Here we go. Back to surgery.

Hey all. I started down this path and intended to go through the initiate training but have not been motivated due to a busy life and medical problems. Well, I've decided to start up next year, because if all goes well in the next few days, I will be mostly back to normal. I am having my second surgery of the year, and hopefully my last for a good long while. Stress is a huge trigger for my condition, so I was hoping my fellow Jedi could help me come up with ways to not stress out before a very important surgery and possibly make everything worse.
Y'all are the best.
Also, during my stay in the hospital, I want to work on my computer. I am a video editor, colorist, and visual effects artist. If you have any fun videos you could send my way, put it on Mega.co.nz and send me stuff to work on!

Good luck.

Hope everything goes well for you

I, too, hope all goes well and that you recover quickly.

I wish you the best of luck and a speedy recovery.

Have you tried meditation? I don't mean that to be a platitude or cliche response.

You are awesome. The surgery is one step. You have many steps left to take. Worry more about that gunman in the gas station about 13 years from now. Hint: Bend at the hip to grab the milk...

Jamie Stick wrote: I wish you the best of luck and a speedy recovery.

Have you tried meditation? I don't mean that to be a platitude or cliche response.

Cliche or not, everything helps. I am not the most patient when it comes to meditating, but I will give this a try. There is a first time for anything.

Maybe that's exactly the quality you need, then. Patience, that is.

Could be part of your stress. If you constantly find yourself not being patient, then you might be creating stress in your life because of your lack of patience and being "ok" with boredom. It's a Zen thing.

Josh,

In terms of being patient for meditation I want to say that there is no time requirement (ie we don't have to be meditative for ten minutes or thirty minutes or an hour for it to be effective, for meditation is less about being silent and unmoving and more about being aware...in the now. This is coming from someone who dislikes traditional views on meditation because they are not dynamic enough. So maybe instead of adopting a lotus position, take a second any time you are stressed out to take stock of where you are, what you are doing, what is taking place around you and appreciate the feeling of "aliveness". Does that make sense?

Hi, Josh. I'm sincerely sorry to hear about your condition and the fact that you have another surgery ahead of you. *bleh*

I have an appointment with my surgeon tomorrow afternoon, but fortunately it's just an annual checkup for surgery that I went through a few years ago. Occasionally, I still have minor issues that come on because of stress, so I completely understand what you're saying about stress and sympathize. :dry: If there's a positive side to this, it's that the physical discomfort stress creates in my body has helped me learn to appreciate the value of peace in my life.

I'm not sure if you will find this helpful, but during times when things are difficult or more stressful, I repeat simple mantras in my mind to calm myself down. I most commonly use the Buddhist mantra, " om mani padme hum ," or the Gayatri Mantra , which comes from the Vedic tradition. During surgery, I also used an incantation that comes from Frank Herbert's 'Dune' series called " The Litany Against Fear ."

My experience has been that if you associate a mantra with a calm, relaxing state and repeat it regularly, mantras can be very powerful and effective. Your results may vary, but perhaps a certain mantra will click with you and you'll find it beneficial.