Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

I practice advanced bodywork in Austin, TX, specializing in Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

Another great Joseph Campbell quote

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I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell directly addresses the seeking part in us and implies that the meaning of life is transcended by the experience of being alive.

The experience of being alive.

If you’re reading this, guess what? You’re alive!

“The meaning of life” puts an intellectual spin on what seekers seek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Think about “being alive” and “the experience of being alive.” What’s the difference?

You can be alive and not have the experience of being alive. You can be asleep, or in a coma — alive but not aware. More common is experiencing some minute fraction of being alive — seeing the pine needles on one branch of one tree, and not seeing the whole forest. Do you do that? I raise my hand.

“The experience of being alive” includes so much more than the intellect — emotion, sensation, and self-awareness, awareness of one’s own life.

I was talking to Peg today during practice inquiry about my practice focus — whole body awareness — and I said that it seems to take a shift in the point of view of my identity to even be able to imagine my whole body as I sit. She called that “the big step back” or something like that. This change in perspective is a  known marker on the Zen/zazen path.

She said that recently psychologists have learned that toddlers follow their mothers around at the distance from which they can see the whole bodies of their mothers.

Today in zazen, after I spoke with Peg, I practiced awareness of being in my body, breathing, sensing, as I simultaneously imagined being able to see my whole body sitting in zazen from the outside. This is a little tricky and fun to practice.

I’m going to do that some more.

The non-breakthrough

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A breakthrough is different from slow, incremental change. The word “break” indicates a suddenness.

In my experience, breakthroughs are fairly rare and rarely happen all of a piece. Even breakthroughs occur incrementally.

Breakthroughs are glamorous, the celebrities of change. Non-breakthrough change (I wish there was another word for that) is sometimes so slow and incremental, you don’t even notice it, like a child doesn’t notice his or her growth, until clothes don’t fit or new furniture is needed.

But others, especially those who don’t see the child that often, do notice growth.

I feel like I am in a period of non-breakthrough change. It happens every day when I sit. There are no amazing revelations. Just a slow sea-change in how I experience myself, and since we see the world as we are, how I experience the world.

I sit and experience more of being centered in my body than I ever have. I notice more of my experience. I am more present to my actual experience.

I’m doing it! This was one of my conscious goals when beginning this year of sitting daily, to be more present to my actual experience.

And for those aunts and uncles who don’t see me that often, the feedback I often get from the world is that I am calm.

I appreciate that.

Feedback sought on new blog look

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If you like this theme better than the previous theme, will you let me know via a comment? You can comment here on the blog, comment on Facebook, reply on Twitter, or let me know in person — lately I’ve run into a couple of readers who haven’t commented in writing but who let me know they check out my blog. It’s very nice to know it’s worth reading to someone.

On a whim, I decided to look at WordPress’s blog themes. The previous theme just seemed very cliche for meditation. This one feels much fresher to me — but is it too dark?

Practice noticing

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These days, when I meditate early in the day, my sitting experience is very body centered, as I have mentioned before.

Of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s four attentions of meditation–technique, relaxing, making friends with oneself, and being open–I realized I’m doing it!

The technique Peg gave me is whole body awareness. Seeking whole body awareness includes relaxing, making friends with myself, and being open. Wow, brilliant direction, Peg!

In seeking whole body awareness, my attention is drawn to a part, to some specific country, mountain range, or river on my whole body map.

Breathe into it and soften it, if pain or tension is there. That’s relaxing. So is allowing my breath to slow and become effortless.

Making friends with myself means noticing my actual experience and accepting it, unjudging. I notice sensations, thoughts, emotions, my subtle body, the flow of changing experience, moments of stillness, bliss, clarity, moments of catching my attention caught by a thought, moments of coming back to center. I notice noticing.

Being open is part of noticing to. I notice pleasant sensations arise with pleasure and then fade, and another experience arises. Same with pain. It all changes.

Get some sleep so you can wake up!

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The quote below caught my attention yesterday as I was reading a post from elephantjournal.com on Facebook. The author is Ricardo das Neves, who is described as a writer on spirituality and humor and a yoga teacher in Seattle, writing about how to fall asleep (both falling asleep and awakening are prerequisites to awakening):

As someone who dips his toes in the meditation pool, I also notice that if I’m lying awake thinking, it’s invariably rehashing the past or planning the future. In the present, there’s only awareness, silence. So to enhance my awareness of thoughts, I locate where in my brain I’m thinking. I notice that it’s mostly top-and-left-of-center, though occasionally it’s back-and-in-and-left. Now I “move” the thoughts over to my right brain. That is, I pretend to feel them coming from the right side of my brain. There’s no question I’m aware of thoughts at this point if I have to push them over to that location. Next, while exhaling slowly, I place short words in my right brain. “Sleep” is a favorite one. It’s not a command; it’s just an exploration of what happens when I say “sleep” every now in my right brain and then perceive all kinds of images that come up out of the blue. That’s the right brain’s language. I notice those random, fleeting images. I keep placing simple words in my right brain. I get images. Words in the right brain. Images. Wordszzzzzzz….

To read the entire article, go here.

I played with this technique this morning at Sunday service at Appamada. We sit for several 30 minute sessions with 10 minute walking sessions in between. Plenty of time to play with your meditation!

Like this: Imagine the word “word” (or pick another word–it doesn’t matter). Imagine it in your mind’s eye as being projected in front of you from your left brain. You get to pick your favorite font. It could be bold, outlined, italic, red, cursive, blocky, whatever you choose. You see a word in front of you coming from your left brain.

Now slide that word over so that in your mind’s eye it is projected from your right brain, and notice what happens.

Do this now before reading on.

For me, the word becomes pure image without meaning, and the letters begin morphing, become covered with fur, or snow. They may change color, dance, unravel and become new shapes. It’s slightly (or majorly) hallucinogenic, and harmless. It’s fun!

This morning during zazen, I also spent time noticing what I saw with my eyes closed. I was facing a window in the zendo (hey, rhyme!), which had morning light flooding through. I let the light in and noticed how my visual centers were stimulated to create vague changing shapes, like phosphorescence. This was fascinating to watch.

Even though I didn’t visualize the word “sleep”, by the time of the reading, I was so deeply relaxed, I caught myself falling into sleep a couple of times. I pulled myself out.

Sit and be still for 30 minutes sometime, if you don’t already. You  may notice that rather than being boring, the opportunities that arise to have fun and be creative are endless!

Trauma releasing exercises

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Update: In Feb. 2011, I started my Chronic Stress and Trauma Recovery Challenge. Click the link to read about it. If you’ve done them even once, I’d love for you to comment on your experience(s).

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I wrote about them in my earlier post entitled “Another Book Influences Meditation,” about the book The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process by David Berceli.

I’ve been doing David Berceli’s trauma releasing exercises a couple of times a week for over a month now. This morning I did them and changed it up a bit: during the seventh exercise, when I was lying on my back, knees bent, soles on floor, my legs were cycling through bouts of shaking and stillness. During the still periods, I could feel an electric current running through my legs, and then the shaking would begin again.

This time on impulse, I raised my forearms straight up and just gave my hands a little shake. Immediately, involuntary shaking began in my forearms, which lasted some time. Even when my legs cycled into stillness, my forearms kept shaking.

(Note: When I spontaneously released the blockages from an old trauma while reading Waking the Tiger, my forearms as well as my legs shook, and there was a pins-and-needles sensation from the elbows down and the waist down. Haven’t encountered that sensation again.)

Then I raised my entire arms from the shoulders, and man, they just took off with the shaking. Eventually my right shoulder, but not my left, was also shaking.

This without deliberately stressing my arm muscles the  way I do my leg muscles to incite shaking.

I shook for 20 minutes, and then I meditated.

Soon I realized that the parts of my body that had been shaking (legs, arms, and right shoulder) felt distinctively different from the parts that didn’t shake. The shaken parts felt lighter and cleaner, as if something heavy and a little murky had cleared out of my body.

Further incentive to keep doing these — I would like to experience all the parts of  my body shaking, releasing stress and trauma, and feeling light and clean again.

The Q’ero believe only humans accumulate hucha. They remove it using breathing techniques. The Q’ero probably have never encountered anything like the stressful lives we modern Americans live. (I mentioned hucha and breathing techniques in an earlier post called “Body Scanning Practices.”)

Trauma releasing exercises release vast amounts of hucha.

They also have an effect similar to Carlos Casteneda’s description of recapitulation — you release “other” unclean energy and reclaim “your” clean energy, but without having to dredge up memories one by one and fan your head back and forth with your breathing.

No images, no sounds, no words are required with Berceli’s exercises. They are a purely kinesthetic way of releasing hucha/trauma.

That makes them elegant and accessible.

The entire sky turns into enlightenment

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Okay, so I’ve been rolling out of bed, doing three sun salutations to stretch and warm up, and then I sit.

It’s so early, my brain feels sluggish, which is actually a pleasant experience for li’l ole vata me. I’ve been enjoying these early morning sessions a lot.

The problem, it seems there’s not a lot to write about.

When I say “my brain feels sluggish,” I mean I’m not experiencing much internal dialogue, which is my usual vata experience. And from the words of internal dialogue, whether witnessing or chattering words, come material for this blog.

What I notice gets named and later blogged about.

So I just sit. I notice, but it’s not particularly interesting to verbalize. My attention stays fairly centered on my body. Sensations of parts, sensations of myself as bio-electricity, just kind of a meandering body-centered attention, with moments of brilliant presence.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be a kapha.

I’m remembering a phrase from Dogen’s Jijuyu Zammai: “the entire sky turns into enlightenment.”

Wow. That is going to happen sometime when I’m sitting. I don’t want to miss that, don’t see how I could possibly miss that! It’s motivating!

I just may have to manufacture something to write about.

Happy Buddha’s birthday-enlightenment day-parinirvana, whenever you recognize it.

Like a hammer striking emptiness

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Went to Appamada to sit with my sangha today. It’s been a couple of weeks, what with babysitting while my daughter studied for nursing school finals, weekend travel, a sinus infection sapping my energy…

It was good to be back and especially good to have practice inquiry with Peg, my meditation coach. (That’s her unofficial title. Her official title is Zen priest.) So good to see her face and be in her presence again. She is calm, accepting, direct, a bit playful, very smart. I just love Peg.

Right before I saw her, I’d been sitting in the side room where people sit when they’re waiting to do practice inquiry with her. It was on my mind that I have skipped meditating for several days. I was wondering why I meditate. It’s time consuming and some days, it’s just hard to get my butt on the cushion.

I’d finally gotten to a place where I no longer felt pain when I sat. After missing a few days, I changed my practice to where I do it on awakening.

As I waited to see Peg, I was comparing in my imagination what it’s like–how I experience myself in daily life–when I do meditate and when I don’t. When I don’t, I experience myself as kind of scatter-brained, in my head, trying to make sense of things, trying to be organized (hopeless), remembering, planning. Vata, vata-deranged.

The difference when I do meditate is that I’m also centered more of the time.

Being centered feels like at least some of my awareness is anchored in the present moment. There’s another dimension to my experience when I’m centered. I feel more grounded, more connected.

So when it was my turn to see Peg, I shared this brand new insight with her and told her that life is better when I’m centered.

She liked that and she told me that the motivation for meditation changes over time.

I liked that she told me that nowadays, after 40 years of meditation and 13 years of Zen practice, she enjoys every moment of her meditation.

She also said to just consider the brain another organ. Like the heart pumps blood, the kidneys filter blood, the lungs exchange gases, so the brain thinks thoughts. These thoughts are often opinions, preferences, judgments. That’s what the brain does. I don’t need to pay them any more attention in meditation than I do to the functioning of my liver.

So it doesn’t really matter whether I like meditating. Liking and not liking are thoughts, just the brain working. The importance is in the actual sitting, and not how I feel about it.

Our reading today was Jijuyu Zammai, Self-fulfilling Samadhi, by Dogen. Dogen is significant in Zen; orphaned early, he was a monk at 13. He wondered why we practice and seek enlightenment if we are endowed with Buddha-nature at birth. He eventually took that question from Japan to China, where he studied with a Ch’an master, later returning to Japan, founding the Soto school of Zen, and writing a lot.

In the Jijuyu Zammai, Dogen’s sparkling wisdom shines as he asserts that practice and realization are the same.

This being so, the zazen of even one person at one moment imperceptibly accords with all things and fully resonates through all time… Each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of realization. This is not only practice while sitting, it is like a hammer striking emptiness: before and after, its exquisite peal permeates everywhere. How can it be limited to this moment?

So. How’s that for motivation?

I don’t love sitting/I do love sitting

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Folks, I’m sorry for not posting for awhile. I’ve been busy at work, did some weekend travel, and have been skirmishing with a sinus infection, which after I post this is getting all my attention.

I do seem to have made it past that hump of skipping some days of sitting. I think I just needed to approach it from a different point of view. Instead of being so rigid (“You have to meditate every day–you publicly committed to doing that and you’re a failure because you’ve already missed–you should be humiliated” yada yada yada), I needed to relook at why I want to do this, and how I could make it easier to walk my talk.

I do this because it makes a difference in the quality of my existence. What I’ve learned since I started at the beginning of this year is that specifically meditation increases my awareness, and it increases my equanimity. Meditation is how that happens, for me, now.

I’ll be honest. I don’t just love sitting. It takes time, and it can be uncomfortable (though I am past the initial pain, thank goodness). I often feel like I don’t  have enough time already. I work a full-time job, have family and social commitments, have other plans for my life. Yada yada yada.

But I do love what sitting has done for me. That awareness, that equanimity. And, sometimes I do love sitting. I love experiencing a shift into expansion, a release of tension, a moment of utter dark stillness, a new awareness, an insight, a surrender, a chakra blossoming.

But not when I first sit. It takes time to get focused, to get present. And then…ah.

How I’ve made it easier to sit daily is to roll out of bed about 6:30 am, do three Sun Salutations to warm my body up, and then sit. Get it done early in the day, and I don’t have to remember later. It’s done.

And now I’m going to rest and let this sinus infection clear out.

Mystery: strange left eye energy

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Strange energy tonight in meditation. From the start and often during the half hour, I  was aware of a different sensation above my left eye, inside my head. Not pain, not pleasure, more like the ever-so-slight pressure of the subtle body’s energy.

Even with my eyes closed, I felt like I saw differently. My sense of vision seemed to be clearer.

Now, as I type this, tired at the end of the day, I do feel like my left eye’s vision is more dominant than my right eye’s. The pressure sensation is still there. There’s a space in there that’s simply different.

In NLP, when a person’s eyes look up, it indicates they are accessing a mental picture. One side is remembered, the other is imagined, and these can be different on different people. For me, looking with both eyes up and left signifies a visual memory.

This is different. It has nothing to do with eye movements. It’s there no matter how I move my eyes.

Another mysterious so-called side effect of meditation. “The Mystery” can be really specific sometimes, like tonight.