My meditation journal

[Thittato]

Fourth skydive tandem-jump completed :-D

Ok, now I have finished what I came here to do. Feels really good and I’m also really exhausted, but in a good way. It feels like I have one full season of skydiving now. Not in a traditional sense, but in my own way since my plans didn’t exactly go as planned. It was a huge disappointment coming home from the skydiving course I did end of May / beginning of June since I was so invested in becoming a skydiver. I had the identity of already being a skydiver without having gone through the training, and that was a disaster for my ego when it turned out I couldn’t handle the training. But I left the course having done at the very least one tandem-jump, which was also a huuuge barrier to get through, and I kind of had to get forced out of the air-plane, so when I decided to come back here again my goal was to do three tamdems in order to acclimatize myself to do the course over again next summer. My primary goal was just to leave the plain by my own free will, and I succeeded with that on my first jump this time. After having jumped out of the airplane four times now it feels like something that is starting to become familiar to me. The ride up to 12500 feet always feels very intense and scary, but also kind of fun, but not once this time have I thought that I’ll abort mission and not jump. As soon as we leave the airplane it feels pretty damn awesome. If I go back to this training again next summer I will just have to be really determined to follow the procedures and orders and not over-think the whole thing so much. The focus should be on mastering the task at hand, and not on enjoying and/or experiencing some new and wild experience. Learning to drive the car before I can enjoy the scenery. But I had to be a passenger a few times to get used to the new and exceptionally wild scenery, before I can return to the boring task of actually learning to skydive.

[Thittato]

And then sauna and cold-showers tonight as well. Good to just blast it out. Somehow I still feel very vulnerable. I’m fed up with being a clown in this skydiving group. And I’m fed up with explaining my situation. These people are some sort of elite of something I cannot quite reach up to. But still I’m addicted to this whole thing. And then they respect my efforts, and give me a lot of support and praise for the investment I’m making. But I shouldn’t seek other peoples approvel in this thing. It is my own thing. But I guess I’m forced into a corner and some of my deepest vulnerabilities are coming out. Which I’m keen on exposing, feeling through, and surrendering into. But it is hard. And I’m keen on just forgetting everything about this thing for a long time. And next summer I’m keen on just being a normal skydiving student who is not in the «special needs» class. Which basically just boils downs to:

«Shut up, and follow the instructions.»

And probably I’m capable of that now, because I’m really fed up with all my excuses.

The only one I have left is: Not right now; next summer.

And I believe in that.

Either I have found something better next summer, or I haven’t - which means: this is it.

And that should be pretty ok. Because these people are beautiful in a very profound way.

[Thittato]

Cold shower this morning as well. Now I have left the skydiving school and I’m on the train on my way back home. Holy fuck that was intense! Glad to be done for this time. It was a success according to what I had planned. It seems like I really do want to become a skydiver, and now I have really made the right preparations for the next season. But I’m fucking glad that now I can take a well-deserved vacation. I’m fucking badass. Very few people would have continued to pursue this stuff having encountered the challenges I have met. A lot of the skydivers told me this. I’m starting to feel ready for the training. Now I know what it feels like to jump out of a plane from 4000 meters above the ground. I don’t have so many unanswered questions about the experience in itself. So I’m getting ready for just following the procedure for how to freefall safely and then activate the parachute, pilot it back to the landing area, and then go in for landing. What scared me the most I think was the idea of hanging under the parachute alone and having to figure out on my own how to fly it back to the landing area. I used to think I would be so in shock from the free-fall experience that I would be totally spaced out and not ready to think about logical procedures. But it feels very safe to hang under the parachute when doing tandem at least. It is not like I’m freaking out because the most intense part is already over and under the parachute you have quite some time to get an overview over the situation and start to plan the landing. So I just have to get a better understanding of how one is planning the landing. In free-fall you are held by two instructors, one from each side, like in this picture I’m posting, so if you space out and don’t release the parachute they will do it for you. You’ll get around 45-50 sec in free-fall together with them where they are going to teach you how to become stable in free-fall and be in the right position for releasing the parachute, and when the parachute is released the two instructors will let you go and then you are on your own. So next season it is time to be released and be on my own. This baby-skydiver is getting ready to leave the nest ?

[Thittato]

8th session of kayaking

So the first thing I did when I returned to my hometown was to go on a really beautiful kayak-trip again. I went to an island with a lighthouse on it that have seemed really far away, but the whole trip back and forth only took 5 hours in a very relaxed tempo with lots of pauses. It was intensly beautiful. I think the best thing I can do to move on with my skydiving process is just to totally immerse myself in everything else that life has to offer. My subconsciousness can continue to work on the skydiving thing while I have fun doing other stuff that gives me a sense of self-esteem and mastery. But I'm really hooked on skydiving. I think it is the most awesome thing one can possibly do. I'm glad that I'm starting to become fascinated with it for its own reward, and much less in order to prove to other people that I'm some badass renegade. It seems like everyone who is serious about skydiving are pretty down to earth and humble. They don't use it as some sort of ego-shit. I mean, if there is one thing skydiving has thought me it is that I have to seriously respect my own boundaries. It seems easier to respect other peoples boundaries when I have finally found out where mine are. Now I know when something is seriously difficult and frightening. I really utterly despise the people who tried to push me, and I feel so much love and respect for the people who understood what I was going through and respected that I had to take things in my own tempo. I don't want to be the person anymore who tries to push people. I want to be the person who understands and respects. The most beautiful people are the ones who give you total permission to be exactly who you are. Here I am on the way towards the island I was visiting this evening. I have tears in my eyes thinking about how much beauty kayaking has already given me.

[Thittato]

Cold shower today. Got to get started with the yoga again. Ok. Tomorrow I'm back with the 25 min yin yoga program.

[Thittato]

Cold shower, and then 25 min yin yoga. I also visited a friend yesterday, and we had a total kick on talking about exercise. I even borrowed a new kettlebell from him, which weights 20 kg. It was pretty cool carrying it home for 1 km. Carrying weights is weight-lifting in itself. This morning I did some squats and kettlebell swings with this new kettlebell before the cold shower. I think my healing-journey totally continues with just continuing to be more and more physical.

[Thittato]

9th session of kayaking

Started the day with 20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then a cold shower. Later in the day I went kayaking together with the local kayak-club. This was a pretty strange experience. These are older people, and none of them are looking for adventures in kayaking. They are more into it just as a way to relax and spend some time in nature with other people, I think. It was sort of nice to experience their take on it, since right now I want to get as much experience with kayaking as possible. But I'm looking for something more action-filled. I did get some good tips on my padling-technique, though.

[Thittato]

20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then a cold shower. So nice!

[Thittato]

10th session of kayaking

So me and friend finally had the chance to go kayaking today. We've been talking about it for some time, and finally the day came. The plan was to try out smoking cannabis while kayaking for the first time. It was pretty awesome. And then we arrived at this beautiful island that I've been to many times now, and we started doing yoga on top of a mountain. The ride over to the island was a bit shaky, but when we crossed the end of the island, we came to more silent water, and the sun started shining very beautifully. It was like a reward for a little expedition over the ocean. It was so beautiful doing yoga in the sun after this. I relaxed so deeply into some of the poses. Doing yoga in nature while stone after having paddled kayak was a really beautiful thing. It would probably have been really nice without the cannabis as well. I think I want to do this more often, without cannabis - just kayak out to somewhere, and then have a yoga session there. The yoga becomes very alive when one is warm from the kayaking, and tuned into nature from the nature experience while kayaking. The only thing missing from todays session was taking a bath. But that I will do soon. Kayaking, yoga, and bath. So this was like full circle with a lot of things. Connecting Ganja Yoga with kayaking. The rewards in focusing on yoga are so good for me right now. And it is so awesome connecting it with kayaking. It makes my core just feel so strong and vital in so many ways. Here is a picture from where we did yoga on the island today.

[Thittato]

And then ending the evening with 25 min yin yoga. This is the 3rd session of yoga today. Holy smokes. Riding out the tail-end of the cannabis enhancement. Really baking in the yin effects. I'm on fire with yoga today. So much passion and dedication in this state.

[Thittato]

11th sesson of kayaking.

Two days now of only doing cold showers. I’m back on the island I like so much, with a kayak. This time I finally brought my tent and sleeping back. I’m planning on sleeping here for 5 nights. But I will take the kayak back to town sometimes during day-time to pick up stuff I need or meet people. But this is my sleeping place for 5 nights now. Will be interesting to see how I spend the day tomorrow. I’m planning on starting it with a bath and then some yoga. Feels so good to be here. This is my second time sleeping in a tent this summer. So good to combine it with kayaking, and tomorrow also yoga and bathing. Will be interesting to see what this grows into. I’m thinking maybe I’ll start fishing, and maybe I’ll need to get hold of a good camping-kitchen. But I will just see how things develop.

[Thittato]

12th, 13th and 14th session of kayaking.

Back home again. Two nights, and three days of kayaking was more than enough hehe. So much sun, and wind, and salt water, and impressions from nature, and some good kayak-trips while I was there, and yoga and bathing, and I feel pretty saturated from the the whole thing. I'm glad I manged to keep my mania in check the first day out there, because I was almost about to go on a really long trip, but I'm glad I managed to avoid that, or else I would have been even more dead-tired than I am right now. Since I'm counting these kayaking sessions (which is a habit I have when I'm establishing myself in something new), I have to divide this trip into the different sessions. So session nr. 11 was packing the kayak and travelling over there. Much in and out from the kayak and stuff, so the whole thing took some time. Getting used to the kayak in a new way, packing and travelling with transporting stuff. Session nr. 12 was my first day there as I went for a day trip around a larger island nearby. I took 2 hours. When I came back to the tent I realized how important it is to stay active when camping, because it was so much better to rest when I had been putting in some work. Seesion nr. 13 was when I travelled back to my town to participate in a bhajan/kirtan for the evening and pick up some more stuff back home. I had to clean the kayak and put it back in storage at the club since it belongs to the club and I wasn't going to use it for several hours - I also travelled a longer route back home just for the fun of it, so I count this as a full session. Session nr. 14 was when I travelled back to the island again at midnight after I was done in town. I travelled the shortest route this time, which is probably 30-40 min, but it was done in the dark, and I had to adjust according to a big ferry that was coming my way when I was leaving the shore to move towards the island, so mentally it was a much bigger project than it would have been during daytime, so I count it as one full session. No wait! Hehe. Visiting town from the island, back and forth, is one session since it was one project, even though it involved some different things.  So I'm still at session nr. 13. Session nr. 14 was when I packed down the tent today and left the island. I travelled for around this other bigger island today, and I stopped on it and walked across the whole thing. Such a beautiful island. I made this trip to decide on whether my journey would continue, because I was so tired, but I thought maybe once the kayaking started I would get warm and inspired again. Almost decided on sleeping on this new island, but I was just so tired and uninspired, so I figured there has been enough kayaking and life by the ocean for a couple of days now. This weekend I'm going kayaking again with a friend I'm going to visit in another town, so I better conserve some inspiration for that trip. As for yoga I did 10 sun salutation each morning I woke up in the tent after having done a bath. These sun salutations felt extra powerful, because I was super-inspired by doing yoga in nature, and I did them extremly slow and mindfully. It also felt like they were super-charged from the kayaking. But yeah, the total sum of: sun, sea, wind, kayaking, camping etc. Holy smokes. That was pretty intense. It probably takes some extra energy, because I'm not used to camping, and kayaking is still new to me. So there was a lot packing in and out. Like first I had to pack my backpack to carry down to the kayak-club, and then I had to take everything out of my backpack and pack the kayak with those things instead, and etc. Lots of logistics. But now I have one day hiking and sleeping in the forest in tent this summer, and two nights sleeping in an island with kayak as transportation, so I've made some valuable experiences with camping this summer. Both trips were done solo. But I have to say, I'm not particularly fond of being alone for long periods of time. This would have been much more fun if I had done it with other people. But the people I know who could have possibly joined are not as inspired about this as I am, so we would have had to plan it for a long time before it would have happened. So I was pretty keen on just throwing myself out into it without thinking so much about it beforehand. So all in all it has been some very valuable experiences. The greatest inspiration is still how kayaking is fueling my yoga-practice. My paddling technique is getting really good. Now it will be nice with some days off to just subconsciously process the whole thing and not think so much about it for a few days. Interesting how much experience I have gotten with kayaking in such a short period of time. I think yoga really helps me understand the bodily experience of it, and I also have a good foundation for understanding the meditative part of it.

[Thittato]

20 min of vinyasa flow yoga this morning, and then a cold shower. Yesterday evening I did 30 min of ganja yoga, and then a 13 min ganja yoga meditation.

[Thittato]

Yoga is my anchor

Then I went climbing with some buddies, afterwards we went out and had a hamburger and a beer together, after that one of the guys left us, and me and the other one went home to my place. He is the one I did the skydiving-course with, so we chattet a lot about skydiving. He is like me, in this process of getting more and more athletic. We also kayak together. So he wanted to learn some yoga from me, and I taught him the sun salutations. It is interesting that they are both better than me in climbing because they started earlier than me, but I'm certainly catching up on them. And it seems, especially this time, because of the good flow I've had with both yoga and kayaking lately, that I'm in a better overall shape than them, so even though I'm lagging behind a little bit with the climbing, my overall pretty good fitness level helps me to gain momentum in the climbing and move even closer towards their level. And this was getting very evident today. And especially since my endurance has been getting better than theirs, I gain more time on the wall, which will increase my skills further. So I was like totally on fire with this feeling of athleticism today, so when my friend left, I rolled myself a cute little joint for this evening (which was actually pretty strong) and did another 30 min session of Ganja Yoga. And oh my god it was so good. It just goes so deep. So after the yoga I was just chilling, eating food, and really binging on watching interesting things on youtube: climbing, yoga, skydiving, kayaking, mixed martial arts, kirtan/bhajan concerts with beautiful music, etc. And then, when I was finished with all that, and I'm now at the tail-end of the cannabis enhancement, I just had to get back to my yoga math for a 3rd time this day and do 25 min of yin yoga. Holy smokes how awesome that was. I've also been burning incense and had a really warm and good vibe going here tonight. I'm so in love with yoga again. Yoga is my main discipline in life right now. It is my anchor.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Started the day with a cold shower, and then I did 50 min of classical yoga. Later in the day I went with a buddy to rollerblade in the skatehall for two hours. All these physical activites are nutrition for my yoga-practice.

[Thittato]

20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then a cold shower. So nice ?

[Thittato]

Cold shower today. It is a bit hard to keep my motivation going for cold exposure when I'm not really having the Wim Hof method as my main-focus anymore, but on the other hand it is out of the question to leave the shower after having only showered in warm water because then I feel so warm and foggy. But I wish the cold water was something I was embracing more. Now it is like I resist it but just go through it like a habit, even though it feels good afterwards. Yeah. The thing that is lacking is my attitude towards it. I'm not standing there until my resistance melts away. It is like I maintain my resistance and just try to endure. So yeah. I've always found it hard to keep two practices going at once. Like either I do yoga or I do meditation. But now I have my main focus on yoga, but since I have been doing cold exposure for so long now, it should be possible to just have it as an integrated part of my daily routine, especially since leaving the shower after having only showered in hot water is not really a choice. So I just need to be more mindful about my attitude when the time comes for the cold water. Like breathe and take it slow. There is still so much for me to learn about this. Which is great.

[Thittato]

10 sun salutations this morning. So sweet ??

[Thittato]

12th session of kayaking.

I'm calling this my 12th session, and instead of dividing the 11th session into 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th, session, I'll rather merge those sessions into the 11th session, since they were all part of one camping-trip and that's more how I count these sessions.

So I visited a buddy in another city, and he had two kayaks there. We smoked cannabis together the whole friday evening and talked a lot about various philosophical and spiritual topics. When we woke up on saturday we started preparing for the kayaking trip, and then we paddled to a beautiful island. After having explored the island for a bit we found out this was a pretty awesome place to smoke a joint, so we did, and then we sat in the sun for a while and then we went and did some yoga on top of a small mountain with a great view over the ocean and the horizont. And then after a while we started paddling back home again. Oh my god, that was so beautiful. Because of the cannabis I was getting so deep into the soul of kayaking. It almost felt like I was accessing the collective consciousness of kayaking and like we were channeling some mystical eskimo experience together. Totally awesome and beautiful. It was so much fun playing around with my paddling technique in this state. Like I was relaxing so much more into it. I could just let my body be totally relaxed, and then sort of let the spirit of paddling work itself through me. Like a mood running through you and then you let that mood be expressed throught the paddling. Seems much better, when doing kayaking high ("highaking") to start out sober and then paddle for a while until you reach a beautiful destination, and then to reward yourself with a joint there. Being high can easily bring up insecurities, so it is much better to already be warm and in the groove when doing it.

Perhaps that is something to try before Ganja Yoga as well - to first do a sober session of yoga.  That would be like clearing out the first layer, and really preparing the ground for going deep with Ganja Yoga.

Anyways, so today, when I came home from having spent two nights at the place of my buddy, I did 25 min yin yoga. It felt like the perfect way to round off such a great weekend.

[Thittato]

13th session of kayaking

Started the day with 20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then I did a cold shower. This time I was much more present with cold showering again and that makes it so much better - I mean the whole point of it, as I see it, is to breathe into that point where resistance melts away and you reach a relaxation response and the whole thing just becomes very relaxing and enjoyable. Later in the day I went kayaking again, for approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes. I was spending much of that time just exploring a big bridge I paddled to. Interesting how much variation there is in my paddling technique. There are many different levels to how much I get into the groove. All the way up to the bridge there was pretty much just resistance and not much flow going at all. But on my way home, when it started to get dark and I felt a bit in a rush to get home, I was getting into a much better groove. I think much of it is just about surrendering into it and trusting the process. The level of flow I get varies a lot. When the flow is good my technique feels perfect, when the flow is not so good my technique feels crappy. It is the same with everything. Meeting it with fresh eyes again and again. It never measures up quite exactly with the previous experience one had with it. One has to warm up again and tune into the flow of the day. Not the flow of yesterday. The quicker one is willing to let go of ones preconceived notions of how it was supposed to be, the quicker one is able to tune into how it is. This is something to become more aware of in my yoga-practice as well. And in everything.