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MBSR 3: How I achieved a state of no bones

aka Body scan for pain relief

I have been having weird pains these last couple of days. It all began with my right wrist. I noticed it during yoga. There was a sharp pain whenever I had my wrist at an angle. It wasn’t intolerable, but it was also far from being pleasant.

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Maybe so, maybe not

There is an old Zen Buddhist story about how we tend to see events as either good or bad, not simply neutral happenings in life as a bigger whole. I have copied the story at the end of this post and I encourage you all to read it because what happened to me today was literally the same.

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MBSR 1: Mindfully eating a pecan nut

Exercise

Place a few raisins in your hand. If you don’t have raisins, any food will do. Imagine that you have just come to Earth from a distant planet without such food.

Now, with this food in hand, you can begin to explore it with all of your senses.

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Driving in Slush

My Slush certificate came in. It states that I did good in my volunteer position. While I agree with them that I was, indeed, excellent and maybe even surpassed my capabilities as a member of the Drivers team, I do feel that I should mention some things in regard to Slush and volunteering there in general.

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Who you gonna call? Night Watchers.

Last night I woke up to a car alarm. It took me a while to realise that the noise I heard through my deep sleep was indeed a car alarm. As a fellow car owner myself, I know that car alarms usually have a reason to go off (unless we are talking about *my* car that starts screaming on its own or when a fly accidentally bumps into it), so I peeked out through the curtains.

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Are Familiar Strangers Becoming an Endangered Species?

According to the paper “The Familiar Stranger: Anxiety, Comfort, and Play in Public Spaces” by Eric Paulos and Elizabeth Goodman [1], Familiar Strangers are people we regularly encounter during our daily activities in public spaces, yet never interact with directly. They are people who wait alongside us at the bus station, do their groceries the same time as us, and eat their lunch at the same café as us. Most Familiar Strangers are tied to certain places (and perhaps times).

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A Metal Bird

A metal bird makes one last turn
as the final rays of a setting star
glance over its wings
disappearing into the soft milkiness
as light as a lovers’ first kiss
leaving behind a glowing belt of pink.

The night has arrived.
And so have I.

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