Figuring out the How To Video Type: Meditation Video

It’s been officially four months since I posted about this challenge, so I think it is safe to say that this challenge is over…well not over per se, but evolved.

So what happened? First, I got very sick on the tail end of the fitness challenge. It was the sickest I’ve been in years and I lost a lot of weight.

Second, I have split this challenge into about 3 other challenges, two that I am tracking and one that I didn’t track but sort of is successfully completed.

Those challenges are:

1. The posture challenge. I literally came up with my own posture exercises inspired by some of the most common and popular posture exercises and I’ve literally done it. My posture is much much better than it was before and I continue to improve it every day. What is the best part? I now can tell and feel uncomfortable when in a bad posture. I didn’t document anything and may never do so.
2. The bedtime challenge. This is a version of a sleep challenge. My latest attempt involves ignoring the whole sleep side of it. Ignoring falling asleep, ignoring getting enough hours, or even habits of turning off electronics. I’m going to make it simple for myself. In the next 66 days (Dec 12, 2023) I will go to bed by 11 pm every night.
3. The jiujitsu challenge. This challenge was a couple of things but I haven’t completely formed my goals around it so clearly yet. The main ideas I have right now are: getting comfortable and confident in moving and utilizing my body to defend myself, getting stronger and more fit, and mastering a lot of jiujitsu techniques.

So, it is a bye for now on this challenge, but there might be some future retrospective posts analyzing some of the biometric data I gleaned from this challenge.

Yesterday I came home, and I felt that I met my goal. I literally felt better than when I first left home.

Now, this fact was immediately undercut by the fact that I went to bed at 3:40 AM in the morning. I was dealing with a great deal of discomfort, perhaps from being home and the taxi ride where I felt like I couldn’t leave. The taxi driver was trying very hard to preach Christianity to me. I feel perhaps the permission exercise may be helpful here in order to give myself permission to leave, but also to stay and feel trapped.

Today when I woke up I felt completely horrible with lower back soreness, stomach issues, dry eyes and tense shoulders and back. My throat and nose felt acidic and burning and I felt sick.

I did the warmups in order of massage first, then stretching, then range of motion. I feel that I can take the warmup much further, so today, I did mental warmups and vocal warmups.

I wanted to do this mental warmup but it felt exhausting. I feel that I needed more of a meditation but maybe my mind just needs to be warmed up more.