Zen acts: fixing a hole within you and without you

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Hoppity

Hoppity

Just brew it!
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There are certain things I do that provide gentle, insightful self-reflection. It usually happens spontaneously while performing a mundane repetitive task.

Today I was skimming my pop-up pool and was almost in a meditative state. I'm not saying I was sub-consciously hanging with the Dali Llama, but I was beyond the normal wavelength of everyday.

If you've had a similar trip, please share the stimulus/experience.

Or not...
 
Yup - I get that at about a six-pack in, at about minute 47 of any meeting scheduled to last an hour, 5 minutes into one of my wife's regularly scheduled rants about my lack of cleanliness, or whenever anything starring Julia Roberts is on TV. I just call it 'The Zone'. :D

It's a self-preservation mechanism. It keeps my head from exploding. The funny thing is when my wife calls me out on it, I can repeat the last 20 seconds of her speech without ever having listened to it. It drives her nuts. Evolution at it's best!!!
 
I get up early on Sunday mornings and put on the Singers Unlimited pandora station in my house. I have speakers in all the rooms. I laze around most of the early morning drinking coffee watching the sun rise. It's like heaven for me.

Honestly, I get this way all the time, but I'm pretty lucky with my situation.
 
Sometime at work I will open the receiving bay door while I drink a cup of coffee. I'll stand there for 5-10 minutes watching the trees blow in the wind. It is a moment of peace away from the world of industrial sales.
 
usually when I'm welding. if I think about what I'm doing, I'll forget a small part or miss a weld or something. if I let my mind go blank, everything goes more smoothly. then my mind wanders calmly and I can figure out problems or reflect on things going on in my life. a lot of the time I'm trying to figure out a way to get something nice for my wife without her knowing. it's difficult since she handles the finances and I have very little alone time. I'm still working that one out.
 
The wife and I are converting a room in our house to a meditation/yoga room, somewhere we can just get away from distractions in the world and just zone out to some music while just being and reflecting.

It sounds hokie to alot of people but after suffering from PTSD its really helped me reflect on what is good in life and way better for me then how i was trying to deal with it before. Honestly i Zen while brewing here at work just waiting for the boil ,mashing in, grinding grain for hours on end is calming to me headphones in no one to bother me. The owner always wants to know why i come in to work at 6am when the taproom doesnt open till 11 and its only becuase i want to be here alone where i can just listen to some jams and get my work done.
 
Adderall can do that with just about any mundane repetitive task.

I once spent an entire workday building a spreadsheet that should maybe have taken me an hour. But damn, it looked awesome when I was done, and I was so Zen.

And my house was so clean that week. The doctor lowered the dose on the next bottle....
 
Going on a long ride. I miss that so much since I sold my last bike. I told my wife once her tuition is paid off, the next savings fund is for a Dyna. In my eyes, you can beat rolling though 3 counties, through the hills and hollers, jamming with some CCR and Steve Ray. Cant forget a 100cu engine...
 
It happens while reading for me. Sometimes I'll read the same passage over and over again, or even an entire page without processing a single word. For some reason I just zone out while reading sometimes. Does this happen to anyone else?
 
Dominic1920 said:
It happens while reading for me. Sometimes I'll read the same passage over and over again, or even an entire page without processing a single word. For some reason I just zone out while reading sometimes. Does this happen to anyone else?
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I hear ya. Sometimes the mind isn't ready to read. If you force it, it won't cooperate. Every word/phrase/idea will bounce off the page and stimulate reveries totally unconnected with the text...You scratch your head and try reading again and take another trip. Weird stuff...

More often than not, I realize I'm just working through a metaphorical boil-over. The brain just won't stop churning.
 
This happens to me when I paint. (rooms/houses, not art) Not a blank mind, just nothing really specific in my mind, just letting it "flow," almost like the body & mind are on automatic, but there's more to it than that.
Regards, GF.
 
Hoppity said:
I hear ya. Sometimes the mind isn't ready to read. If you force it, it won't cooperate. Every word/phrase/idea will bounce off the page and stimulate reveries totally unconnected with the text...You scratch your head and try reading again and take another trip. Weird stuff...

More often than not, I realize I'm just working through a metaphorical boil-over. The brain just won't stop churning.
Click to expand...

That's it! Good way of describing it. It can get frustrating sometimes, these reveries. Its almost like free-associating. A word will lead to an entire fugue state. I have been reading the same book before bed for sometime now. I still don't know what its about.
 
I'm a very introverted person. I like a fair amount of alone time to decompress, although I usually don't get it. Brewing does that for me when I can spare the time.

I had another good "space-out" situation a few weeks ago. My friends and I take an annual long weekend trip to the one guy's lake house for boating and hanging out. I was one of the first ones awake Saturday morning, so I made some coffee and sat out on the deck with my earbuds in. Just staring off into space, letting your eyes go out of focus so the morning sun coming in through the trees just becomes a shimmering sea of light...heavenly.
 
This thread has been too quiet, so let me revive the ancient thread. There is something very zen about washing my brew pot on the grass. Arm elbow deep in cold water, scrubbing , but with minimal effort. Also, walking into the server room at work to hide away for 5 minutes, just the white noise and cool air , and none of the office noise and hustle of people running around. Not a huge room at all, but feels like I've stepped into a portal of sanity , away from busy worker bee central.
 
zefbrew said:
This thread has been too quiet, so let me revive the ancient thread. There is something very zen about washing my brew pot on the grass. Arm elbow deep in cold water, scrubbing , but with minimal effort. Also, walking into the server room at work to hide away for 5 minutes, just the white noise and cool air , and none of the office noise and hustle of people running around. Not a huge room at all, but feels like I've stepped into a portal of sanity , away from busy worker bee central.
Click to expand...

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12LLJFSBnS4[/ame]
 
hunter_la5 said:
Adderall can do that with just about any mundane repetitive task.

I once spent an entire workday building a spreadsheet that should maybe have taken me an hour. But damn, it looked awesome when I was done, and I was so Zen.

And my house was so clean that week. The doctor lowered the dose on the next bottle....
Click to expand...

In my early 20s I stayed up all night with a girlfriend. When it came time to go to work, she gave me some adderall. My job that day (I was still in college but worked as a union laborer) was to wreck forms from underneath a floor we poured the day before... Most energy Ive ever had in my life!

I did the whole room in one day by myself ( and it was yuuuuge)
 
Pretty much any physical labor that doesn't engage the mind. I love to zone out when cleaning, for example. Sometimes I have my most creative thoughts that way.
 
Running a mud/obstacle run like Warrior Dash. I find that once I'm a bit fatigued from the running, some of the obstacles, there's almost a precision in my mind going on about where to grab, what to reach for, how to move. Hard to explain.
 
Am I the only one who misread this thread title as "Zen acts: fixing the a-hole within you and without you"?
Most likely. Btw, there's no fixing it within me. Time to sober up. Cheers.
 
Hophunter said:
Am I the only one who misread this thread title as "Zen acts: fixing the a-hole within you and without you"?
Most likely. Btw, there's no fixing it within me. Time to sober up. Cheers.
Click to expand...

Haha the first step is acknowledgment :)
 

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