter of what the order says, or the spirit of it? Obviously, cessation of my meds is NOT an option in any way, shape, or form, nor is taking them without food or screwing around with the times I take them at.

Beyond that, do I try to follow it as closely as possible, or do I just do what works with factors I've got?

I asked one of the message groups from the order, but my message has to be moderated since I haven't posted much yet.

I'm thinking of asking the Grand Grove, if I don't hear back soon, but I'm curious what the opinion is on here, and I'm trying to figure out which way to swing in the meantime.
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"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation." -- Herman Hesse

Jenett

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Re: Follow the letter, or the spirit?
« Reply #1 on: June 17, 2013, 11:49:38 pm »
Quote from: Leanan Sidhe;112871

So I could sit or kneel on the floor, but my feet wouldn't be flat on the ground. And for the sitting option, your thighs are supposed to be parallel to the floor -- which I could do by stretching my legs out, but otherwise not so much.

The other option is a walking meditation. This would have worked great a few years ago, and hopefully, it'll be perfect in the future. However, I was recently diagnosed with an Adrenal Insufficiency -- which the doctors have yet to decide about whether or not it's Addison's Disease and low Vitamin D.


Asking is definitely a good idea - both because you probably aren't the only person for whom this is an issue, and because the best answer depends a bit on *why* they have those preferences (I can think of a good handful of possibilities, but I don't know which ones they care about.)

(I will also say: once they treated the Vitamin D stuff for me, that sudden surge of "I am totally exhausted now, let me fall down in this frozen snow bank on the way from my car to the door to work, because I can't go on" got a whole lot better - it took a month or two, but meds really helped there.)

Anyway: a couple of other possibilities: lying down with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. This is weird for meditations that require an up and down axis point, but some people (including me) make that work, and I find it vastly more comfortable for long meditation than sitting. Depends on if 'thighs parallel to the floor' is more or less important than 'feet on the floor'

Another possibility is using cushions to help - I know a few people who have trouble sitting fully who use something like a Buddhist style meditation bench or cushion.

As far as walking - would standing (leaning against a wall?) work for you?

The other option - especially since you're in the midst of finding meds that work - is to ease off on the meditation work for a bit, wait until you've got that stable, and then come back to it. (Learning new stuff like this *while* actively rewiring your biochemistry at the same time is one of those things that's doable, but sometimes an awful lot of extra work, where waiting a few months might make it a lot easier.)

Quote

Last, the stance in the handbook on meditating is not to have drugs or food in your system when you meditate. It also says not to meditate close to when you eat -- before or after.

I'm pretty sure they don't mean prescription medicine, when they say that, but coffee and alcohol are included. And if I had to wager a guess, I'd say the steroids I'm on are a mite more of a jolt to the system than a cup of coffee. Nevertheless, my system needs them.


Part of my evaluation of my own meds is what they're doing: the two I take regularly are Vitamin D (massive prescription dose twice a week) and a thyroid pill. Both of those are "This is a thing my body doesn't make right, but that my body *would* normally make", which I view as a different class of medication than "This is a thing that is altering how my body is trying to be, by putting something that wouldn't normally be in there in there." (my asthma rescue inhaler, for example, or allergy meds.)

(I also view 'stuff intending to act on brain chemistry' as a third category, because brains are especially weird bits of our body, and part of the issue is that it can be hard to tell if it's replacing something we don't make, or adding something that helps us function but is outside our body's normal range of stuff it'd do, or what.)

These aren't because one kind is 'better' than another kind - but because what they're trying to do can feel different, and can often produce different kinds of side effects, in my experience, for ritual and magic. (something your body used to make better and now doesn't is going to be a more intuitive pattern for your body to adapt to than "Oh, new thing!" in terms of natural energy flow.)

Anyway. Alcohol and caffeine (and chocolate, and carbs for some people, and dairy for some people, and all sorts of other things) affect how our bodies function. On this one, I'd say learn about the reasons why they suggest that (because they have reasons), and then do some experimentation, in a controlled sense, with how it works.

Try different times of day, spaces from meals, spaces from meds, doing functionally the same meditation or exercise for a couple of weeks (maybe a month or two: for menstruating people different points in the cycle can make a larger difference than is convenient sometimes - mentioning in case it's helpful for other people reading, as well as maybe for you)
 
Anyway. Asking is definitely the right move here, because people doing (or who have done) that same series of exercises can best help yo ufigure out which bits are most critical in the larger sequence. But there probably are options in there somewhere.
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Leanan Sidhe

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Re: Follow the letter, or the spirit?
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2013, 04:28:02 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;112872
Asking is definitely a good idea - both because you probably aren't the only person for whom this is an issue, and because the best answer depends a bit on *why* they have those preferences (I can think of a good handful of possibilities, but I don't know which ones they care about.)



Yeah, I'm going to ask today. I probably won't hear anything definitive for a few days.

The reasoning the handbook states for keeping the spine vertical is to allow nwyfre (essentially, life force) to travel up and down the spine. It's also the reasoning for not using cross-legged postures -- basically, the theory being that it restricts nwyfre from flowing between the earth and the person meditating.

Quote


(I will also say: once they treated the Vitamin D stuff for me, that sudden surge of "I am totally exhausted now, let me fall down in this frozen snow bank on the way from my car to the door to work, because I can't go on" got a whole lot better - it took a month or two, but meds really helped there.)



That is so good to hear. I feel a million times better, I really do, but there are still some quirks. I've only been on the meds for a month, and I've got a full metabolic test tomorrow. I started improving massively right away, but there was a time I collapsed in the middle of an intersection and couldn't get up before the light changed. Mercifully, one of my partners was with me -- but he literally had to drag me across the street. And since they put me on medicine, I've only been drinking one or two cups of coffee a day, or three on bad days. But a lot of times, I don't even finish my first cup. I just don't need it as much anymore. I grew up drinking a lot of coffee, but for the last year and a half, it got to the point where I was drinking it all day, every day -- and it wasn't even doing anything.

Quote


Anyway: a couple of other possibilities: lying down with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. This is weird for meditations that require an up and down axis point, but some people (including me) make that work, and I find it vastly more comfortable for long meditation than sitting. Depends on if 'thighs parallel to the floor' is more or less important than 'feet on the floor'

Another possibility is using cushions to help - I know a few people who have trouble sitting fully who use something like a Buddhist style meditation bench or cushion.

As far as walking - would standing (leaning against a wall?) work for you?

That’s how I normally meditate, actually and it works very well for me.

So far, I’ve assumed that ‘feet on the floor” is more important, because they are okay with walking meditations. But I will ask.

Cushions usually work, but I can’t sit on meditation benches for much longer than I can sit on normal benches or on stools (a few minutes longer than I can do a chair, but not long enough to effectively meditate).

That’s a great idea! I can’t walk as long as I used to, but I can still stand for a good while. The only problem is worrying about tipping over, but a wall at my back would prevent that.

Quote


The other option - especially since you're in the midst of finding meds that work - is to ease off on the meditation work for a bit, wait until you've got that stable, and then come back to it. (Learning new stuff like this *while* actively rewiring your biochemistry at the same time is one of those things that's doable, but sometimes an awful lot of extra work, where waiting a few months might make it a lot easier.)


I’ve considered this too, especially because I already have bouts of jitteriness/shakiness and meditation doesn’t really help me with that.

But by the same token, meditation does help me with relaxation, de-stressing, and ordering my thoughts, which I could use right now.

Also, there were other times in my life when having a structured spiritual practice tremendously helped me to thrive. Well, it always does, but sometimes it was even more useful. I’m thinking it will probably be the same in this instance. It’s absolutely a lot more work, but in the past, the difficulties have been worth the rewards for me.

Quote

Part of my evaluation of my own meds is what they're doing: the two I take regularly are Vitamin D (massive prescription dose twice a week) and a thyroid pill. Both of those are "This is a thing my body doesn't make right, but that my body *would* normally make", which I view as a different class of medication than "This is a thing that is altering how my body is trying to be, by putting something that wouldn't normally be in there in there." (my asthma rescue inhaler, for example, or allergy meds.)

(I also view 'stuff intending to act on brain chemistry' as a third category, because brains are especially weird bits of our body, and part of the issue is that it can be hard to tell if it's replacing something we don't make, or adding something that helps us function but is outside our body's normal range of stuff it'd do, or what.)

These aren't because one kind is 'better' than another kind - but because what they're trying to do can feel different, and can often produce different kinds of side effects, in my experience, for ritual and magic. (something your body used to make better and now doesn't is going to be a more intuitive pattern for your body to adapt to than "Oh, new thing!" in terms of natural energy flow.)

Anyway. Alcohol and caffeine (and chocolate, and carbs for some people, and dairy for some people, and all sorts of other things) affect how our bodies function. On this one, I'd say learn about the reasons why they suggest that (because they have reasons), and then do some experimentation, in a controlled sense, with how it works.

Try different times of day, spaces from meals, spaces from meds, doing functionally the same meditation or exercise for a couple of weeks (maybe a month or two: for menstruating people different points in the cycle can make a larger difference than is convenient sometimes - mentioning in case it's helpful for other people reading, as well as maybe for you)
 

That’s a good point. I’m on massive doses of Vitamin D, too, as well as two different steroids taken once a day. But the steroids are intended to replace those that my body isn’t making.
I will ask their reasoning, and work within the bounds of what they’re trying to achieve – without making my med schedule go off kilter.

My menstrual cycle does really complicate the way meditation works for me, and some foods and sugary drinks, too.

Quote


Anyway. Asking is definitely the right move here, because people doing (or who have done) that same series of exercises can best help yo ufigure out which bits are most critical in the larger sequence. But there probably are options in there somewhere.


I’m going to ask today. In the message group, someone responded saying that it wouldn’t matter if I used different meditation postures.

Thank you so much, Jenett. You gave me a ton of useful advice, a lot to think about, and great potential ways to be able to pull it off.
"Modesty is an illusion" -- de Sade
"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation." -- Herman Hesse

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