Category Archives: body

Open mind, no expectation

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In the practice of meditation, concentrating too heavily on the technique brings all kinds of mental activities, frustrations, and sexual and aggressive fantasies. So you keep just on the verge of your technique, with 25 percent of your attention. Another 25 percent is relaxing, a further 25 percent relates to making friends with oneself, and the last 25 percent connects with expectation — your mind is open to the possibility of something happening during this practice session.These four aspects of mindfulness have been referred to as the four wheels of a chariot.The ideal number of wheels we should have on our chariot is four, the four techniques of meditation: concentration, openness, awareness, and expectation. That leaves a lot of room for play. That is the approach in the buddhadharma, the Buddhist teachings. A lot of people in the lineage have practiced that way and have actually achieved a perfect state of enlightenment in one lifetime.

The fourth wheel of meditative attention, according to Chogyam Trungpa, is expectation. I’ve done a halfway-through-the-year assessment of the first three wheels, and now it’s time to address this one.

It is very difficult to have no expectation. I mean, don’t we all expect that the sun will set tonight and rise in the morning, that we will experience that next day, that next meal, that next greeting of a friend or loved one? Intellectually we may know that this isn’t always true, but it usually takes a great act of chaos for us to really get it, a deep awakening.

I just do the best I can with this one, and the best I know how to be open is to be as completely in the present as possible.

When thoughts of the past and the future are not arising, what’s left is the present, and in this six months of sitting, I have been surprised to discover that the present is vast. I notice more of what I didn’t notice before. Refinements of breathing, hearing, feeling, much more awareness of my own inner experience.

I’ve had what I call a breakthrough, and it didn’t happen how I thought it might. A radical thought crossed my mind, and I quickly suppressed it, fearing its consequences. It kept coming back, and it was a process for me to clearly understand and accept that it was true.

That thought was that everything is awareness and awareness is everything. Nothing exists outside of awareness. And it’s my awareness that knows this.

Having accepted its truth, I know that this radical thought has been at work and at play in my everyday life. Ironically, it seems to have made me more selfish, in the sense that I do not want to sacrifice myself any more to being less than I am, to fearing my own light, as Nelson Mandela/Marianne Williamson said. I want to be all that I am, to live the life that I’m best suited for – not someone else’s idea of a good life, but my idea of my good life.

That, my friends, is not too much to ask. Truly, it is the only thing to ask.

Making friends with myself

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The third wheel of attention in meditation, according to Chogyam Trungpa, is making friends with yourself.

After six months of daily sitting using the technique of whole body awareness,  I have gotten views of my whole life that have deepened my compassion for myself and for other human beings.

When I was a child, under the surface of civility and compliance, all sorts of disturbing awarenesses arose. Confusion, doubt, helplessness, inarticulateness.

For instance, at times I concluded that something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I was being judged and didn’t meet the standard, that no one understood me, that it was not enough just to be myself, that what I felt didn’t count.

These are painful thoughts to think and feel about oneself. Yet show me the person who has never experienced this.

These thoughts occasionally arise even now, on and off the cushion, and I now am quite aware of the emotional pain that accompanies them.

Maybe the most worthy response to awareness of suffering is compassion. I don’t believe there is really a purpose for suffering. It just happens as part of the human experience.  And, it is often a catalyst for growth.

So for all children, and for all those who have survived childhood, I feel compassion. It is hard to grow up. If you’re reading this, congratulations on making it.

I notice fluctuation in how I feel about myself. Some days, full of confidence and vigor, other days, full of doubt and sorrow. Many days, both. Whatever it is now will change.

Part of making friends with myself is beginning to see how I create my own suffering. How I have punished myself, how I have viewed myself as being much smaller than I really am.

I have sold myself out by not dreaming big enough and believing in my dreams.

I can now stop doing that each time I become aware of it. It feels great each time I stretch into my Large Self!

I love this quote from Mark Twain:

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

The task now is to know which ones never happened, and to respect the ones that did happen and note their lessons, and all let these past troubles go.

Taking yoga teacher training

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Yoga is a category for posts on this blog, and most posts with that category are also about meditation, such as experimenting with seated poses for meditation and doing Sun Salutations before sitting in the early morning to wake myself up more. (Isn’t it all about waking up?)

I thought I would post about taking yoga teacher training.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, having practiced yoga regularly for 12 years (plus the time I taught myself yoga from a book 28 years ago – notice how honesty adds complexity).

I researched yoga teacher training programs here in Austin and elsewhere. I was serious about getting the money together and saving up time off from work  for studying elsewhere if that’s what I decided on. I figured it would cost about $3 grand and take about three or four solid weeks.

And then something happened I hadn’t dreamed of. My primary yoga teacher for the past 5 years, Eleanor Harris, offered to train me as a yoga teacher.  I’ve taken Iyengar-based yoga classes with her at lunch a couple of times a week. I’ve substituted for her without training, just by virtue of planning to take the training and having more years of experience than the other students.

I know Eleanor is good. Besides teaching yoga, she also does shiatsu, massage, reiki, Pilates, and has had some training in acupuncture and cranio-sacral therapy. She knows the body and its energies really well, knows how to move energy from dis-ease into ease and health, and she knows yoga really well from studying with many senior teachers.

She also has qualities that don’t come across on paper very well, like kindness and patience, that are desirable in a yoga teacher.

She got it all squared away with Yoga Alliance, and we began in early June. Besides myself, there are two other students.

It’s a joy for me to learn yoga this way, from someone I’ve already studied with for a considerable length of time. I like the flexibility (no yoga pun intended) of learning this way. If something comes up for any of us (because we all have lives outside of yoga), we work around it. No big deal. We track our hours and activities.

I’m not sure a studio training a dozen or so students at a time could offer this.

I’m learning to teach from observing, helping students gradually transform into yogis with strong and flexible bodies, deeper awareness of self, and a healthier flow of energy. Learning adjustments, how to teach beginners and mixed-level classes, diagnostic poses, linking, sequencing – there’s more to it than I knew.

I’ll be substituting for Eleanor three times in July and am  looking forward to doing that with new skills. Later I’ll be teaching a four-week beginner series. I’ll post more about this when the time comes.

Mostly I want you to know I’m fulfilling a dream. You can too.

Technique and relaxing

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More assessing, in terms of Chogyam Trungpa’s four wheels of meditation, which I’ve written about several times as being handy guidelines for placing your attention during meditation. I’ll cover technique and relaxation today.

Technique. My technique, given to me by my teacher, Peg Syverson, is whole body awareness. I didn’t know how to do this at first, so I’ve experimented. My most recent experiments have been (after I’ve scanned my body and relaxed) to see myself sitting there as if I’m outside looking in.

I start viewing myself from the back. My point of view has to be at a certain distance to be able to see my whole body from the back. Then I shift to viewing myself in 3/4 profile from the front left, then directly in front, then in 3/4 profile from the front right.

Seeing my whole body in my imagination at the same time that I’m feeling myself sitting is a stretch. In NLP, when you’re experiencing being in your body, we call that first position. Third position is viewing yourself from outside your body, like a movie camera.

So in essence I’m practicing being in first and third positions simultaneously and moving fluidly between them.

Whole body, whole life. Since I started doing this a few weeks ago, my internal maps about my whole life seem to be changing. New finding: I am much less static and much more dynamic than I’ve previously believed.

I am in awe of transformation. From the meeting of a sperm and an ovum, changing moment by moment, with physical growth, developmental stages, experiences,  memories, imagination, awareness,  to being this 57-year-old broad who blogs and is a grandmother, wow, what a trip!

And not just for me. For you too. Your life is bigger than you think. Honor your whole life, even the parts that sucked. It’s your unique gift to all-that-is.

Relaxing. I have become much more aware of tension in my body, of places where I’m holding, where I feel stiffness, or even just a lack of flow. When I sit down to meditate, that is often the first thing that comes into my awareness. I slow my breath. I scan my body. I breath into the holding places.

One of the most awesome skills I’ve learned in the last few years is that there is no end to refining one’s sensory acuity or one’s awareness.

Thus, perhaps the greatest benefit of meditation is that it’s a skill that when practiced daily just brings deeper and deeper levels of self-awareness.

One thing that’s amazing is how difficult it is to stay relaxed. I get up off the mat, and I have people to connect with, places to go, chores to do, money to earn, fun to have, et cetera. And before I know it, I’m holding somewhere – or several somewheres – and I’ve completely lost the experience of being relaxed.

Some stress is good stress. Learning that, and how not to hold, is a skill I intend to refine.

I’ll post about making friends with myself and being open soon.

Six month assessment

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The year 2010 is nearly half over. I have meditated daily for 30 minutes consistently if not perfectly for 6 months.

It’s time to assess my own progress: I have entered a period in my life that is marked by experiencing myself as more whole, healthy, happy, grounded, centered, engaged, energetic, positive, loving, playful, present, alert, aware, appreciative, grateful, and full of equanimity, vitality, wonder, and compassion than I was before this year of meditation began.

Some things have remained the same from the start: I’m still working where I work and living where I live, although I have spent time really examining these two major components of life and I feel open to change. I know myself better and might make different choices now, and I can live with the choices I made in the past for the time being. I appreciate what these choices have allowed me to experience.

I’ve been fairly regular in weekly attendance at Appamada on either Wednesday night or Sunday morning and having a practice inquiry session (“meditation coacing”) with Peg each time.

I’ve continued my association with NLP: I finished assisting for the first time at Best Resources’ NLP practitioner training in April. It was more relaxed to learn it all the second time and to help newbies learn it.

I feel closer to my family than before.

I still go monthly for acupuncture and cranio-sacral work and every 3 weeks now for chiropractic treatment.

I still have my yoga practice.

Things that have gone by the wayside: I joined a gym in February. I went when the weather was cold. I haven’t been since late March. I should quit and save that money.

I also went to a couple of Flint Sparks’ classes at Appamada on the Diamond Sutra. Not sure why, but it just didn’t jell. I dropped out.

I’ve undertaken a few new endeavors since beginning this year of sitting: I agreed to be the program director for the Austin NLP meetup.

My friend Katie and I started a Peripheral Walking meetup here in Austin in January, and I assist her with our monthly meetup.

After 12 years of doing mostly Iyengar-based yoga, I began yoga teacher training this month. That’s a big commitment — in time and money. I’m deepening my practice and learning a skill and gaining a credential that I will use in my future.

I also committed to participate in the Zen precepts program at Appamada, which meets monthly for a year and includes journaling and self-observation. We’ve had one meeting so far. The course is based on the book Waking Up to What You Do. I will write more about this because it ties in with this blog really well.

I’m also taking part in an advanced NLP study group taught by Keith Fail on strategies.

So I’m full, overflowing even, with wonderful activities, learning, and sharing.

I know myself better and see a path into my future that I like, and that path leaves a lot of space for the Universe to teach me as well.

If those of you who know me in person or who read this blog notice anything that I’m not noticing, please feel free to bring it to my attention in the comments.

Link: Best times to meditate

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Waylon Lewis of elephantjournal.com, an online “magazine” with a Buddhist orientation, writes about the best times to meditate. I catch elephantjournal by friending it on Facebook. Sometimes there’s too much to read, and sometimes articles really catch my eye. Here Waylon articulates well (and briefly) how meditating first thing makes him a better person in his later activities and interactions with others.

I’m an a**h*le when I don’t meditate in the morning.

Sitting like a king or queen

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“Meditation practice begins by sitting down and assuming your seat cross-legged on the ground. You begin to feel that by simply being on the spot, your life can become workable and even wonderful. You realize that you are capable of sitting like a king or queen on a throne. The regalness of that situation shows you the dignity that comes from being still and simple.” -CTR, The Sanity We Are Born With

Quote found on Facebook from my friend Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (or whomever maintains his Facebook page).

Maybe one of these days/weeks/months/years, I’ll get around to reading one of his books. Meanwhile, I totally love getting an excerpt from time to time. Brilliant teacher.

You don’t have to do anything. You can just sit and be, and be the king or queen of your own life.

Don’t forget to elongate your spine while you release tension!

Sitting after a disturbing dream

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I am feeling the aftermath of an unnerving dream, in which I make a decision that results in a pregnant woman being put in danger. As time progresses, her husband, and then I, after seeing his tears, feel increasing grief, and as a result I change my decision.

Feeling grateful for the change in decision and the wisdom to recognize a parts conflict. Thank you, dream maker, for bringing this to my conscious attention!

I have some processing to do. See you in a few, after sitting.

Okay now. First thought: Never sacrifice the Pregnant Woman. That’s a bad strategy. She brings new life, new energy. Even if I don’t know what kind of energy, it is needed in this situation or she wouldn’t have shown up pregnant.

But in this case, she doesn’t seem to know (or be empowered) to just get out of the car and walk out of the building before it is demolished. She is passive, helpless. She gives The Decider way too much authority over her.

The Decider in this case is ham-fisted, full-speed-ahead, blinders on, reckless with others’ lives. Not unlike a certain former president of the United States!

The Decider consults head, but not heart or gut. Doesn’t understand the emotional and relational consequences.

This part harks back to how my father made decisions. But it’s me, too. The Decider is an unintentional tyrant who sees life through a simplistic lens. And has a lot of yang energy!

The Crying Man loves the Pregnant Woman very much. Yet he too gives the Decider too much authority. Only by showing his feelings can he influence the Decider to change the decision.

Outcome: I’m spending the rest of today inviting harmony between yin and yang.

Waiting for the love of your life

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We’re going on a little journey, so get ready.

First, find 20 minutes when you won’t be interrupted.

Next, find a quiet place to sit where you won’t be interrupted, perhaps in a chair (where you’ll sit with your back erect, not leaning against the back of the chair, and with the soles of your feet flat on the floor) or cross-legged on a cushion. You’ll probably want to elevate your butt about 3 inches. Use a zafu, a firm cushion, or folded towels or blankets.

Turn off your phone and other distractions.

Ready? Shake the tension out each leg. Shake out your arms. Wiggle your spine gently. Wiggle the tension and stiffness away. Shrug your shoulders and drop them a few times. Work your neck. How’s that?

Now sit, spine straight but not stiff. Close your eyes and open your mouth. Start checking in.

First, your breath. Feel the air entering your nostrils, expanding your chest, leaving your nostrils. Feel your body’s natural movements with each breath. Without any forcing, allow your breathing to become smooth, steady,  relaxed, and comfortable.

Check in with your head next. Feel all the parts. Especially notice any tension in your eyeballs and around your eyes, in your tongue and lips, in your jaw. Relax them. Let your jaw hang open.

This is important: I want you to get a look on your face as if you are in the dark, and a greater love than you have ever known is nearby. If you try to pursue it, you drive it away. It must find you, and the only way for it to find you is for you to be still, silent, and aware.

This love operates on s-l-o-w time. You have to match its pace for it to find you, so believe that for right now, for just this moment, you have all the time in the world to make this connection.

You are being patient and anticipating this connection at the same time. Your face has a look of wonder on it. Keep this look on your face. If you lose it, come back to it.

Now notice your neck and shoulders. Sometimes we collect tension in habitual places. Notice where these places are on your body today and relax them. Imagine each inhalation going directly to the tension, dissolving it, then each exhalation taking it out of your body.

Move down your arms, hands, fingers with your awareness.

While checking in with your back, also see yourself from the back in your mind’s eye. See yourself sitting there in silence.

Slide your awareness down the front of your body, releasing any tension you find.

Now check in with your pelvis — back, sides, front, bottom. Again release tension.

Move your awareness down your legs, feet, and toes. Notice how your entire body feels. Glowing? Lighter? More relaxed? Alert?

While you were scanning your body, love started permeating your cells. Now you are really starting to feel it. Each moment, you are becoming more and more immersed in love. Take your time and savor it.

Now, in your mind’s eye, view yourself sitting there from the front. See yourself with your eyes closed, jaw open, look of wonder on your face, suffused with love. You can move your point of view to straight overhead, to the side, wherever you want — just get a good look at yourself sitting there.

For the rest of your sitting time, let your awareness move as it will from noticing your whole body, to releasing tension from parts, to noticing the love of your life permeate your being, to being open to your experience.

(Thanks to Vivian, a member of my sangha, for having this look on her face for me to catch a glimpse of, thus inspiring my meditation and this post.)

5 minutes of pranayama a day

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Learning to teach yoga — there’s a lot to it. Learning the asanas, pranayama (breathwork), communications, the verbal/visual feedback loop, linking asanas, sequencing asanas, anatomy and physiology of the physical, energy, and pranic bodies…

Chanting, Sanskrit, philosophy, scriptures, teaching different levels of ability, teaching for conditions like pregnancy or disability, teaching different styles of yoga…

Whew. We’re probably going to go way over 200 hours, and that’s okay.

And probably in August or September, I will be teaching a four-class series. If you’re interested, please let me know.

I’m grateful that one of our first assignments is to practice pranayama for 5 minutes a day.

On Saturday Eleanor taught viloma breathing, inhaling into the bottom one-third of lungs, holding, inhaling into the middle one-third, holding, inhaling into the upper one-third, holding, and then one long smooth exhalation.

I observed myself trying too hard, overdoing it, filling my lungs up so full I had to expand to be able to exhale, holding by locking down. Just as I like to go to my edge in asana practice, so I was going to my edge in pranayama.

Eleanor said “different edge.” Aha!

At home I practiced taking deep full breaths, but natural deep full breaths, and holding with a minimum of effort. Actually, rather than holding, I just paused from inhaling.

Very gentle, very different experience.

I will be good at this when I finish my training.