Ro, Not sure if this is what you mean by mediations, but here's a couple great quotes from B.K.S. Iyengar that inspire me during my practice. "Giving does not impoverish, nor does withholding enrich us. " --BKSI "This practice of yoga is to remove weeds from the body so that the garden can grow. " -BKSI "Yoga is a light; which, once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame." --BKS and one from Lawrence LeShan" "We mediate to find, to recover, to come back to something of ourselves we once dimly and unknowingly had and have lost without knowing what it was or where or when we lost it." Namaste, BrianClt

Ro, Meditation seems to pose a challenge to all of us accustomed to the fast-paced, overstimulating, everyday western lifestyle. As you said, the surrender, letting go is really the antithesis of how we're conditioned from an early age to respond to the unknown. My personal meditation practice exists sort of on levels -- like a descending staircase with many landings. One of those landings is, for some reason, very attractive to my pets. Both my dog and my cat -- who couldn't be less interested in other aspects of my yoga or meditation practice -- are somehow quite attracted to a specific level of my meditation practice. When i'm 'there,' they come from wherever they are in the house and get as close to me as they can -- I'll be in downward dog with a cat sitting on my raised sitting bones and my minpin between my palms doing her own version of downward dog. When I move passed that particular level -- either up the staircase or down, they once again loose interest. Occassionally I try to stay at that level for a while, though it tends to be difficult as they are a bit of a distraction. It took me quite a while to get passed that 'searching' desire in my meditation practice. And I'm guessing that hummingbird, like dragonflies and butterflies, merely wanted to illustrate that he (like meditation) is more likely to light on an outstretched palm than a grasping fist. Sounds to me like you're well on your way! Namaste, BrianClt

I do have pets - birds though have been a lifelong fascination. One of the blessings I count is living in a wooded area on a bluff that butts into a creek that runs into the Tennessee River. Our woods are full of birds of every kind. If I could be any animal, I would be a bird. My pets leave me alone when I practice - they're into their own type of meditation. I try so hard to meditate - it is probably my weakest area - I can go out into the woods and magically the feeling of being one with everything happens. Same experience with the hummingbird. I'm such a friggin control freak that it is very hard to let go. It does happen but I'm constantly searching for that holy grail.

I just finished doing the Sun Saluatation part A, needle thru the eye, breath concentration and corpse pose. As I was finishing, I messed up because as I looked up a little hummingbird was looking in at me from the french doors to the porch outside. It was hovering down at my level. What a breathtaking experience. It followed me from room to room looking in. Then it flew off. I was so involved with the hummingbird that I realized I had forgotten about myself - I felt so uplifted. Meditation? Maybe.

One of surprising things I learned about myself through my WLS experience was the astounding, nearly crippling mistrust I harbored for my own body. This mistrust took years to develop. As a morbidly obese child I was made painfully aware that my body was not only unlike that of my peers, it was also somehow 'wrong,' 'abhorrent,' 'flawed.' In a 'chicken-or-the-egg' scenerio, accumulated weight result in less physcial activity which resulted in accumulated weight, which...you understand. Moving confidently and gracefully requires practice. When that practice is preempted, an overall lethargy and innate clumsiness set in for me. I stopped trusting that my body could do things I hadn't tried before. I stopped running. I stopped dancing. I stopped moving, except when absolutely necessery. Then there was the fact that no matter what 'guarranteed' or 'can't-miss' diet plan I subscribed to during my tenure as an obese person, they simply did not work -- further inpacting my trust. I remember standing in my bathroom at 470 pounds, staring into the eyes of a reflection I barely recognized seriously agonizing over 'how I'd become this?' 'when and why had this happened?' and with each ache and pain which cumulated in an inability to walk a city block though I was still under 30, each painful social situation, each time i felt myself out of breath i remember wondering why my body had betrayed me. Naturally, my body hadn't betrayed me. There was a miscommunication between my mind and my body -- in fact, there was no communication at all. Each flew off in different directions, trying to procure what each thought was required, never once undrestanding that both had the same goal -- merely different approaches. Yoga has afforded me an opportunity to bring both body and mind, and eventually spirit, into the same arena -- instead of pitting one against the other in a search for physical health, emotional comfort and spiritual security, yoga continues to teach me ways of bringing the three together as one to pursue and achieve these goals in highly beneficial and efficient manner. And for someone who didn't see his feet for most of his adult life, swinging gracefully into handstand or pushing up into upward bow is like reaffirmation of how far a little trust in one's body can go. Namaste, BrianClt