The Bookend Meditations ~ Finding after 40 Days:

I cannot imagine how life existed in any kind of measured balance before I began these two practices, consciously beginning and ending my day with a directed breath exercise to frame the front and back ends of it. I am in awe at the shifts that I have experienced over the last forty days. I feel more centered in my day as I move through it and better able to course-correct into responding with intention and love, rather than allowing myself to react unchecked as if a hair trigger been fired off from inside of me. I see myself with more clarity, indeed I have found that I can peer more deeply into myself than I had been able to up to this point. I feel that I understand myself better and hence can better understand the world around me. This practice of rhythmic, measured breathing in the morning, which I set to the rhythm of my heartbeat, seems to help my otherwise somewhat chaotic mind to stay ‘on target’ more often as the day goes on, and is less susceptible to the twists and turns distraction brings. I find that I am more efficient with my time. And when I am on deadline, I can move through that pressured interval allowing myself the space and time to complete the task at hand. It is almost as if in just giving myself permission to take the time I feel that I need to complete the task, I am able to expand the fabric of time itself and create the amount of time I need to finish – an illusion I know, but that is my perception nonetheless.

This exercise just before I lay my head down to sleep of consciously preparing myself for bed, while it has been a handful for me to manage, has resulted in a deeper and more powerful sleep interval than I ever remember experiencing prior to bringing on this practice. I have learned in just attempting this eleven minute activity how much I allow tension to build up in my system during the day. Without this practice, I do not believe I ever would have noticed this. I literally have witnessed and felt myself unwind from the day as I sit doing this alternate nostril breathing. I now have a focused method of ‘letting go of the day’ one bit at a time with each exhale and bringing in peace, tranquility, and the love of life force itself, prana, on each inhale. And I now am more conscious of how I pick up energy from the day and tend to store it within me, rather than process it and let it move through me as the day progresses. The more nights I did this evening practice, the more I was able to remember to remember to observe myself as I progressed through my next day and observe my energy and then shift how much of it I was wrapping up into the tension of my body.

I feel that after forty days I am only beginning to reach below the surface of these Bookend Meditations and plumb the depths of what they have to offer their practitioners. I will continue these exercises into my foreseeable future and await any additional nuggets they might have to offer. I am so grateful to Tommy Rosen for coming into my life and for putting these in front of me as an option to try. His invitations sometimes seem a little unusual, even strange, and some are even quite uncomfortable for me as I step into them at first, but I am learning that no matter how outlandish his suggestions might seem on the surface, there are always extraordinary gifts tucked deep inside and that I need only to summon my curiosity and courage to find them. Thank you, Tommy! I am grateful for the teachers that passed their wisdom to Tommy R and for the connection the original discoverer of these practices had to The Great Inspirer, to his or her ability to listen and then step forward into service to the rest of us to show us these ways. I believe The Bookend Meditations are an avenue by which I am moving ever closer to discovering the essence of Elizabeth. Sat Nam!

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