I ran off an hour-long meditation earlier this evening, looking for ideas on how to best podcast. While I was working the meditation, other thoughts about my family, neighbors, and my landlord kept coming up.
I did remember to use the Silva 3-2-1 Method for going to center after spending some time just deeply breathing. And… As always… I did The Lord’s Prayer at the start of things.
I also threw in a suggested hand position by Marsha Linehan. She suggested you do your meditations with palms up, either sitting or laying down. I was laying in bed again under my weighted blanket so keeping my hands in that position was easy.
For whatever reason, when I’m laying on my back, turning my hands palms up with my arms at my sides feels awkward. But… If Marsha can do it… Hell! “I’ll use free weights to achieve the position if I have to!”
What was interesting about doing the palms up thing during this particular meditation was the fact that every time a new face presented itself along with the emotion it evoked, I felt my hands heating up as I concentrated on placing the energy I could feel from said emotions in my mind and body with the people who triggered them. It was as if my hands and even my forehead, which developed a soothing pressure like sensation as my hands heated, were all part of a three-point targeting system, “All locked in on a single none physically existent target.”
I didn’t get passed level 2 for longer than a few minutes at a time because of racing thoughts about various folks who have been a problem for me. But I did get there and have an image to represent center that I can use with ease as it is the brilliant amber golden white light that I’ve only ever seen and experienced the full power of when God wishes to announce his presence in one of my life like visions. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced that light, it appearing in dreams and visions a lot when I first started reluctantly doing dream analysis at the behest of my therapist at the time, Pegi Lindsly.
I associate this light with God because it was the color of the sky as I stood before His Son, Jesus, in one such vision. So, it will do as an image to represent level 1 using the Silva 3-2-1 method.
#3 Is for relaxing your body.
#2 Is for relaxing your mind.
#1 Is Representative of having reached center, consciously accessing at least the Alpha and sometimes Theta levels of mind.
However, it came to me this evening that I could use images in place of the numbers, thus working more smoothly with my newly acquired understanding of things in my head. So, the new way will go something like this.
#3 Will be replaced by a visualization of my naked body, glowing from the inside out from an amber-white light, with a ferocious focus on bodily sensations.
#2 Will be replaced with an experience of me standing on the seashore, engaging as many of my senses as possible.
#1 Will be me experiencing as much of God’s amber-white light as possible; me recalling its super intense energy, warmth, sense of safety, feeling of it connecting me to all things, and peace in addition to the color.
I do believe this will actually be an upgrade from the former way of doing things and will enhance the mindfulness exercises I’ve recently learned. So… I’m going to run with it, and we’ll see how it all goes.
As far as the ideas that came to me during the meditation, when my brain wasn’t distracted by constant thoughts of bullshit? Well… I’ve come to the understanding that my biggest issue with podcasting is that I’m attempting to do the cast in one sitting. The problem is that I don’t come across as the Word Smith other people believe me to be because, “I’m not having an interactive conversation with myself!”
When I’m using dictation in my phone, the texts come out ok because they are reasonably short. Siri is only going to let me talk for about a minute before she either murders my messages in translation or cuts me off. “Doing short messages with Siri works best.”
But my messages come out ok most of the time because I’m dictating them to my phone in short chunks.
There are time limits on doing dictation with a computer, and when leaving voicemail messages, too. So… The name of the game here is to set things up so that I can do my podcasts in bite sized chunks instead of recording them in one long segment.
Long segments are a lot more stressful to do and don’t come out nearly as well as my texts or voicemail messages.
Also, when you are talking to another person, the interaction gives you time to pause and think, the other person’s dialogue helping you along, thus making the words that come out of your mouth flow more easily. You don’t have that when you’re talking to yourself.
When I’m writing, I can do it well because, when I run short on the way I want to express things I can either get up and walk away for a few minutes, or simply go back and review and correct what I’ve written until the next wave of inspiration strikes.
So, what formulated in my head is a plan that goes like this.
- Before starting the project, put phone in do not disturb mode and kill the screen reader so I am guaranteed not to hear about any time sensitive alerts.
- Set things up on the device I’m using so that I can easily do one recording as a series of small files that I can easily find, when it comes time to string everything together.
- Don’t worry about the small stuff. If I run out of words… Just stop and come back to it in a few minutes.
Audacity is well suited for doing recordings like this and audio can be easily reviewed. So, my Windows PC will be my main driver for doing this kind of work.
My iPhone will be my second runner up for little projects like this. But it’s a bit more involved to manage due to the way VoiceOver works. But, in a pinch, it will do nicely. “I’ve already done a few things using Voice Memos.”
I’ve got a pretty good feeling about doing things this way and look forward to giving it a go. And… If all else fails and I feel the need for a little interaction I’m sure I can use Copilot behind the scenes along the way to keep things rolling without anyone listening being any the wiser, “Being the crafty bastard that I am!”