finding balance without samyama

[Anthem]

I would fall under the definition of sensitive to AYP practices and have been this way for the last 5 out of 6 years that I have practiced AYP. The the amount of time in my routine has reduced dramatically over this period of time from over 1 hour in length to the current 9 minutes or so.

In case there are others who fall into this category, I wanted to mention that by giving up the practice of samyama, that I have been able to find the most stability in my daily practice in a very long time. I have even been able to add in 1 minute of deep meditation time to my previous routine of 6 minutes of DM and 1 minutes of SBP and remain easily in balance with seemingly more room to add down the road. In addition, I am finding other practices like asanas and tantra less able to elicit symptoms of overload as well.

I had been practicing samyama for about 5 years and was very reluctant to give it up but am now very glad I have. Instead of losing anything by letting it go, there has been substantial gain.

Sharing this with the AYP community in case others find themselves sensitve to practices and not sure what to cut out of the routine. i get the feeling samyama is an easy one to get attached to!

All the best![]

[JDH]

Thanks Anthem11,

My experience has been similar to yours and updates are helpful.  About 6 to 9 months of adding practices quickly, high practice times - and then over the last 6 months, ever increasing sensitivity and decreasing practice times.  I have also found that from a self-pacing perspective, Samyama is adding 5-10 extra minutes of practice.

Have you ever tried going to meditation only?  Or taking a several days off entirely?  So far I have gone down to about 5 min SBP and 10 min DM, and I'm wondering if I should take yet another step back and just do 15 min DM by itself for a period before trying to add SBP back in.  And the longest break I've taken is a day.

[Anthem]

Hi JDH,

Yes, some extended time off helped me reset a few months back after some accumulated build-up. I occasionally take 1 full day off when needed. Check out this thread for some good self-pacing info:

http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/index.php?topic=8393#8393

I currently do one round of SPB about 45-60 seconds in length before DM, so not a lot of pranayama but the minimum I have done. So no haven't tried just DM in many years. I do find the little bit of SBP that is done here to be energy balancing.

Interesting question about the ration between DM and SBP, this was discussed somewhere in the forum a few years back. I think the best thing to do is to experiment with having just DM vs. having some SBP in front of it and seeing how both scenarios impact your stability. I think ideally from my perspective, I like to have at least a little bit of SBP but not enough that would lower my DM below 10 minutes in length. I am currently below 10 minutes of DM, but will add 1 minute of DM after long periods of stability until I get to 10 minutes or more before contemplating adding in any SBP.

Hope this helps,[]

A