Category Archives: body

article: Damage to One Brain Region Can Boost “Transcendent” Feelings

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I like learning about scientific discoveries, especially those that have to do with health and well-being and the brain. Sometimes the findings are surprising to me, and often I feel happy for scientists to be learning something that I already “know” is true! Because scientists learn using a painstaking method. I am not often painstaking, not a scientist.

But then, I could be wrong. It’s all a hypothesis to me–if a belief works, use it. If not, discard it. My Museum of Old Beliefs is vast!

Often these reports on scientific discoveries add to my knowledge about how the body-mind works because they contain details about areas like anatomy that I am finding more and more interesting. I have been buying picture books about anatomy. I don’t know where if anywhere this is leading, but I’m finding it more and more interesting.

I will post links on this blog to articles I come across that are interesting to me. Here’s the first one:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/02/11/damage-to-particular-brain-region-can-boost-transcendent-feelings/

Wandering Mind and her family, Thoughts, Equanimity, Chakras, Pain, Curiosity, and Moments of Emptiness, came to visit

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Today is a day off work. Slept in, started laundry and set dirty dishes to soak, then sat.

Really, there’s not much to report from today’s sitting. Nothing really new or different. I sat, did body scan (now tied to breath), and then Wandering Mind and her family, Thoughts, Equanimity, Chakras, Pain, Curiosity, and Moments of Emptiness, came to visit.

I thought about last night’s class on the Diamond Sutra. Sometimes things seem funny to me that no one else is responding that way to, and I keep my mouth shut. The way Subhuti and the Buddha spoke to each other sounded exceedingly formal to my ears, and some mischievous part of me wanted to insert the word “Dude” in there. So pardon this indulgence.

“Even so, Dude, if a noble son or daughter should set forth on the bodhisattva path, how should they stand, how should they walk, and how should they control their thoughts?”

“Well, said, Dude! Well said. So it is, Dude. It is as you say.”

I am probably not cut out to be a scholar.

The gist of it is a paradox, which in my admittedly limited familiarity with Buddhism, seems most characteristic of Zen. “…I shall liberate [all beings]. And though I thus liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated… And why not? Dude, a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a being cannot be called a bodhissatva. And why not? Dude, no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self, a being, a life, or a soul.”

Who creates the perception? See, this is something people struggled with in 400 BC too. Maybe creating a perception means interpreting experience. Maybe creating a perception means naming. We did an exercise in knowing and softening to not knowing.

Flint Sparks, the Zen priest who taught this class, brought up Jill Bolte Taylor’s video and book, My Stroke of Insight, and her description of right-brain awareness, as a way, in my perception, of helping us grok the shift in awareness from ordinary left-brain thinking that the Dude is pointing to.

But I could be wrong.

Insights about pain

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Sitting this morning, I noticed that when I sit, it doesn’t take long for pain somewhere in my body to come to my attention.

Could it be an artifact of how I usually pay attention? Beta waves? Intriguing concept, but I don’t have a way to know.

Anyone got a good used biofeedback machine for sale? I’m not joking. I’d love to play with getting feedback on my brain wave patterns.

Am I looking for the pain? I don’t think so. Maybe it’s more that when I close my eyes and my internal dialogue stops, I become aware of my body — specifically aware of the places that are feeling pain because those sensations are most intense.

And  yet they are parts of a whole body-mind system.

I reminded myself that there were vast areas of my body that were not feeling any pain. I gave some attention to them. What does it feel like to not feel pain?

At first, I didn’t feel much of anything. Just “normal,” whatever that is. Then I noticed that I particularly felt strong in the core of my body — from my sit bones up through the center of my torso, neck, and head, it felt as if a nice strong column was holding me up. Being yoga! Yes!

The areas that do feel pain are usually small. A twinge here, a pulling sensation here. Rarely are they larger than a muscle, and usually they seem to be part of a muscle or an adhesion in the fascia that separates muscles. Rather, the nerves associated with those places are what feels pain, or so I’ve been taught.

Learning about pain is part of yoga. If you stop stretching as soon as it feels uncomfortable, you will not lengthen your muscles and become flexible and open up your meridians. In yoga, with time, you learn to recognize when pain is telling you, “Hey! Back off!” and when it is telling you, “Just breathe and hold this a little bit longer, and that muscle will release.”

I suppose it is the same with meditation. Pain may be one of those frequent visitors to the guesthouse. How can we become more at ease with each other?

I feel grateful and astonished that I have a nervous system that works! What a miracle that is, one of the myriad miracles under our very noses all the time. Just like the miracle that most of my body isn’t feeling pain!

Sitting with compassion

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Third morning of sitting early. Only had time for 20 minutes; had to get my granddaughter up, dressed, and ready for school. Will pick up the other 10 minutes this evening.

I reset the alarm for earlier. I like getting 30 minutes in.

Yesterday after sitting, I went to my chiropractor, Dr. Chandler Collins, and after testing and doing what I think of as anchoring muscle combinations, he adjusted first my left ilium and then my right.

It seemed like not much moved. The adjustments were small, seemed to be only a couple of millimeters, if that. But then…I noticed feeling stronger when I stood, not like you could knock me over with a feather, which is how I’ve felt since April 25, 1996, the date of a serious car wreck that destabilized my sacrum/pelvis.

Yesterday was a day of getting used to it. Noticing how standing is different, how walking is different, how driving is different. By the end of the day, soreness in new places. Going to sleep, not being able to tell if my neck was crooked. Reorganizing, reorienting.

There are  more adjustments to be done next week. Something to do with the Hamstring Group. (They’re architects, you know. j/k) Another week of keeping my core stable and avoiding torque. And then, maybe he’ll give me some homework and I can really get strong.

Practice today centered on something Peg said on Sunday. I was attempting to convey how my realization that awareness is everything, everything is awareness, was rippling out into my life. How my dislike for certain characters, like Pat Robertson and Baby Doc Duvalier, were parts of my awareness. How I feel some responsibility for the quality of my awareness, and how it doesn’t feel good to feel contempt or scorn toward others.

She said, “Do you know them?”

No. I don’t. I only know what I’ve read or seen or heard about them. I’ve never met them.

Chances are, if I did know them, who they are would of course be different than how I judge them now. I’d know them with breath, voice, movement, energy, a family, relationships, desires, suffering, eye movements, context, filters. They’d be fuller and more complex, not demonized. I could find compassion for them. I would be curious about their awareness and compassion.

Book influences meditation

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This morning’s zazen was heavily influenced by a book I’m reading titled The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body. Les Fehmi, biofeedback pioneer and director of the Princeton Biofeedback Centre, and Jim Robbins, science journalist, are the authors.

The major premises of the book are that (1) the way we customarily pay attention is using a narrow focus on objects and details, (2) that this habitual narrow focus produces chronic stress and is useful only in limited circumstances, and (3) that there are other ways of paying attention that are immersive and diffusive — ways that alleviate physical/emotional pain and optimize performance and well-being.

I’m about halfway through reading it. The book comes with a CD with a couple of recorded trances on them, and that’s what influenced my meditation.

Simply put, one of the trances is becoming aware first of your thumbs in a three-dimensional way. Then you do that with your forefingers, then thumbs and forefingers together, then the space between them.

You add an awareness of a subatomic level in which the distances are vast. We are made mostly of space. You gradually expand to include the whole body and the space in and around it.

Doing this felt a little different from sensing my energy body. The feeling was denser, less like light, and more like pulses, currents,  and vibrations. It was not chakra-centered. It was more centered on the physical layer.

John Daniewicz, a member of my sangha, recommended a book called The Alphabet Vs. the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, which seems to have a related premise: that when humanity became literate and used our eyes for reading and writing, we rewired our brains into left-brain dominance and lost our right-brain way of awareness. Or at least that is my second-hand understanding of it.

I’m adding it — not ironically — to my to-read list, along with Buddha’s Brain. With a note that I wonder what it would be like to read and write nothing for a year. Sounds restful.

Witnessing the ordinary

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This morning the visitors to my guesthouse were just ordinary folks.

Attention wandering during body scan. Then remembering to  connect my breath to each part as I scan, not planning it but staying as long as needed. Five breaths for my head covers the territory. Another five for my neck, sensing and releasing tension.

And so on down my body (interrupted occasionally by Wandering Attention, a frequent visitor) and then the feet! Yes, there’s definitely a flourish of attention and delight when awareness reaches my beloved feet.

Mostly I’m just noticing what it feels like to be me, here, now. Feeling little aches and pains, little tightnesses and heavinesses.

Then realizing that  much of my body isn’t feeling aches, pains, tight, heavy. You know what? Those parts are doing okay! Functioning with ease. I like that.

Hey, I just did the old figure/ground trick, a very useful tool. Bring the okayness to the foreground and let the pain recede into the background. Yep, I can (sometimes) choose what I attend to.

And then on to whole body awareness. I say those words to myself, start with a breath, and “decide” to stick with just breathing, noticing the expansion of my physical body and my energy with each inhalation, and the rest and release that come with each exhalation. Such a nice soothing pattern, this breathing. In, out, expand, release. Repeat until the end of this life.

Mind wanders but feels lazy, not getting very excited about anything. Actually, this is kind of boring, just sitting here breathing. If I hadn’t recently woken from a full night’s sleep, I might feel sleepy. I want something to do. Something else.

A part that lives in the dark would like to experience some silence. Sure. I/we/attention notices the emptiness between thoughts, the just being. The length of each emptiness seems to become longer. Or maybe time slows.

At times, time itself seems to be suspended by some kind of hook, and then something — another breath — releases it to drop away. Some odd dream-like mechanism is moving time, like in a Terry Gilliam film. Time is moving slowly, irregularly.

Now it’s crawling, now stopping, now lurching, back to crawling. It’s the rhythm of stillness in Gabrielle Roth’s 5 Rhythms.

And then I hear the chimes, ending my session.

Today was not a big chakra day, a big energy body day, a big mind or big heart day.

Today was a day of witnessing the ordinary.

Working with a meditation teacher

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Before late 2009, I meditated for several years without a teacher, usually for 20 minutes a day. My meditation sessions were relaxing. Sometimes they were expanding. Sometimes my mind was caught up in thoughts. Sometimes I entered deep states of bliss.

After the first few months, I did not have a sense of progression. What I experienced seemed to repeat itself at random. It was all beneficial, but random. I didn’t have a sense of where I might be headed, except there was a possibility that something called “enlightenment” might be at the end of this path.

I discovered that Peg was a meditation coach late last year, which encouraged me to commit to a daily practice. It actually seemed like a no-brainer, as in, “Mary Ann, you live in a city with a Zen priest who can function as a meditation coach! You are privileged beyond your wildest dreams and cannot pass this up!”

Today Peg encouraged the sangha members to meditate for 30 minutes daily and to meet with her weekly, and before each meeting, to remind her of our full name and our current practice. She coaches a stream of people on Sunday mornings.

By current practice, she means what she has coached us to do in meditation. For some, their current practice might be to focus on their breath. My current practice is to start with a body scan and then focus on whole body awareness.

This isn’t random. Peg has experience with both spiral dynamics and meditation, a powerful combination that means she has the skill and experience to know what to prescribe.

For instance, often a meditator will take a big leap in growth over a short time and then will level off into a plateau. The plateau is necessary to integrate the big leap. Then another big leap occurs, followed by a plateau. And so on.

She knows what the big leaps and plateaus are likely to be about, and through her coaching, can identify where a meditator is on the path and prepare them for what’s ahead.

Now I have a sense of progression and a teacher I can trust. It makes a difference. I’m actually going somewhere. It’s called maturity or enlightenment. They may even be the same thing.

Working with my vata dosha

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One of my friends posted on Facebook last night that she was cooking, had an ear out for her baby, was thinking about how to improve her job prospects, wanting to finish a book she was reading, thinking about doing some yoga… Then she added that she was a pure vata Gemini.

I don’t know about being a Gemini–my daughter and granddaughter have a lot of it in their charts, but I don’t (I’m an Aquarius, also an air sign).

I do know about vata, because that’s my dosha too.

If you’re not familiar, doshas are another of those ancient Hindu bits of wisdom. Doshas are kind of like temperament, and there are three of them. Everyone has all three, but one usually predominates.

Balancing the doshas is what ayurveda is about–when our doshas are unbalanced, our health suffers. Diet, yoga, and meditation all play a role in balancing the doshas.

The other two doshas are kapha and pitta. You can google them and read all about them online. I just want to talk about vata.

People in whom vata predominates experience mental quickness and are excitable and irregular in habits. (You may have noticed that I don’t sit at the same time every day.)

Vatas are full of joy and enthusiasm when in balance. Yay!!! In stress, we respond with fear, worry, and anxiety.  😦

“Often have racing, disjointed thoughts.”

This is monkey mind on speed for people who aren’t vatas. It’s like reading unfiltered Twitter, only it’s happening in your head.

For me, at times monkey mind operates too fast to really catch anything. Then the part of me who is witnessing just waits, and eventually monkey mind slows down and gets in sync. I found this skill on my own. It’s a keeper.

It’s important for vatas to know that not everyone has this kind of monkey mind. Some people can easily turn off their internal dialogue.

If you are vata-predominant, “Meditate every day for deep relaxation.”

Okay, I can check that off my list of things to do. I’m doin’ it!

“An effort to establish a regular routine is very important for all people with a vata body type.”

Ooh, I kind of knew that was coming. So… on Monday, I will begin to sit early in the morning. And you and I shall see what difference it may make.

Inner dialogue about pleasure and pain

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Today is the first time that I sat after cooking but before eating. Just wasn’t that hungry, or rather, was hungrier for sitting than for eating.

A few moments from today’s session really stand out. I was sitting in half-lotus, ardha padmasana. My attention was on my energy body, being with the delicious vibrant hum of prana emanating.

Then my attention switched to feeling aches in my neck, hip joints, sacroiliac joints, and knees from tight muscles and residual tension from the work day.

It occurred to me that I could shift my position to relieve the pain.

An internal  voice said, “Oh, please, not yet. We’re feeling so pleasant and peaceful, sitting in this silent stillness. Moving will be a disruption. Let’s find out if we can extend these good feelings and ease the pain and sit in stillness a bit longer.”

I found I could intensify the pleasant sensations in my energy body a bit by giving them more attention to the point that the sensations of pain in my physical body were quite mild. There, but contained.

I wondered if I could overwhelm the sensations of pain with sensations of pleasure. It certainly seemed possible.

And then the sensations of pain became intense enough that another voice said, “Enough. Shift.” Guess it can work both ways.

So I shifted my position. My left leg was especially happy to stretch out straight and rotate the ankle before coming back into sukhasana.

And that was what was most remarkable about sitting today.

I want to add that when I sit, I experience much more than I can write about. A lot of it is nonverbal. It may be that the real benefit of meditation is this nonverbal “something else” that seems to be running in the background.

I also want to clarify something. These blog posts go to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I got a comment on Facebook about a previous post about awareness that I have been pondering on.

The awareness I’m talking about isn’t necessarily being aware of anything in particular. It’s more that the act of being aware, regardless of object, is a huge surprising miracle in and of itself. It is unifying and endless and profound, and tuning into it is perhaps the most expansive experience I’ve ever had.

Falling in love with awareness

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I sat early this morning, before work. Long busy day, just now having time to post. Feeling tired, so this will be short.

Don’t remember details of this morning’s sit. Just that then, and later in the day, and even now as I think about it, I feel like I am falling in love with awareness.

It’s a subtle yet major shift in my universe, to understand that awareness is everything. From that realization, an unveiling is slowly taking place. I can’t hurry it or even describe it right now.

I can only ooh and ahh as the process unfolds.

Going to bed now. Can’t wait to sit again tomorrow.