Cosmic Meditation - Meditation for Enlightenment, Meditation for Guidance, Meditation for Manifestation, Medita.. http://bit.ly/8ZjpCz

Pranayama Techniques - Yogic Breathing, Kapalabhati, Anuloma Viloma. Taking in lifeforce energy with breath. http://bit.ly/4NMHPZ

Pranayama Techniques - Alternate Nostril breathing.:

Pranayama Techniques - Alternate Nostril breathing.

.. http://bit.ly/68JgSX

Fun holiday tip: The AeroPress also works GREAT for straining mulled cider!

I just signed a petition telling Harry Reid to keep reconciliation on the table. Click here to sign: http://bit.ly/7tB8TA #hcr #publicoption

Then life gets a lot more fun and interesting

Important realization I just had: You can't transcend what you can't embrace. In order to surrender and let go you have to first accept.

Tell Senate progressives not to sit silently by as the #publicoption dies. Please sign and RT (via @credomobile) http://bit.ly/4LmIQ3

Polyphasic sleep milestone: I can meditate tired WITHOUT falling asleep. I used to have to time meditation carefully. No more!

Ugh. My everything hurts ttoday. After getting up, I took some Tylenol and went back to sleep until 1st napt (7AM). Taking it easy today.

EMERGENCY: Harry Reid screwed over the public option. Urge Feingold/Burris/Sanders to fight back. http://bit.ly/5OqcQ3

Slept off the effect of an all-nighter. Messed up my sleep schedule but sooo worth it. Got to meet and work with a great group of people.

Lotus Flower Symbol - The Lotus as a Healing Symbol, Lotus as a Symbol of Enlightenment. http://bit.ly/3mSiky

Oh, wow. From the same source as Carl Sagan's Glorious Dawn: The Symphony of Science. http://bit.ly/3k4Yzp Thanks @puredoxyk

Stop Lieberman! Any senator who filibusters the public option should lose their chairmanship http://bit.ly/31uhkO @credomobile Please RT

Are we going to let Joe Lieberman screw up health care reform? Hell no! Sign
the petition to hold him accountable

Ah. Feel less undead after my scheduled nap. Off to work!

That extra nap has me feeling more tired than ever. Totally unfair.

Ugh. I was shorted on my nap and my core sleep, so I thought I'd grab an extra nap. Big. Mistake.

Yay, I'm getting to see all my siblings at one time and place. Haven't done that in forever!

I just told President Obama we need him to FIGHT for a public option. Join me? http://bit.ly/3vTFXz #publicoption #p2 via @BoldProgressive

The Chakra Diagram - Knowing the Chakras for work with Reiki or Any Energy Healing http://bit.ly/2Ifw8V

A fresh perspective on my back.

So, my back has been acting up recently. I've taken on some physical challenges and I had back surgery only a couple of months ago, yet I felt it was time. At the same time, it's late in the year, and my spiritual tone is getting harder and harder to maintain.

A while back, a teacher told me that healing after surgery is like mending a broken relationship. I thought I'd smoothed things over pretty well, but I was about to find out I'd gotten the flowers but still wasn't listening :-D

I've recently been teaching a loved one the value of surrender; releasing emotional hang-ups to better stay in the present. With that I'd like to share the following quote:

"Think you the relationship between Master and Padawan is only to help them? Oh, this is what we let them believe, yes! But when the day comes that even old Yoda does not learn something from his students-then truly, he shall be a teacher no more." ―Yoda

I was meditating tonight, noticing the sensations produced by my unhappy back when it hit me. I still have emotional mending to do. I thought I'd just picked up and moved on, but instead I realized that I had basically pretended that (for the most part) it never happened. The other half was that even with that attitude, I was treating my back like it was permanently less than what it was. Putting all of this together, I gave my love to my innerverse, especially my poor back. For so long, it had toiled on, without the love and support of the guiding intelligence (me), yet it continued on and was only now crying for help and attention.

Having come to this realization, I was shocked to realize just how cruel one can be. Here I am trying to refine myself into a light upon the world, and I blithely ignore an entire universe entrusted to me and reliant upon my direction? No more.

I finished my meditation, and also realized that along with the ghost hunting that comes with this time of year, also comes the need to really focus on maintaining my spiritual tone. I spent a while collecting more energy and working on my tone (Water of Life, for those of you in-the-know). After that, and equipped with fresh perspective, I am once again back in the captain's chair.

Ugh. Core sleep massively interrupted by muscle cramps. To quote a Harold Ramis character, I feel like the floor of a taxi cab

I just learned that the Mysterious Cities of Gold is available at Hulu! Now we just need to get Spartakus on there, too!

Polyphasic adaptation day 6. Getting better slowly still. Awoken during core sleep by headache. Took OTC meds for it.

Polyphasic adaptation day 5. One note: My normal meditation is suffering for now, as I'm in sleep-dep. Practicing mindfulness to compensate.

Just had my body try to turn the lights out. Evasive action saved the day.

Polyphasic adaptation Day 4 and not bad. Still tired, though

Start of Day 3. A new timer insures against oversleep, and I'm doing pretty good with few sleep-dep symptoms. I think my body remembers.

Day 2 of polyphasic adaptation, and I overslept my core sleep 3 hours, AND I have a headache, AND I'm STILL tired....*growl*

Almost time for nap #1. Here's hoping the body remembers how this all works, and adapts faster than last time.

So polyphasic day 1 is underway. Not too bad, but the rough bits are still ahead.

Check out Keith Olbermann's hour-long special comment on health reform this Wednesday. (Wow!) Click here: http://bit.ly/1Fd2su sign/RT

I've got the Bad Horse Chorus lodged in my brain and I can't dig it out... @drhorrible

I've got the Bad Horse Chorus lodged in my brain and I can't dig it out...

Felling physically better and reuniting with the missus soon! Happy camper.

omfsm, I've been eating cruddy the last couple days. Got back on my green smoothies today and I'm feeling pumped!

RT @puredoxyk: Go ye, and harass the 13 Senate Democrats who're holding out on the Public Option! Here they are: http://is.gd/2JAOG

Vice President Biden Asks Your Help: Why We Need Reform Now - Reality Check: http://bit.ly/8LJ3j #health via @BoldProgressive

Great new TV ad - longtime Republican voter for the public option. http://bit.ly/2WAEXq #health #p2 #health via @BoldProgressive @DFAaction

Life upside-down? Check. Finding New Balance? Check!

Forgive the rather free-form nature of this blog post, but there's been lots going on and thus there is a lot to share.

Firstly, some physical updates:

I had been cruising along on my polyphasic sleep setup (Everyman 2-nap) and all was well, except that my midday nap spot was slowly doing Bad Things to my back (For those of you who read the newsletter at energy-healing-guide.com, please forgive if some of this is familiar. Not all of this will be the same). Eventually, the back gave up on my stupidity entirely and decided to Teach me a Lesson. Lucky me.

As such things go, it was a lesson well learned. Several, in fact.

* Reading the safety instructions isn't enough. Safety protocols are there for a reason.
I was closing in on the end of the month-long adaptation period, and my back was starting to hurt at the end. I didn't want to give up when I was so close to a complete adaptation, and that was long enough for my napping spot to finish it's job.

* Pay closer input to the minutia of sensory input.
It's all in the details. I didn't even know what physical agents caused the back problems until I reclined in a car seat. Then suddenly, all became clear. My midday spot was in my car, and the absence of lumbar support, coupled with the awkwardly-positioned sit-up at the end meant that it wasn't a matter of if, but when.

* I really, really, really miss my polyphasic sleep schedule.
PureDoxyK recently published a post (check it out at puredoxyk.com) about the horrors of having to sleep monophasically ("normal", sleep-all-in-one-lump-type sleep) for about a week and a half. I let my body sleep as much as it wanted during recovery phase, and I made a promise to my wife and my body that I wouldn't re-attempt polyphasic transition until New Year's. This would give me time to fully recover and get geared up for the switch. . .

And yet, I find myself wanting to cheat. I find myself thinking things like "Well, I can still take my naps..." or "Well, I can pick up a Siesta schedule, that's not REALLY polyphasic" or "I'm well enough to return to work, so that means I should be well enough to get back into a polyphasic schedule, right?!" Mark Twain divided lies into three categories, I'll let you categorize these as an exercise.

*But for all of that, the real lessons and new understandings have been spiritual and emotional in nature.

To be physically helpless and dependent is not something I've had to deal with. I've always tried to be Mr. Big Strong Stoic Silent Helper Handy Man Person. Yeah. When you're immobilized on the ground and it takes several strong rescue personnel to scrape you off the floor, and wheel you out of the house, it shocks you out of your mental patterns.

So often we imagine that the roles we play and the things that we do, and the personae we put on are ourselves. It's no surprise; we get so used to them, that they take on a life of their own. Through patient work, I've made some progress distilling who I am by noting over and over and over that which I am not. This experience (the immediate and the recovery) was such a shock to the mental/emotional system that I had no real way out but to take a closer look at myself, my body, and the interactions between them.

I've been meditating regularly for well over a year now. It's been of incalculable benefit to me. I used to post content on this blog which was basically self development from a technological perspective. But the meditation practice was such a quantum leap forward that I couldn't write about what I had been writing about, and I didn't have a handy frame-of-reference to describe what was happening. It really is too bad; that would have been some good stuff. But I digress.

My meditation practice went out the window after the injury. No good trying to meditate when you're flat on your back and doped up on pain pills.

Oh, and an aside to anyone who reads energy-healing-guide.com and sneers at me for "selling out" and enlisting the aid of modern Western medicine; you didn't read all the way down to the bottom. I'm very pragmatic: I use what works. I write from experience and personal study and I lay out what has worked and (occasionally) what hasn't worked for me. Modern Western medicine is great for treating the physical stuff. I wouldn't use it as a stand-alone, but I wouldn't really use anything as a stand-alone, so there you go. Thankfully, I haven't gotten any such flames in my inbox yet, and hopefully won't any time soon. Again, I digress.

Not meditating for a month really messed me up. The world was darker. Heavier. The petty things of life became more important until it started to become hard to see anything else. I was aware of what was going on, but I was unsure how to handle the situation or what I could do about it.

During recovery after the surgery, I started watching some suggested spiritual movies. Most notable was "Ram Das Fierce Grace". Yowza. Watch it. If you have Netflix, load it up on View Instantly (after you finish reading and share your thoughts, of course). The true story of a renowned spiritual teacher and how he coped with a much larger version of the same problem. The same kinds of reactions, and how he re-united with his spiritual core... it just gave me a great kick to the complacency.

For the one-two punch, when I shared my experience with the community at energy-healing-guide.com, I was greeted with warm wishes and (in one case) a gentle chiding for not including the community to begin with. The ensuing conversation was a real eye-opener. For those who have read of what Steve Pavlina calls "lightworker syndrome", the story will be pretty familiar: I felt (and still do) that my place was to serve. I incorrectly extrapolated this to mean that I shouldn't be asking for help, thinking that such would be presumptuous and selfish of me. Instead, I walked into selfishness and presumption by not sharing. Not only did I take an interesting dialog off the table, one with discussion of what the various events and situations were doing with mind and emotions, but I deprived a community of healers of the chance to do what their heart yearns to do: help heal others. The twin chance to help someone and sharpen the skills, and I didn't even give them the chance.

But. I live, and I learned. I wound up missing what sounded like a great meditation retreat just last week, but I seem to be getting back into the swing of things, and I'm starting to feel more and more like my true self again.

Biggest lesson of all, perhaps: When life falls apart, take a quick look to see what lies behind and between the cracks!

Until next time,

Namaste

RT @puredoxyk: The verbalization of thought is not thought; it is an echo of thought.

Just watched Dr. Horrible (http://bit.ly/2mbcZ9). I can't believe I haven't seen this until now. I've been working on my Evil Laugh for ages

RT @anachronistiqu3 .. Write the White House and tell them you still want a public option: http://ping.fm/CgPIf #healthcare #hcreform

Sorry to get up in peoples faces, but this is important. Not to me personally, but to the country as a whole. Too important to screw up.

RT @huffingtonpost White House Mixed Messages On 'Public Option' http://bit.ly/1616Bj With no public option this health care bill is crap.

RT @WholeFoods support the public option

Getting to space without rockets? Oh yeah... http://bit.ly/8RmNM

http://bit.ly/3hgSe - 18 Days. Looks like a futuristic retelling of the Kurukshtera War (See: The Mahabharata) Awesomeness!

First day back at work since the surgery. Wish me luck, everyone.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I yet live. Moreover: I'm back!

Meditation Quotes - Collected Wisdom on Meditation http://bit.ly/5oZaZ

Two weeks on Everyman 2-nap. Going pretty good, despite my back giving me grief after the first week.

Pranayama - Yogic Breathing or Pranic Healing, Using Breath to Draw In Energy http://bit.ly/10BZoH

Recommended media http://bit.ly/1xtKN

Free Healing Meditation - Guided Meditation for Healing, Science Fiction Gives A Sliver of Spiritual Truth http://bit.ly/2m2qFK

Good morning. I've been up for about an hour, but I've built up some nasty back pain, so I had to deal with that.

meditation healing - How meditation heals the body, mind and spirit. Meditating to bring you closer to the Divine. http://bit.ly/19Q6mN

Energy Healing Training - How You Learn Energy Healing, Finding Resources, Locating a Teacher http://bit.ly/UD564

A Glossary to Make the Site a Little Easier to Read. http://bit.ly/10Ce7E

I'm up. Contrary to prior posts, this is day 8. Core sleep was interrupted by dog. Dog yet lives.

Qi Gong - Moving meditation, energy building and healing all on one. http://bit.ly/1TRPJ

So yeah. I think yesterday's interrupted core sleep messed me up. Every little thing is achy this morning. Ah well.

EFT Therapy - Uses for EFT, how to put EFT to Work And Improve Your Life http://bit.ly/PHIRB

So 90 minutes into my day, (day 6 polyphasic) and I'm operating fairly well. Still, good thing I have a nap coming up.

Core sleep was interrupted 3 times by the dog. Don't worry; the dog lives ;-)
Other than that, it's pretty easy getting up; no headache!

Learn EFT - How I Learned EFT, and How I Suggest People Learn It Easier

I learned a lot in my journey to learn EFT. One of the things I learned was that I did it the hard way. Let me show you the easy way.

http://bit.ly/Ihxi

Weird, but not unexpected: Just had my nap during lunch, and it seemed to last f-o-r-e-v-e-r. Cool, but weird.

Good morning, everybody. Pretty much the same as yesterday. Tough getting up but I can shake it off without too much fuss. This'll be day 5.

Not too bad this morning. A minor headache, but that's easily dealt with. I'll be glad when the adjustment period is over.

Just had great evening meditation. Beddy-bye for me. I seem to be adjusting to the new sleep schedule well. We'll see what 0130 brings.

Beautiful Healing Music - tips for using your inner senses for finding that perfect piece of music.

Beautiful healing music isn't just about what it sounds like. It's also about how the music interacts. When doing energy work of any kind, take note of the energy of the music itself.

http://bit.ly/16nKFV

Music for Healing - Some selections of music for meditation, music for healing, music as a healing tool.

Finding good music for healing can be challenging. Here are a few of my favorites that I use regularly.

http://bit.ly/FcafH

Sharpening Intuition with Cards? Here Comes the Math...

So, I've been working on my sixth sense quite a bit recently. One of the things I've been doing is the classic exercise of guessing red or black with a deck of cards.

On the face of it, it's pretty easy. 26 red and 26 black, so you should hit about 50%, right?

So, I practiced. I had varying levels of success, including a couple spikes into the 40s, but usually around the 29-32 range. 29-32 right out of 52 is more than expected, but is it beyond the level of statistical "noise"? Putting on my math geek hat, I decided to investigate.

I won't bore you with the pen-and-paper route I used; we'll use one of my new favorite toys: Wolfram Alpha.

Ok, so, each card is an event in a series of 52. The probability of getting any given card right is 50%. The tool to use for this is a "binomial distribution", and you can take a look here:

http://www50.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=binomial+distribution+n%3D52+p%3D.5

The important number to look at in the results is the "standard deviation". Simply put, everything inside the standard deviation accounts for 68.2 percent of cases. Here, the standard deviation is (for our purposes) 3.6. This means that on average, I'll score a little outside the standard deviation of a single run, as 26+3.6=29.6.

I started to sweat a little bit on this, as I seemed pretty close to the standard deviation. However, I remembered my range is 29-32. It is rare for me to score lower.

This has two related factors: First, I'm consistently scoring on the good side of the bell curve, with dips on the downside very rare (happens once in a great while).

Second, and relatedly, we can look at this not as simply a series of 52 events, but as aggregate data. Sorry, I'm geeking out too much; lemme 'splain:

Say you scan a deck of cards twice over the course of a day. Say you get 31 (beyond standard deviation) for the first run, and let's say 29 (just under standard deviation) for the second run. The thing is with statistical data, the greater the number, the sharper the picture. Let's crank up the definition of the picture and combine them.

When you increase the sample size, the standard deviation doesn't increase at the same rate: for 104 cards, the standard deviation isn't 7.2... it's 5! Don't believe me? Check it out:
http://www50.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=binomial+distribution+n%3D104+p%3D.5

So let's say you do the same the next day. Now, what we have here isn't a case where we're a little beyond the standard deviation and a little under, we're waay over: 60 (number of cards right - 5 (standard deviation) - 52 (the median number of cards) = 3 beyond the standard deviation. Not only are you into the realm of statistical significance, you're 3/5ths of the way beyond it!

I know, I know, it may seem silly to get into the itty bitty numbers to dredge up a trace of data. But here's the thing: Numbers don't lie. I may not be far into the realm of statistical significance, but by the same token, I'm definitely showing that there's something going on.

Want to stretch your brain a little more? Suppose you keep going, and double it again. Now we're going from a portable black-and-white TV to a High-definition LCD:
http://www50.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=binomial+distribution+n%3D208+p%3D.5

Assuming that you're doing about the same all the way through, we're looking at 120 right out of 208. The median (middle point) is 104, with a standard deviation of 7.2. 120 cards right - 104 median = 16. That's two standard deviations away from the median. That's getting into the tail end of the bell curve, and statistically significant by anyone's standards.

Now, I have to acknowledge the nay-sayers and cynics who will (rightly) say that the last two thirds of my examples are projections, and that this is subject to cherry-picking, as I didn't include my dips in this example. They have a small point, but they're also missing the big picture, and that is this: If you're using this as a means of training your intuition/6th sense, pay attention to the small stuff. It adds up faster than you might think.

Healing Therapy Music - Use Music to Set The Emotional and Energetic Tone to Follow.

With practice you can weave healing therapy music to move your healing work farther than before.

http://bit.ly/VwO07

Healing Music - Using Music to Heal, music as a healing agent, ambient music for your healing area.

With healing music your results will be significantly enhanced. Music can calm the emotions, and keep the conscious mind occupied while the healing is done.

http://bit.ly/1alHGS

Meditation and Spiritual Healing - How Meditation Heals Your Spirit, Helps you Heal Others.

Meditation and spiritual healing are two sides of the same coin. Meditation takes you beyond where the blocks to health and healing can go. Healing the spirit and reconnecting you to the Source.

http://bit.ly/pUt2q

Tried to find a good social aggregator so I can read all my updates. Can't find a good fit. Ah well. Meditation time!

After a wonderful weekend in the Portland Japanese Gardens, I'm back. Hope to have a new page out today or tomorrow... see how it goes.

Sorry about the mess… http://bit.ly/4vWYyX

http://bit.ly/3LWajJ