Month: November 2024

Today, I’m figuring out how to embed a video onto a WordPress page. Let me just find a random video on YouTube… I’ll use this one of Adam Carr teaching the Warrior Meditation® and….

Boosh! Done. Pretty simple, actually.

While we’re here, if you haven’t checked out Adam Carr teaching the Warrior Mediation® technique, take a look.

Jake Clark and Adam Carr led the community in Warrior Meditation® twice a day during the Covid pandemic lockdown of 2020, and they started with this initial instructional video.

God bless them for doing so. For myself and many of the Save A Warrior alumni, connecting to meditate together was the high point of my day during that abysmal period.

Prior to doing business as Save A Warrior, SAW was initially called the Warrior Meditation Foundation.

Check out the Save A Warrior YouTube page for more Warrior Meditation® videos led by Jake Clark or Adam Carr.

Anyone coming to a Save A Warrior cohort is going to learn Warrior Meditation®. That’s part of the experience. I often tell people that learning this meditation technique and incorporating it into a daily morning practice is at least a third of climbing myself out of Complex-PTS insanity.

I could go on a long dissertation on the benefits of meditation, and I probably will in some future blog posts.

The benefits of meditation, however, begin to evaporate the instant I quit doing it, so incorporating Warrior Mediation® into a daily morning routine is a critical part of my day/life.
It calms down the amygdala (the CPU of my brain), which is where my fight-or-flight responses stem from, and what drives hyper-vigilance.

In an excerpt from Franco The Succulent (available wherever fine pieces of high-quality masterpiece literature are sold…), the Warrior Meditation® technique is as follows (or watch the video):

“The Warrior Meditation® is twenty minutes long and in three phases:

Nullification
Breath Awareness
Metacognition

For the first six minutes and forty seconds, I’m going to tap my fingertips to my thumbs in ascending/descending order. It doesn’t matter which direction I go, and/or if when I get to the pinky, I start over at the pointer finger or go back up with the ring finger next, as long as I’m tapping my fingertips to my thumbs.

As I tap my fingertips, I’m going to make my internal voice (the amygdala) say “Ah,” and then “Vah” on the next finger tap.

The reason “Ah-Vah” was chosen as the mantra is that, theoretically, there aren’t a whole lot of words in the English language that start with either of those syllables. The reciting of that mantra should not stimulate my amygdala to go wandering off on its own conversation.

Oh, but it will.

I can’t sit here for six minutes and forty seconds reciting, “Ah-vah, ah-vah, ah-vah” in my head. Pretty soon, my brain starts saying, “Aren’t you going to work today? At least put on pants, for God’s sake.”

I catch myself following those thoughts, and when I do catch myself following them, get right back to the mantra.

The first intermission chime goes off at 6:40, and the “Breath Awareness” phase begins. I quit finger-tapping and started focusing on my breath instead. With my eyes still closed, I focus on my breath coming in (through my nostrils), noticing the air filling my lungs/abdomen, pausing, and then exhaling (through the mouth). As I breathe in, I’m going to make my amygdala say, “Ah,” pause and hold my breath for a moment, and as I exhale, internally say, “Vah.”

I’m going to do this for another six minutes and forty seconds.

At 13:20, the next chime goes off. This is the “Metacognition” phase. I am going to simply stop reciting the “Ah-Vah” mantra. I will still focus on my breath, slowly breathing in and out, and I want to simply observe the thoughts as they pass through my mind. At twenty minutes, the end chime goes off, and I go about with my day.”

For more information on how to configure an Insight meditation timer specifically to do Warrior Meditation®, here is a video by Cassie Wehr, which I will also embed into this page (look at me go! I’m just embedding stuff all willy-nilly now…):

Well, I think that’s plenty to chew on for now. I will be talking a bit more about meditation down the road.

Peace out, people!
-Larry

This is my first blog post, at least on this site.

By building this website, I am satisfying a couple needs.

First, in the future, I will be helping manage a website which was built using WordPress. I was nominated for the job because I’m pretty good with IT related matters, computers and so forth.
I logged into the website I’m supposed to help manage and was immediately struck with the epiphany that I knew absolutely nothing about WordPress.
That was clear to me seconds after I logged into and thought, “What the hell is all this stuff?”

I learn by doing, so, this is what I’m doing. I’m building a WordPress site and learning as I go.

The second bird that I’m knocking out of the air with one stone by building this website is satisfying my compulsive need to write. That has always been a creative outlet for me.
I’ve written all kinds of stuff in the past. I’ve recently written a book (Franco The Succulent – Foreward by Joe Robb), and that is available on Amazon.
If you’re interested, heck, I’ve made it easy for you by placing a link in the menu bar at the top.

Also note, I’ve recently learned how to make menu bars with functioning links on them…

Another thing I’ve learned how to do recently is imbed a picture on the page so that the text flows left and right around the picture. I mean, obviously I’ve learned how to do that. Here I am doing it…

Like a lot of folks, I take a crap load of pictures, so I’ll post a bunch of those here, too. Go ahead and click on any picture, the picture gets bigger!
I learned how to do that yesterday…

That is what this place is going to be. A creative outlet. Writings, pictures, and even a couple shops.

In the menu bar, there are links to a couple shops.
One will take the visitor to Squirrel Meats Unlimited, which is a ficticious factory farm specializing in the mechanical meat separation and deboning of American rodents. How that came to be is a bit of a story, which I may get to in an upcoming blog post, but essentially it is a store front to sell Killbuck Creek Distillery clothing and whatever other stuff Sue and I come up with.
That is a “for profit” business, which, like most of my other business ventures has done nothing but lose vast sums of money.
We’re having fun with it, and Sue get’s to be the CEO of Squirrel Meats Unlimited.
She is so proud. I have her listed as “Top Nut” of the organization.

The other store is a Bonfire site in which 100% of the profits go to charity. The vast majority of the profits go to SaveAWarrior.org, an organization that is saving veteran/first responder lives from the suicidal effects of Complex-PTS.
I would not be here to make this website which I am sure you are thoroughly enjoying had I not been through the program myself.

The other charities we support with our Bonfire shop are Meals On Wheels and Pure Heart Childrens Fund.

Meals on wheels is obviously feeding the hungry, and Pure Heart’s mission is to feed the poverty stricken children of Central America.
Sue and I have been supporters of Pure Heart since our early moonshining days (sounds like a bit of a story, most likely a future blog post as soon as the statute of limitations expire…).

Lastly, one more new thing that I’m going to do on this site is open myself up for commentary/critism.
Yeah! I know…

I actually own the website “notgonnarespondtothisemail.com.” It’s an email server and I listed that as my email address in the book..
Like many with Complex-PTS, I always tend to isolate, and regard any personal critism as a direct attack.
Hey, it’s what I do. Surely I’m not the only one?
Well, here, I’m gonna turn on “commenting,” open things up a bit. If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to interact with your thoughts, tips, or suggestions. Heck, I will even make a contact page.

So enjoy, if that’s the word you choose to use. Interact. Buy some stuff to support non-profits.
Have a nice day.

Blog post #1, complete.