day 4 of zen retreat - discussion

first, the meditation - not sure why, but I zoned out a few times - different from sleep (no head droop) - just a sort of gray-out. kind of startling. other than that, it went pretty smoothly, I seem to be getting into the groove with less effort, fewer interruptions (although I'd like to do a full 10 min without one).

mindfulness: this was interesting. something I have been doing daily is push-ups. I don't enjoy them, but do them for the sake of building my strength. this seemed to fit the pattern in the day's reading (something you do to get past and onto other things), so I chose it as my test subject. things went really well, and the numbers were climbing without me having to focus on counting. I could feel my arms move, and the shirt shift on my back as I moved through the range of motion, and the front of the shirt move with each exhale. I felt the texture of the carpet under my hands (I used normal palm down hand position today). all rather bizarre, as I have done push-ups for months and never noticed these things.

all was well until about the count of 22. at that point, I could feel my arms ache and lost track of the other things I had noticed. now it was simply time to pound the last few out (target was 25) and call it complete. not as long a task as washing the dishes, but still very interesting to me.


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