Second Day: Meditation, a Movie, and More

We started of our second day of Eastern Disciplines with a guided meditation on YouTube.  It was very calming, however, the narrator talked really slowly so I found it hard to pay attention. I spaced out halfway through, but I liked the breathing exercises the narrator guided us through in the beginning. The group talked about it together afterwards, and I found it interesting that some of the group had the same problem focusing like I did, while others really enjoyed the amount of detail and imagery that that the narrator used.

The most interesting part of the day was definitely the documentary we watched on the man who popularized yoga in America. It was called Awake: The Life of Yogananda. I was a little skeptical at first because the movie starts out with Yogananda saying that he can remember his birth, but as the movie went on I found myself more willing to believe in his claims of visions and contact with the divine. I found that it was much easier to believe that he talked with and had visions of his God compared to people of other religions who say they talk to their God. He seemed to have a truly intimate relationship with his God, and it felt very different from what I usually see nowadays. He was such a powerful speaker and he seemed like he truly believed in what he was saying.

Today was also the day that most of the students started reading Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn, which is the book we are all reading. It's a book about Buddhism, and so far it focuses on mindfulness and focusing on the present so you can live to your fullest potential. I think that the ideas from the book are nice, however I think that the author is trying to prove most of his points with opinions, which isn't very convincing to me and makes me feel like he is wasting my time. The book is about spirtuality and philosophies, which I guess is just opinions too, but I would like for the author to also give some facts to make me want to believe him, or maybe even provide an opposite opinion to show that his opinion makes more sense.

Our last activity of the day was yoga. We followed a video of a woman on YouTube that we thought was going to be easy, however there were many difficult poses that required a level of skill that I do not possess. It was still fun doing the poses that I was able to do, and at the end of the session I felt very energized, but there was way too much downward dog for my wrists to take.