I don’t know when I’ll be allowed to travel again. The 4th lockdown here in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, started in Mai 2021, now it’s end of November and for me it’s still not possible to travel. No forest, no beach, no mountain, no nature. I hope for mid January 2022, even though some rumours hint at June 2022. Meanwhile, the self-elected Führer of my own country, Austria, is trying to find back to the glory of 1933. And it seems like he’s getting plenty of support. I’m not going to go back there as long as that’s what’s going down. Therefore…

I’m trying to get into meditation again.

Strangely, I have a talent for it. But I forgot how much work it is, the prep time is insane. When I was 17 it was all so easy. Casual, spontaneous, living in the moment, minimal responsibilities, priorities could be flipped like coins. Now my understanding for the complexity of life and the consequences of my choices is much deeper. Plus it’s been a good 20 years since I stopped extreme sports meditation.

From friends I know what it takes to be a passionate sports person, especially for surfers and wind surfers. They adjust their whole lives to it, holly hedge, they even pick their relationships in accordance to it. Especially as they get older. At 20yo you could party all night and nevertheless head out to the mountains at 9am to get some good snowboarding done. This doesn’t work so well anymore a mere decade later.

With meditation it’s no different. I have to follow a couple of rules—to build something I can only compare to what they call „fitness level” in sports. Nothing out of the extraordinary, but still worth mentioning: to improve sleep efficacy I need to stick to what my grandmother simply called „dinner”, and what in my youth was called „dinner cancelling”, and what is now called „intermittent fasting”. This means no food after 16pm (teetotal is a given). A sound meditation before bedtime. To bed at 22pm at the latest. If all that was successful I’ll be up again at 4am. A brief half hour of energy meditation to fill the tanks, easy. And finally… it’s practice time. Surf’s up!! 🤙