Day 1

As soon as a finished that last post, I quickly went to the hill behind my house. It's very quiet and serene and away from all the noise of daily living. I quickly got into sitting position and just sat, meditating. I would like to briefly pause and talk about my previous encounters with zen meditation. As I mentioned before, I take an Aikido class, every Saturday from 8:30 to 11:30. But for 30 minutes of each class, we did zazen, or zen meditation. When I was a little kid I used to hate having to do zazen, mainly because it hurt and legs and it was really boring. But as I got older, I began to appreciate zazen more and more, and began looking forward to it. During the 30 minutes of zazen I'm able to just sit, relax, and calm myself down. For those 30 minutes, I try not to think of anything, because if I do, my mind begins to wander and I end up thinking about homework and school and I just end up getting stressed. If I just sit and focus on my breathing and posture, I feel at peace with myself (this is the main reason why I've decided to try meditate more often).

So during this first session of self-regulated meditation my goal was to just sit properly and maintain good breathing and good posture (will try go over what is "good" tomorrow or day after). I must say that I was able to maintain relatively good posture, but I lost focus on my breathing, and my mind wandered to my homework. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my mind under control and train it to not wander and stay focused.