CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Before I sat down to write this chapter, I wandered through our gardens. The columbine were just coming into bloom, their blue and white faces a perfect complement to the border of pansies. Two spotted hawks rode the air currents, and a chorus of mountain bluebirds and jays greeted the morning. I felt like one of the Ute Indians who once held their summer festivals on the land where we live, savoring the summer fragrance of juniper and sage.
Although it was already hot by 8:00 A.M., a cool breeze wafted down from the snow fields that still cover the Continental Divide in late June. All around the house, wildflowers were in bloom. The deep blue of wild delphinium complemented the delicate pink of the profuse mountain geraniums. Yellow sedum seemed to peek out of every crevice in the rocky ledges that lead from the back of our house into the wilderness of Simpson's Gulch, where mountain lions, bears, and owls make their home.
Here in the front range of the Rocky Mountains, the landscape is subtle but ever-changing. If I'm mindful, present in the moment, it reveals itself ever more deeply. The colors seem to come alive, and the play of light and shadows reveal a world beyond the solid realm in which we live. At these moments—holy moments—I'm aware of drawing energy from both the earth and sky. I can sense the way that my life energy interpenetrates the rocks and trees and soars with the hawks and ravens. As I ride the tides of my breath, I am also aware that I am returning energy to the earth.
Stop for a moment and try this exercise. You can do it anywhere, but this time try it near a window, or better still, move outside. Either read through the directions until you feel comfortable trying the exercise, tape it for yourself, or have someone read the instructions to you.
AWARENESS TRAINING:
The Breath of Bridging Earth and Heaven
Sit with your feet flat on the ground and your back straight, yet relaxed…. Take a minute to stretch so that you feel as comfortable as possible in your body…Now allow your eyes to close.
Take a big letting-go breath, and then switch into belly breathing, feeling or imagining your belly expanding as you breathe in, and relaxing as you breathe out….Continue until you feel relaxed and present in your body…This is one of many ways to breathe. Now we will learn another way called the breath of bridging earth and heaven. We will imagine breathing energy from the sky and the earth simultaneously into the heart.
Let's start with breathing in the sky energy. Feel or imagine the energy of the sun above you—it doesn't matter whether it happens to be day or night as you do this…. As you inhale, draw this energy in through the top of your head and into your heart. Breathe out a sense of spaciousness as if your breath could move out to the edges of the universe…. Try this for several breaths….
Now we will breathe in the energy of the earth. Feel or imagine the earth energy beneath your feet…. As you inhale, draw this energy in through your feet and up into your heart. Breathe out a sense of spaciousness as if your breath could move out to the edges of the universe….
Now we'll try the full breath of bridging earth and heaven. As you inhale, draw the sky energy down at the same time that you draw the earth energy up….Let them meet and mingle in your heart. Breathe out a sense of spacious awareness into the universe. Try this for a minute or two until you begin to get comfortable with it….
Now open your eyes and look out at nature. See the earth and the sky as you continue to do the breathing exercise. This breath brings you into the present moment and blesses the universe with your peaceful presence.
I use the breath of earth and heaven frequently to shift gears out of worried mind into mindfulness—a spacious awareness of the moment. At the end of the last chapter, we practiced the art of learning how to change our minds through intention, awareness, and choice. Breathing exercises—either belly breathing or the breath of earth and heaven—are the keys to this process. They represent the mental gearshift through which you move out of spinning your wheels into engaging the full power of your mind.
If your mental movies are mild, such as the irritation that can arise in a traffic jam, belly breathing is usually helpful in restoring sanity and allowing you to shift to a more creative mindset. But when mental movies are stronger, for example, if someone in the family is ill, belly breathing may not be enough to help you disengage your mental gears. In the latter circumstance, the breath of earth and heaven provides a stronger focus to help let go of persistent worries and return you to a more spacious outlook on life.
At a meditation retreat that Miron and I attended, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche opened his arms wide. He smiled radiantly and said, “Meditation is being spacious.” His arms opened wider still. “Meditation is being spacious and bringing the mind home.” Perhaps you experienced a little bit of what Sogyal Rinpoche means in some of the exercises we have done together. When we are present in the moment, feeling our energy interpenetrate with earth and sky, we are comfortable in body and mind. We are at home in life. We feel part of something bigger, something infinitely comfortable and spacious. But when we begin to worry, our mind closes down like a fish grabbing a baited hook.
One winter, Miron and I were driving down a highway in New York State on our way to give a weekend retreat at the Phoenicia Pathwork Center. The sky was blue, and a wonderful blanket of snow covered the trees. I was feeling spacious and at home. Suddenly I thought about how infrequently we had skied that winter. The thought, “Other people who live in Colorado actually get to ski. Here we are working again,” led to an avalanche of associated “poor me” thoughts. I was hooked. The infinite stream of the spacious present quickly faded as I began to suffer. Fortunately, in this instance, I was able to remember that I had a choice. I could return to enjoying the moment, or I could continue to suffer. A few minutes of the breath of bridging earth and heaven returned me to the spaciousness of the meditative mind. I was able to bring my mind home to the present.
The spacious mind is powerful because it reflects the Wholeness of our Higher Self. The constricted, worried mind is far less powerful. We all access the meditative state daily without making a particular effort. Whenever we feel comfortably absorbed in what we are doing, we are in the meditative mind. I usually feel that way when writing or gardening. In both cases, creative ideas flow freely, and I am often astounded by what comes through me. Miron feels particularly meditative and creative when he is at his art board drawing mandalas and other sacred pieces. Cooking and cleaning are very meditative for me, too, as long as there is no time pressure involved.
The Buddhist poet and writer, Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches his students to maintain a spacious, present awareness in whatever they are doing. Whether washing the dishes, driving a car, eating, or making love, mindfulness brings you fully to life. In his excellent book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that you try bringing your full attention to different activities such as eating a tangerine, washing the dishes, or going for a walk. When you are finished with this period of reading, perhaps you might enjoy choosing one activity and doing it mindfully—with full attention.
I originally took up meditation for its medical benefits, discovering the deeper psychological and spiritual benefits much later. My nervous system was like a car that idled too high, always ready to respond to a threat. Since practically every interaction with another human being seemed threatening, I was in chronic over-reaction to life. The simple diaphragmatic breathing exercise that you tried in the last chapter was the first type of meditation that I learned. I expanded this to a sitting meditation practice that consisted of counting back from four to one, for 10 or 20 minutes once or twice a day. This type of meditation, in which you are concentrating the mind on any repetitive stimulus, is called concentration meditation.
The physiological benefits of concentration meditation were first studied scientifically by doctors Herbert Benson and R. Keith Wallace. They found that Transcendental Meditation, which involves focusing on a mantra—or sacred sound—decreased heart rate, breathing rate, and oxygen consumption. These changes were accompanied by alterations in hormone levels and an increase in alpha waves in the cerebral cortex. They described these restful, restorative changes as a “wakeful hypometabolic state,” which Benson subsequently termed the relaxation response—the physiological antidote to the fight-or-flight response. Benson went on to show that any simple kind of concentration meditation, whether secular or nonsecular, produced the same core of deeply restorative changes.
More recent research shows that under some conditions, deficient immune functions such as natural killer cell activity and helper T-cell function can be at least partially restored by simple concentration meditation. Benson's classic book, The Relaxation Response, documents the impressive effect of meditation on the cardiovascular system. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health now recommends meditation, exercise, stress management, and salt restriction as the first line of treatment for mild to moderate hypertension. Similarly, many irregularities of heart rhythm also respond to meditation. Amazingly, these beneficial changes occur after only a few weeks of practice, even in novice meditators who are almost always convinced that they are doing the meditation incorrectly!
For example, when we ask people at workshops to raise their hands if they meditate, a lot of people usually respond. But when we ask them to keep their hands up if they think they are meditating “well,” most of the hands go down. The mind is actually a very busy place, jumping from thought to thought like a wild monkey. Typically, you will lose your focus and get lost in thought, only to “come to” a minute or two later and think, “Uh-oh, I was supposed to be meditating.” This is absolutely natural.
Sogyal Rinpoche compares the mind to an ocean. Just as it is the nature of the ocean to rise and fall in waves, it is the nature of the mind to rise and fall in thoughts. Thoughts are always arising and then passing away again. Even skillful meditators still think. The difference between them and novice meditators is that skillful meditators no longer get upset about thinking.
The skillful meditator begins to think about her job and simply notices, “Thinking, thinking.” She lets go and returns to the meditation. The ocean of her mind is making waves, and knowing that this is completely natural, she lets them be. The novice meditator, in contrast, begins to think and may then say, “Oh, my mind is so active. I'm always thinking. I'm not supposed to be thinking. This is awful….” Dr. Benson counsels his patients to take an “Oh, well” attitude towards thinking. It doesn't matter. It's just the mind making waves.
Let me give you an example of a typical meditation. Let's say you have chosen to focus on breathing and counting back repetitively from four to one. Perhaps you get down to one and notice that you are feeling a little more relaxed. Then the inner dialogue may begin, “Boy, this meditation is great. Just four breaths and I'm relaxed already…. Why is it that something so easy is so hard to make time for….” Thinking, thinking…“four, three, two, one, four, three, two, one, four…“my waistband seems a little bit tight. I bet I'm gaining weight again. I watch what I eat, but I don't have time to exercise—and that knee never recovered from skiing last year. Not that we'll go much this year, it's so expensive”…. And then you catch yourself again. Thinking, thinking. “Four, three, two, one…” this is how it goes.
Meditation is a type of mental martial arts training in which we learn to side-step the ego and its incessant judging. Every time you let go and return to your concentration, the mental muscles of awareness and choice are being exercised. Remarkably, even when most of a meditation exercise is spent thinking, beneficial bodily changes still occur. I think of that as a sort of grace. Even the intention to let go produces a near-magical result. When meditation is discontinued, the physical benefits generally disappear within a few weeks. But why make meditation an all-or-nothing thing? Some people enjoy sitting for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes with closed eyes, and some don't. You can just as easily take several mini meditation breaks throughout the day, shifting to belly breathing, the breath of bridging earth and heaven, or the lovingkindness meditation we will learn in Chapter 15.
When I still worked at the Mind/Body Clinic, we used to send follow-up questionnaires to our patients six months after they had completed the ten-week program. While the majority no longer sat for regular 10- to 20-minute periods of meditation, almost all of them practiced mindfulness as part of daily life, and a majority of those still experienced relief from the physical symptoms that had first brought them to the clinic. Meditation is not just a practice, it is a way of life. Initially, that way of life is learned through formal practice, just as we learn to play a musical instrument in this fashion. Some people will choose to continue practice periods and others won't, but both will have shifted the paradigm through which they relate to the world.
Unless you have had a formal meditation practice at another time, we recommend that you start one now and continue for a minimum of three months with regular daily discipline. You might choose concentration meditation, mindfulness of breathing, a body form of meditation such as hatha yoga or tai chi, repetitive prayer, walking meditation, or any practice that you feel drawn to. The easiest way to establish a routine for meditation is to choose the same time each day. Many people simply get up 20 minutes earlier in the morning and meditate before the momentum of the day carries them away. If you simply “look for” 20 minutes here and there, you will rarely find them, just as you won't save much money if your strategy is to put aside whatever is left at the end of the week. Your intention to establish a regular routine is the most important asset you can bring to your practice.
Our good friend Robin Casarjian, author of Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart, teaches prisoners how to meditate. She tells them the amazing story of a prisoner in a Chinese concentration camp who attributed his sanity and health after 10 years in solitary confinement to his daily meditation practice. The most fascinating part of this story was the man's statement that he really had to make a strong effort to find the time to meditate each day! So, if it's hard to put aside the time when you're in solitary confinement, no wonder we have to make such an effort to do it in the busy-ness of the outside world, even if our physical lives depend upon it.
Mindfulness meditation was first introduced as a medical treatment by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester in the late 1970s. The remarkable results of his 10-week program are detailed in his excellent book, Full Catastrophe Living. Jon calls mindfulness “being fully awake in our lives.” Dr. Kabat-Zinn was very helpful to us when we were setting up our Mind/Body Clinic at the Beth Israel Hospital. It was from his program, which was an early model for our own, that we learned the tremendous power of mindfulness meditation in working with both physical and emotional pain.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn's clinic was featured on the popular Bill Moyers series, Healing and the Mind, which aired on PBS television stations in 1993. In one very touching sequence, he was coaching a woman on how to practice a hatha yoga posture mindfully. She was in so much pain that a tear escaped her eye. Rather than telling her to get up and rest, Jon helped her become present to the pain, to go into it rather than avoiding it, while wiping away her tears.
Our mind generally tries to escape from both physical and emotional pain, but if the pain is persistent, it keeps gnawing away at the edges of consciousness. As a result, muscles tense to keep the pain at bay, and both mental and physical energy is depleted. In contrast, when you choose to become mindfully aware of the pain, resistance diminishes. Instead of feeling like the victim of the pain, you become its observer, and there is a world of difference between those two positions!
In workshops, we often demonstrate the powerful way that mindfulness can change the experience of pain. Participants close their eyes and scan their bodies until they find an area of pain or tension. Adopting the stance of a curious detective, they pay close attention to every sensation that arises and then passes away without judging or commenting on the sensations. As soon as we label a sensation “pain,” or think “it's killing me,” the body/mind responds to our thought.
Pain is actually made up of two components: the physical sensation and our thoughts about the sensation. Even if the former stays the same, our perception of the pain can change dramatically by altering the latter. The spacious awareness of mindfulness brings the mind home and frees it from the hook of painful thoughts.
Stop and try this exercise before reading on. As usual, you may want to read it through and then try it from memory, tape it for yourself, or have another person read the exercise slowly, pausing at the dots to let you enter the experience fully.
MINDFULNESS OF TENSION
Take a moment to stretch so that you feel as fully present in your body as possible….Now, allow your eyes to close and take a big letting-go breath….Shift your breathing either to the belly or to the breath of bridging earth and heaven….
Now, allow yourself to become aware of your body. There are probably some very comfortable areas, while other places may feel tense or painful…. Choose a tense or painful area, and imagine that you can breathe directly into that spot….Let the breath come and go from that place while you notice everything you can about the sensations there…. Be like a detective, noticing every nuance of feeling, of energy flow…. You can do this without mental commentary or judgment.
Try letting the sensations just be rather than labeling them as good or bad….Just be present to what is….Continue this exercise for a minute or two until you feel ready to come back and open your eyes.
What did you experience? It's common to notice that tension or pain intensifies when we bring our awareness to it. But then the sensation often changes and either diminishes or even disappears. On the very rare occasions when I get a migraine headache, I rest and use the pain as a focus for mindfulness meditation. It is so interesting! First, there may be a shooting sensation, followed by a wave of nausea. For a while everything seems calm, and then I might feel throbbing in one temple that quickly shifts to an ache in the jaw. Next I may feel pressure in the eye, which gives way to a warm sense of pleasure and then settles into a toothache. And after a while, the pain may stop or I may fall asleep.
Before I learned to meditate, my response to a migraine was very different. First, I'd get angry. Why did this have to happen to me? Then I'd feel envious of all the people who were going about their business while I lay in a dark room vomiting and writhing in pain. Oftentimes, I'd cry both from the intensity of the pain and from plain old self-pity. The harder I cried, the worse the pain became. As a child, the pain was so intense that on several occasions I even contemplated suicide. I definitely felt victimized. Now my perception is completely different. A migraine is an opportunity to rest and meditate. It's not pleasant, but it's not that unpleasant either. It's just what's happening. I can be spacious about it.
So, what is meditation? Essentially, it's about being spacious and bringing the mind home.
