Workout and Meditation

This is an example of how I use meditation after a workout.
Today's workout was about strength and alignment. I gave myself very little rest and moved through some of the most basic human movement exercises. My overall goal was to increase my heart rate in quick bursts of effort with timed rests.  I started with a warm up and ended with a cool down, as always. The workout itself lasted about 27 minutes.
Some days I like to meditate after a workout. Especially if the workout has gotten me particularly excited or tense.  Today was one of those days. I was really struggling at the end of my workout, but I put all of my energy into continuing to go through the exercises with strict form. Afterwards, as I was doing my finishing stretches, I noticed that I was a bit more “amped up” than I like to be, so I sat for a few minutes and meditated.


Maybe I should have recorded some voice over on this video describing what I was doing for my meditation, but instead I had music playing.  Had I known I was going to post this video on YouTube, I wouldn’t have used the music for copyright reasons.  
But anyway, I was basically focused on my breathing in the beginning. I was intentionally exhaling and letting the inhales happen reflexively by relaxing.  Once my heart calmed down I shifted my focus to my spine and rotated my awareness up the back of my spine and down the front. 

I didn’t notice this while I was meditating, but afterwards, when I watched the video I saw that at times it seems like my whole body is vibrating. It’s actually pretty scary looking.
Notice that the meditation is only about three minutes.  It wasn’t a deep meditation.  This wasn’t one of those meditations used for enlightenment or for reaching Nirvana. It was really just about relaxing my nervous system before going on with the rest of my day.

Used as a relaxation technique, if you’re skilled at relaxing you don’t need to do it for very long. As the saying goes, “Your Mileage May Vary.”  So if you sit for meditation, I always recommend sitting a bit longer than you think you can. 

Comments

Jason Alan Griffin said…
that gave me a laugh. Thank you.
March 16, 2011 at 11:54 AM
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