Tag: meditation

Sow & Grow Meditation Timer

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Why would I create yet another meditation app? While the process was informative as I’ll describe below, the main reasons are:

  • It’s a zero cost support for new meditators in the Sow & Grow Meditation movement.
    • Post-practice encouragement to visit the site.
    • “Text my check-in buddy” feature.
  • To provide an option that does not require a login.
  • To provide a free option with no advertisements.
  • As a tool of the movement, it is designed to make itself obsolete:
    • Easily pick a meditation plan with a full set of teaching audios
    • Edit the plan to delete audios you no longer need, adjust durations of silence, or practice multiple techniques in one session.
    • Start with continuous mantra deep listening practice and gradually increase the amount of time in silent practice.
  • It’s easy to share and try a meditation plan, even a custom one, with a minimal commitment for the new user. In a couple of taps they can be practicing, with the timer running on any device with a browser.
  • Regular users can optionally install the Progressive Web App to their desktops.
    • Increases convenience over navigating to a browser tab.
    • Enables off-line use.
    • It is still updated to new versions automatically when you are on-line.
  • The “Circle” timer integrates the meditation features into an interface to help guide a small neighborhood meditation group host. This supports the Sow & Grow emphasis on the host simply providing space and not needing to be a meditation teacher.
  • The YogaFlow timer could be used by individual Hatha Yoga students, although it is primarily designed for Yoga teachers.

For years I happily used the Insight timer to ring a pleasant sounding bell at the end of my practice. Now when I revisit the app, it forces me to go through a lengthy process of starting to use it, just to get to the basic timer feature. It’s still has a free tier, which is great. I know the start-up process is designed to help new people to become regular with their practice. At Sow & Grow, we emphasize supporting each other, so our meditation tools can be simpler.

If you haven’t already I encourage you to check out the timer. It’s designed to be easy to learn and use. If that isn’t true for you please contact me!

Scan to open the Timer in your browser

AI as a tool to bridge the Wisdom Gap

The Sow & Grow Timer started out as a whimsical notion to create a visual timer for yoga teachers. I’d heard and seen examples in YouTube videos of how powerful AI was to create programs from scratch, without writing any code. The latest phone upgrade I treated myself to came with a full year of Gemini Pro, which normally costs $20 / month. So just to see what happened, I sat at my computer and had the first version of the Yogaflow functionality working in a few prompts. The power of AI to get things done really is seductive!

I’d also heard great things about the ability of AI to do research. So when I was preparing to teach my first Meditation class at Asheville Community Yoga, I used it to discover the latest in scientific understandings of the difference between guided and silent meditation techniques. What were the benefits of one over the other? It was very affirming of my insights and gave me some scientific backing to teach that silent meditation techniques were worth the additional challenge they pose for my future students. Then I was curious about the question of handling thoughts during meditation. I’ve used different techniques, as available in the recorded teachings I included in the app. But what are the scientific understandings about the relative benefits there? Wow. Starting with gently releasing thoughts and moving eventually to witnessing them without attaching my identity was also affirmed. Both methods very valuable, but best to start with the more common approach. Finally, I wanted to learn more about the continuous mantra technique promoted by one of my favorite teachers, Sadhguru: The Isha Kriya. I’ve been so impressed by this practice that I’ve requested permission to include it in the app. How wonderful to discover a meditation modality that is more accessible than silent practice, with all the benefits! So I created the two techniques of that kind for the app. As I refined my main Sow & Grow Meditation website, I was curious what other organizations also had a mission driven by the same world view. I learned about the term “Wisdom Gap” for the problem of (soon to be) ultimate technological power in the hands of humanity in its spiritual adolescence.

The Mindful Use of Machine Learning

Bringing the app to its current state involved about two months of ‘managing’ Gemini—a process of constant evolution. What started as a simple, single-page HTML experiment has grown into a sophisticated, React-based Progressive Web App (PWA) that handles the complex technical differences between Android and iOS. The most remarkable part? I didn’t need to master the underlying code or systems to make it a reality. This perfectly mirrors the Sow & Grow philosophy: just as our meditation hosts don’t need to be ‘experts’ or ‘teachers’ to hold space for others, I didn’t need to be a currently up-to-date software engineer (I retired in 2012) to build a professional tool for our community.

I’ll admit, I have become deeply intentional about using AI to amplify my work. While I am acutely aware of the environmental costs and the more ‘scary’ potential of such power, I believe the path forward is one of mindful engagement rather than refusal. We are at a turning point as significant as the dawn of electricity or the first Ford Model T. Instead of standing on the sidelines, I am choosing to co-create with this technology to bridge the ‘Wisdom Gap.’ By leveraging AI, I’ve been able to build tools that support meditation and Hatha Yoga—using modern code to serve ancient practices and help raise collective consciousness as rapidly as the technology itself is evolving.

Credit where it’s due!

The last two paragraphs of this post, and their heading, were written by Gemini, as well. I wrote two ending paragraphs that gave the same information and told the same story, but with my mediocre writing quality. I fed the paragraphs to Gemini one at a time. It generated three versions with different voices, and I picked the one that I liked best. I’ve never been a strong writer, to be honest. My book was pretty heavily edited as well by a friend, before I self published it. Now AI can take my personal style and message, and transform it into polished prose in seconds. I hope you enjoyed the result!

Sow & Grow Yoga Flow Timer

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I’ve graduated from my first Yoga Teacher Training! One of the challenges I’ve had teaching my first classes is timing. It is easy to go over the scheduled amount of time! I’ve used different devices to help, but in the end I was inspired to create something any yoga teacher could use.

The result is a free yoga and meditation timer web app. It is featured on the Sow & Grow Meditation website and it will refer back to it’s home to help raise awareness of and inspire participation in the movement!

One of my pet peeves over the years is yoga teachers that did not manage to balance the amount of time a pose is held on each side of the body. The process of giving helpful prompts on the first side takes time and often the second side gets “cheated” by being held for less. My timer is designed to make it easier to even them up. The display has unique features towards that goal.

The app does not require a login. It has no ads. There are no paid subscription features. It can be installed on your phone’s desktop to enable off-line use. The name and length of time for each segment of the session is configurable. The segment names could be categorical (warm-up, standing poses), specific Asana sequences (2 sun salutations) or even individual poses, for Yin (90+ second holds). The timer could be helpful for home practice too.

The timer display, when you turn your phone sideways, is unique:

In this orientation, the numbers are the pause / play button. Touch the speaker icon in the upper right corner to turn off / on the chime sound at the end of each practice segment. There are three timer displays in one:

  1. The main numeric display shows the time left in the current segment or part of your practice. The green time bar at the bottom also grows to full width when the current segment is done.
  2. A sweep second hand that makes a full rotation every 20 seconds. Use this to time holds less than 20 seconds.
  3. A sliding parade of shapes under 10 second tick marks. Use this to time holds longer than 20 seconds.

The config screen allows you to add / reorder / delete and configure segment names and durations:

Users can save and share practice segment configurations through “magic URLs.” This is great for:

  • Teachers can share their class plan with a substitute.
  • Teachers can give sequences (or meditation sessions, described in another post) to their students as “homework.”
  • Any yogi can share the app and their favorite configuration with one link.

To create a configuration link, go to the Config screen and scroll to the bottom. The button at the bottom brings up this display:

The URL itself contains all the segment settings. It can be shared via text, email etc., or copied and pasted into a document to save for reuse. The QR code image file can be downloaded and included on a poster or flyer. Since the timer is a web application, the single URL provides the configuration and almost instant use of the timer app itself.

The app also has a meditation mode, which I’ll highlight in a future post. Meanwhile, it’s quick and easy to check it out for yourself!

Daily On-line Group Meditation

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This practice is no longer taking place. If you are interested in a future version of daily group practice please contact me!

Yesterday I led my first reiki enhanced group meditation session for three people and I’m excited to do more. Since I practice sitting meditation every morning anyway, I’ve decided to try inviting everyone to join me on zoom!

Starting Saturday April 4, I will be on a publicly open zoom meeting starting at 7:00am EST every day. I will be offering distance reiki to anyone that joins the call right at 7:00am (or a bit early is okay, I’ve enabled the waiting room feature) and lets me know that preference. People are welcome to enter silently at any time, but once I’ve started to meditate I’ll assume new people to the session prefer not to receive reiki consciously from me that morning. I’ll be done with my 30 minute meditation before 7:45am, but people are welcome to silently leave the session earlier than that.

If you intend to join for less than the full time that I will be practicing, please set your own timer or track it yourself by peeking at your time piece from time to time as needed. I always recommend that you decide the duration of each practice at the beginning and then stick to that intention regardless of the quality of your experience! Allowing ourselves to end a meditation session early is problematic. It means that any moment during our practice we could be discerning / judging if we want to “give up” on the practice! This decision making process is not particularly meditative. So please drop in on me as you wish, but heed my advice so you do not sabotage your practice with uncertainty and lack of devotion.

The meeting information below allows for joining via a telephone. This is fine if you wish, but know that the practice will normally be in silence, except for any greetings before and afterwards. If you wish to receive reiki and David might have trouble remembering who you are (he is actually basically face blind so this could be possible for people that would not expect it to be an issue) please join the meeting through video on your phone or computer. That will allow him to make a better connection to you for the treatment to be sent.

These sessions are not classes. If you wish to receive instruction and/or inspiration, please check my MeetUp group first, then if none of the scheduled classes work for you, schedule a class with me. Next week (4/6-4/10) I’m devoting lots of time to teaching!

David Kano is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Daily Group Meditation with David
Time: Apr 5, 2020 07:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Every day, until Apr 10, 2020, 6 occurrence(s)
I’ll continue after the 10th if it is well received, stay tuned!

Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Daily: https://us04web.zoom.us/meeting/u5Eqde-qrTIuyVrG7y96UCrK-Byq8hLBNw/ics?icsToken=98tyKu-tqTksGNectFyCd7ctE8H8bM_Il2h4uIQKhUazNgNBSU7UL_MaOp5dPs-B

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/657262394?pwd=WTdMSjNWbWRqTW9wNU1oOVBQRFRMQT09

Meeting ID: 657 262 394
Password: 467756

One tap mobile
+13126266799,,657262394# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,657262394# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
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+1 301 715 8592 US
Meeting ID: 657 262 394
Password: 467756
Find your local number: https://us04web.zoom.us/u/feu8CUx18U

Coloring Meditation for Kids of All Ages

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I’ve led kids in many forms of moving meditation in recent years. The one that was best received by most of them was coloring. You simply start with a blank sheet of paper and draw a scribble on it to create spaces to fill. Then while you color you do your best to keep your mind on the current moment, coloring in the spaces and following your breath. I usually set the rule that no space can be colored the same as an adjacent space, but that’s really up to the person doing the coloring.

Now I’ve created a simple resource to take this practice to the next level. The idea is to record each time you become aware that you are having a thought about the past or future. That way you can see how you improve from session to session and even within each session if you use the optional suggestions in the included instruction sheet. To give this a try, print the a copy of the second page of the Coloring Meditation document for each person/session.

I’ve also created a YouTube video that describes how to use this tool.

Here is a sample I made by practicing for 5 minutes, also featured in the video.

Fishing for the Self in Clearwater, Florida

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In a very interesting discussion with my brother-in-law Jon Bower, which was mainly about the cool things he is doing to create tools and teach techniques to use in education, I realized that what I’m trying to do with my book and face-to-face opportunities is really not so much like teaching as it is like fishing. I’m encouraging people to cast out into the waters of beliefs to catch those that resonate, which will better inspire them to do regular spiritual practices. The idea is to use our rational minds to find beliefs which reinforce and support the reasons to do practices that actually weaken our addiction to, and identification with, the random stream of thoughts that plague the average person throughout their waking life. It’s kind of like the rational mind waking up to the irrational nature of our thoughts themselves, even though the intellectual reasoning being used, when energized by fears and desires, is a major player in many of these unhelpful thoughts.

After a wonderful month at Koinonia Farm, I spent the first third of March in Clearwater, Florida, at the house that my sister Becky and her husband John are renting there. They moved up from their rental in Sanibel Island just before I joined them. The highlights in this post are:

Koinonia Farm to Clearwater, Florida

To get back down to Florida from Koinonia I decided to take the bus again. Hitchhiking in Florida just hasn’t worked out that well and the ticket was only $61 from Albany, GA to Tampa, FL, the closest major city to Clearwater. So the first trick was getting to Albany from Koinonia, a 35 minute drive. Bren (the director of Koinonia) kindly scheduled one of their interns to take me down early on March 1, but then my friend Jo Knox, who lives in Albany, contacted me. I had been trying to reach her to schedule a visit, and it turned out she was coming up to do a little work at Koinonia the day before. Jo is about 10 minutes from the bus terminal, so I asked her if I could go stay at her house one night and hitch a ride to the bus with her the next day.

Jo with her chickens and geese.

Jo and I had been wanting to spend some time together anyway, going back to the end of my internship in 2015, so it all worked out beautifully. It was also great to meet Jo’s husband and see their home and beautiful yard with it’s 4 beehives, custom made deluxe chicken coop, chickens, geese, dog, parrot and more.

Traveling companion?

Jo & I discovered that we both want to go to Sedona, AZ. She has a friend there she would like to visit and I’ve heard wonderful things about the area with it’s many spiritual retreat centers and positive energy vortex. Jo and I may drive out there together at some point soon, which would enable the trip for her (she is 80 and couldn’t drive long distance by herself) and save a lot of hitchhiking for me! Stay tuned to see how this works out.

More biking, with my rollerblading family

My sister Susan and her husband Jon were visiting Becky at the same time as I was and she rented me a bicycle for my birthday, which enabled me to go along with them on their almost daily rollerblading trip down the Clearwater – Tampa causeway. We didn’t have a way to put the bike on the car, so I rode to the causeway from the house too. If I got a 10-15 minute head start, we would arrive at the near end of the causeway at the same. Their routine is to take a rest break for lunch at the Tampa end of the causeway at a nice restaurant right on the beach.

Short video of rollerblading:

Families play in the water on a cool windy day at Sand Key Park Beach.

The bike also enabled me to ride to Clearwater Beach on two occasions. In some ways it reminded me of Waikiki in Hawaii, with high rise hotels just across the street from the beach. The beach is wide, with fine white sand and volleyball nets to attract the masses. In addition to the main beach, I went to Sand Key Park where the beach is adjacent to a nice buffer of green space. It was a bit cool and windy, so people were mostly staying on the beach. The hearty people in the water were mainly motivated by their children, who were too excited about the water to be deterred. When I went for a dip, I would have stayed in the water longer if the waves had been big enough for body surfing, because once I was in I realized that by staying down in the warm water it was actually pretty comfortable.

I had a great 61st birthday. It started with successful dream yoga in the wee hours. Then my email brought a heart warming video of my friends at the Center for Transformational Practice, singing me a happy birthday song!  We went for our usual rollerblading/biking trip down the causeway to have lunch out. My family took me out again for dinner, at a nice restaurant near the house. Then my brother-in-law John let me borrow their car so I could go see “Black Panther.” It was good to have a little taste of the mainstream movie culture and see what lots of people are raving about!

 

Clearwater Zen Center

With a little Internet research I found a couple of meditation sanghas in Clearwater. The closest one was the Clearwater Zen Center, so on Sunday morning I joined them for their regular weekly practice. That week it included sitting, walking and chanting. It was my first time at a Zendo where you sit facing a wall to meditate, so I followed their practice and kept my eyes open, as I learned to do atthe Upper Valley Zen Center (UVZC). Some of the chants were in English and the rest were in ancient Japanese, like the ones I am familiar with from practicing at the UVZC. I really liked verbally affirming my faith through the profound teachings in the English chants, with each syllable falling on the beat of the drum, as steady as the beat of my heart at rest. The Zendo was quite full that morning and it was wonderful to practice with such a large, welcoming group.

Dream yoga practice starts to flower

I continue to use modified versions of the techniques from the book, “The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep” by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche every night. At this point I need 3-5 hours of unconscious sleep to start the night, to bring my awareness to a clear enough state to practice lucid dreaming. Through experience, I’m getting better at sensing when my awareness is pure enough to begin the practice; when it’s not, I just lay back down for another session of unconscious sleep. That way I can do the preparatory “9 breaths” practice and guru devotion ritual that the book recommends, just prior to the first successful dream yoga session; I’d been doing them at the beginning of the night and I wasn’t sure they were that helpful to the practice after I’d been in unconscious sleep for a few hours. Given the time spent unconscious, I either practice only 1-2 of the 4 recommended session techniques, or each of the 4 sessions is shorter than the recommended 2 hours.

The visual quality of the lucid dreams is improving over time, with more and more color sprinkled into the experience, which has been mostly black and white up to now. Some scenes are even full color, but sounds are still rare, with occasional short conversations with other players. As I’ve shared here before, the feelings of peace and gratitude are still almost constant regardless of my nascent abilities to create a dream world complete with stimulation of all the senses.

Traveling to a new location every week or so has been challenging for this practice. The first few days I was in Clearwater I wasn’t having much success, with unconscious sleep more of the night than I had been at Koinonia. It is mysterious to me exactly what all the factors are at this point, but I love that Wangyal stresses that the quality of your day time practice is key to your success at night. It means I have another wonderful motivation to steady my mindfulness during the day and do extra sitting and walking meditations, etc., when I have a chance.

As I finish up this post, I’m in Quincy, Florida visiting my friend Nina who I met in the Greyhound bus terminal in January. When I contacted her that I was heading north via bus right through her area, it turned out she was going to be in the Tampa area and then heading home right when my time in Clearwater was coming to an end! She and her boyfriend Andy have been very hospitable. I’ll write more about that adventure filled leg of travel and my visit here in my next post.