Part 1 (kaya passadhi - body pacification, deep relaxation, same as taiji quan "fang song" - release tension)
4. Baby capybara (35 sec.)
🔗35 sec.video, 1080p downloadable
Part 2 (citta passaddhi - mind pacification, deeply relax the mind and free it from 5 hindrances)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/n91gcn/meditating_while_depressed_is_the_best_feeling/
Meditating while depressed is the best feeling ever.
Today I meditated again after about two months of not meditating and it felt great!
These past 6 months have been filled with ups and downs for me, but recently the downs started to become way more prominent than the ups. This escalated to the point where I was constantly worried about death and disease, even dreaming about tragic events that could potentially happen in my life. This lead me to fall into a well of despair, leaving me without a bright outlook on the future.
This weekend was when I hit rock bottom and I decided I needed to get things on track again. The first logical step was to start meditating again. Meditation has always left me with the calmness to overlook the situation and the ability to ignore distractions and mindless behaviors, so this will hopefully be the catalyst that guides me out of this forest of negativity. In addition to that, I've planned a productive personal task to do after work for each day of the week.
Now this morning I did my first meditation in a long time, only 10 minutes. As soon as I took a couple of breaths and realized I didn't have to do or be anything for the next couple of minutes, I was struck by this incredible sense of relaxation and restfulness. This sense of relaxation stayed with me during the meditation as I tried to keep it in the awareness that lies behind the focus on the breath. Now, the focus on the breath was really difficult, especially compared to these times in my life where I was more heavily into meditation. This was a great sign to me, since it signals that I have a lot of room to grow back to my old meditation skills, entailing that starting meditating again can also drive me up significantly.
All in all, it was great and I'm grateful for the experience. I'm definitely incorporating meditation into my daily life again.
Forum discussion
Re: first jhana really can be this easy (35 sec. video demonstration)
I loved both videos. Funny story: I woke up last night about 2-3 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. I have a busy home life, so I usually take such opportunities to do a little sitting, but I was slow to get to it last night: I chose rather to try and wait it out; maybe I could just fall back asleep. I made all sorts of excuses not to sit. Finally, after not falling back to sleep, I said, "To hell with it" and sat. And, yeah, first jhana within the first minute. (I guess my kaya was already quite relaxed.) Second jhana was slow in coming, and, when it came, it was weak: I fell back to first jhana almost immediately. But first jhana was good enough: I focused the v&v (or, maybe, papanca) and got some good insight through the sitting. Then I went back to sleep very easily.
What I found most poignant in your post, though, was the person's account of such a wonderful sitting after many months of depression. Though it should have been obvious all along that some sitting was the key, their citta didn't leap up at it: same with me last night. We live near a mountain, and I usually do outdoor sitting there every uposatha. I absolutely love it! Last night, before I sat, I was thinking about stories I heard about thudong monks in Thailand being addicted to thudong life: even after being mauled by animals, getting hit by cars, falling from cliffs, they can't wait to get back to it. That shame is what made me sit--even though the distractions of the home life and the sitting at home rather than outside take away some of the luster of sitting. But, the key is to do it! We have the mentalities of addicts in samsara: people who actually run from what would be kusala; it is always our last choice when we know it should be the first.
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