My Daily Practice

I'd like to share my daily practice and some thoughts about each practice.

Morning Practice

Eight Pieces of Silk. This is a set of simple Chinese exercises I learned as a young man. The instructor said I would live a healthy life if I did these twice a day. In typical fashion, I do them once a day. Here is a description I found in this PDF from a Google search. The instructions are very similar to the eight I was taught.

Greeting the Sun. Another Chinese exercise, a basic yoga move, I believe. I breathe in while raising my hands together up the center of my body. When my hands get to my face and my lungs are full, I exhale and push up and out with my hands in a big circle. When my hands come down to my sides and my lungs are empty, I start another inhale and bring my hands slowly up again. I do this eight times to clear my mind and get my breathing right.

Mindfulness Meditation. I sit in a half lotus for 20 minutes. On my best days I spend the first couple of minutes putting my attention on relaxing each part of my body from head to toe. Then, I try to concentrate on my breath, the breathing in and breathing out. It's best for me to concentrate on the air as is comes in and out of my mouth. Other people concentrate on the belly expanding and contracting. When a thought comes into my mind, I try to let it go. If a feeling comes into my body, I try to stay with the emotion, to just live it without judging it. If my cat passes by and rubs against my leg, I will pet her a while. On many days I sit there and worry about my life. I'm not very good at meditation, but I'm willing to be bad at it for as long as it takes. An interesting note: for a few years I did only 10 minutes and did not see a lot of benefit in meditation. Recently I upped it to 20 minutes and I've noticed a big difference. The spiritual lesson is that half measures really do avail us nothing.

Then I get on my knees and say my prayers:

"God I'm an addict and I need help." This is my first prayer of the day. It's pretty basic. This is my first affirmation of the day and it's all about humility.

"God, I can't do this on my own." There's a distinction between needing help and thinking I need someone else's help. It's also an invitation for God to join me today. God is very hands-off if you haven't noticed. God doesn't show up unless you ask him.

The Serenity Prayer. Of course.

The Third Step Prayer. It's from the Big Book, but it's written in King James English! I think Bill and Bob were getting a little grandiose there. I recite it, "God, I offer myself to you..."

The Seventh Step Prayer. This prayer says a lot about the purpose of the Seventh Step that is not in the actual text of the Seventh Step.

List of character defects to be removed. "God please remove from me my grandiosity, my arrogance, my patronizing and my hostility. Please remove my hostility, anger and resentment towards my wife, whom I love." Funny how I've never really had to update that list.

Prayers and affirmations specifically for my addiction. "Dear God, please remove my breast fetish. I don't need to control women to be okay. Dear God, please remove my desire to look at pictures of women's breasts. Sex is a part of my life, it's not my whole life." These are remarkably effective for me.

Any other prayer that comes to mind. I should probably look forward to what is coming up in the day, but I don't.

Daytime Practice

Spot Check. If anything is upsetting me, I do a 10th Step spot check. I ask myself, "What is my part in this?" I ask myself if there's any amends that need to be made. And then I do them. Promptly admitting my wrongs is very effective.

Spot Prayers. The Serenity Prayer is a good one to throw in at any time. A favorite daytime prayer for me is "Thank you, God, for bringing me to this place." This works for whatever situation I find myself it, "good" or "bad". A prayer I use just before doing something that I'm worried about is "God, I don't know how to do this." It's a great prayer especially when I think I know damn well what to do. Finally, "Thanks" is just a great, quick prayer.

Calling an addict. I try to get a call in to my sponsor or another addict every day. It grounds me.

Bedtime Practice

Gratitude list. I fill out a little list of things I'm grateful for. I actually just started this about a month ago after eight years of thinking it was "not for me". It's been a great month. This one you should try especially if you think it's a stupid idea.

Tenth Step inventory. I have an actual form I've created, a scoresheet. It's good for me to quantify things. I list positive behaviors and negative behaviors and tally which ones I've done during the day. I'll write a whole post on this some other time.

Recovery Reading. I read a little from a recovery book every night. My commitment is to merely open the book and close it. Occassionally that's all I do. Usually I read about a page. The book I'm opening right now is Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

Spiritual Reading. This is the Bible or some other spiritual, non-recovery text. Right now I'm reading Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance.

There are other things, of course, I do throughout the day (attending meetings, step work, etc.), but these are the things I do every day.