{"id":10,"date":"2013-11-07T23:57:33","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T23:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nashvillerecovers.org\/wordpress\/?p=10"},"modified":"2013-11-07T23:57:33","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T23:57:33","slug":"will-you-please-shut-up-im-meditating-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/2013\/11\/07\/will-you-please-shut-up-im-meditating-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Will you please SHUT UP? I\u2019m MEDITATING, people!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"againstthestream\"<\/a>In early recovery, I couldn\u2019t really sit still for five minutes, let alone an hour. My mind is always whirring, often with negative thoughts. Sitting still just lets those thoughts wash over me and put me in a nasty funk.<\/p>\n

But I kept hearing about the importance of listening to God, of doing that by meditating. Clear your mind, I was urged. So in looking for ways to do that, I stumbled across the Against the Stream meditation group, which, in fact, holds meditation meetings for people in recovery on Monday and Wednesday nights.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the funny\/peculiar thing \u2013 I found I can clear my mind MUCH BETTER when I\u2019m in a room full of other people trying to do the same thing. Even if that room is in an old restaurant equipment warehouse off Charlotte Avenue in West Nashville. True story.<\/p>\n

A leader takes us through some guided meditation for a few minutes, and then we sit in silence \u2013 for 20 to 35 minutes \u2014 as we try to focus only on our breathing and what\u2019s happening around us in the moment.<\/p>\n

I called Dave Smith, chief meditating officer of serenity and mindfulness (I made up that title) for the Against the Stream group (www.AgainstTheStreamNashville.com<\/a>) to chat about his group.<\/p>\n

Q: So if you had to boil down what you folks do in a sentence, what would it be?<\/i><\/p>\n

A: Using mindfulness meditation to explore the inner experience in learning how to relate to our lives in a more meaningful way.<\/p>\n

Q: Wow, that sounds, uh, like an incredibly lofty\u2013 and maybe unattainable \u2014 goal. What\u2019s step one for new guys like me?<\/i><\/p>\n

A: Step one is developing mind body awareness, bringing attention into the breathing body and out of the thinking mind. That would be phase one.<\/p>\n

Q: And it\u2019s harder than you think, at least for me. My mind is racing!<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Everyone\u2019s addicted to thinking, so how do we break the addiction to the mind? We have to focus on something else. We start with the body and the breath because they\u2019re so easy to notice.<\/p>\n

Q: We\u2019re told at the beginning that this isn\u2019t meant to replace 12-step meetings or treatment.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Not really. But for some people, it does. Some people got clean and sober at Against the Stream and have never been to a 12-step meeting. It\u2019s very open in that sense. We don\u2019t have an agenda for people coming in to the room.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s meant to be congruent with what you\u2019re already doing. But if you aren\u2019t doing anything else, that\u2019s OK too.<\/p>\n

If someone were to ask me, I really like this meeting, should I stop going to the 12-step meetings, I would say no, don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

Q: Do you get asked that?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: It happens all the time.<\/p>\n

Q: So what\u2019s phase two?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Once we\u2019re able to relax, we\u2019re more likely to be able to observe where the mind is being pulled. You can now observe \u2014 are you being pulled into the past? Are you being pulled into depression? Where are you being pulled? Once you\u2019re being relaxed, you can come up with that tendency.<\/p>\n

Q: And phase three?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: By relaxing, observing and allowing, we can work with anticipation or resistance. We\u2019re either anticipating something or resisting something all the time. We can work with that reality and not struggle with it so much.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re learning to be at ease with the reality of anticipation and resistance.<\/p>\n

Q: But not trying to eliminate it.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: There\u2019s no way to eliminate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In early recovery, I couldn\u2019t really sit still for five minutes, let alone an hour. My mind is always whirring, often with negative thoughts. Sitting still just lets those thoughts wash over me and put me in a nasty funk. But I kept hearing about the importance of listening to God, of doing that by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}