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
